The last of our missionaries have boarded their flight. We are officially all headed home!

With OSLC, we have 64 missionaries on this flight. Pray for the other people – lol!

3 of 4 flights have left for home. We have 14 left in San Diego leaving soon. But, we just learned that Our Shephard is flying home with us!  

We have just sent the first wave off to the airport, while the rest of us get a few more hours of sleep. We continue to pray for safe travel as this will be a long day! 

As the trip slowly comes to a close, we wanted to take a minute to tell you a few things about the trip from our perspective.

First, God certainly blessed us with an AMAZING team. Your students and adults are wonderful!! Everyone put forth their best foot this week, working together and doing what they needed to do to be the hands and feet of God. They were challenged in the morning and evening to grow in their personal faith, and worked diligently to show love at their sites, even when it was challenging.

The student leadership team worked hard to lead their team and communicate with their adults. I am very proud of both the students and adults for working together to find the right balance of adult mentorship and student leadership.

VBS – written by our teams – was great as well. The imagination and creativity was impressive, as was the amount of work they out into making it work at their sites. They even gave up quite a bit of California time to prepare and organize their teams.

Each team had some serious challenges this week. I am not sure how much of the challenging stuff made it into the blog – but man, with a lot of prayer, each team really stepped up to the plate! The build team, rather than starting from the beginning, had to piece things together and make them work, which was super challenging. The Park Team had a few boys at their site that were very hard to love – throwing rocks and cursing at our team. The team took time to remember that these boys come from homes where there is not a lot of attention or love and made a true effort to shower even more love on them. The team in Soli started not 1, but 2 new sites for Octane. This is hard work and makes for a couple long days figuring out the details. Regardless of the challenges, each day when I asked how the day went, all of our students were super excited and happy, ready to go again the next day to share God’s love with more kids.

On a personal level, I am so very thankful for all of Octane’s hearts and love for my family. They made it possible – almost easy at times – to have my kids at camp. This is no small feat…a 5 month old, 3 year old, and 4 year old at camp in the heat with the mosquitoes and very little sleep. All of our team was so great and helpful – I am so absolutely thankful for each of them!!!!

Last but not least – we are FULLY FUNDED!!!!! Thank you to Trinity and their Wild Game Dinner, St. Augustine and their pancake dinner, a last minute anonymous donation, the Mexican Dinner, and all of our Aunt Polly letters, God has blessed us with FULL FUNDING for our trip.

What an amazing God we have. So many details came together just perfectly, with the right people in the right places at the right time. God is so very good.

Our trip is not over yet, though. While my family came home one day before the rest of the team, everyone else is still on their way home. Today and tomorrow are VERY long days for our team. They are exhausted and will get into San Diego any minute. Once there, they need to clean out all of the vans, shower, and make sure they know what luggage goes where. Our first flight leaves at 6:15 am, and our last one lands here in Detroit at midnight. I will meet our flights at the hotel tomorrow, get them settled in and then we will be debriefing and praying for each of our team members on Saturday morning. Please pray for a strong finish to the trip, that everyone gets along and is patient even though they are soooo very tired, that God blesses them with great travels, a heart that is ready to debrief on Saturday and an excitement to see their friends and family.

See you all soon!
In His Grip,
Amy and the leadership team

As with any mission from God, there are many stumbling blocks on our road to Mexicali. That’s why it is so amazing when we see answered prayers! They are truly God speaking to us, telling us to stay the course as good and faithful servants of Christ.  

We have received a few curve balls over the last few weeks, but the team is persevering. It will be amazing to see what God has planned for us in Mexicali! 

So, as we continue to pray, we would ask that you continue to keep us in your prayers as well. Requests include safe travel, healthy travelers, full funding of our trip, and to be preared for our ministry physically,  mentally and spiritually. To God be the glory!

Today is the day of our annual Mexican Dinner and Silent Auction!  We will be serving mexican lasagna,  chicken enchiladas, taco salad, Spanish rice and ice cream sundaes for dessert!

As always,  we would like to thank our catere Sheri Hebert for the amazing meal. We would also like to thank Lori Carrier and Paul Myers for the Silent Auction.  Most of all, we thank our supporters for making this event a success each and every year!

To God be the glory!!!!

Today we had our first March meeting. The students are working on plans for their VBS teams, the build team is formulating a plan to approach their unconventional week, and we are counting down the days until we leave as opposed to weeks. 

Next week we will host our annual Mexican Dinner and Silent Auction at Trinity Lutheran Church in Utica. Please join us!!!!  We would love to show you firsthand all of the plans for our 2017 Mission team!

Please continue to pray for us as our travel dates quickly approach!  As always, thank you for your love and support!

Teams are starting to form, plane tickets are being purchased, hotel reservations are made, vans are reserved…. good things are happening! We continue to pray that God will bless this trip, this team, and all of the people we will encounter throughout this journey.

As you enjoy tonight’s football game (or maybe just the commercials), please take a moment to keep us in your prayers. Our build team could use a few extra hands, our VBS teams could use a few extra students, and we are still praying about our resources to successfully construct a team Stephen.

To God be the glory – in tonight’s game and in Mexicali!!!

Our 2017 Mexicali Mission Team is starting to take shape. We are three weeks into planning and on the verge of identifying our teams. We have had two official meetings – a get to know you meeting and a paperwork meeting – followed by our annual leadership retreat in Omena, MI.

Please keep us all in your prayers as we work towards our trip dates. There is still a lot of work to be done to prepare for our journey!