2nd day

Today is our 2nd day in Ensenada. We arrived yesterday and it was drizzling. We stopped at the Walmart in Rosarito. Its in this mega-mall plaza with Home Depot and a huge movie theatre that has all the latest movies just like back home (Transformers 2, etc.) but dubbed in Spanish. If you take away the Spanish, you wouldn't know we're in Mexico. The Walmart was huge. The main difference is the kind of produce they have and the unbelievable bakery. The pastries look SO good. Liya was the only one who bought something. I wish I did now. Right now, everyone is either doing skit training or VBS training. Our VBS coordinator is Dan Mats. Daniel and Alex round out the VBS team for today. I bet we are one of the only churches to have an all-guy VBS team. Awesomeness. The rest of the group is learning two skits - one is Wake Me Up (Evanescence song) and the other is Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2. Supposedly they are new this year which is pretty cool. We played games this morning. They were ok. We did an obstacle course and then played water balloon battleship.

The sessions have been pretty good. I like the speaker. His name is John Rey or Ray. He is not a pastor rather he does all kinds of social justice stuff. He is very down-to-earth. He's not very dynamic and he said he's not your prototypical youth speaker but something about him I really like. I see him as a man of action. He brought his wife and family with him. I'll see if I can find his bio on-line. Some people commented that there are much fewer teams than 2 years ago. Last time, there were like 200 people on the base. This year its just us and another team from Washington so its like 50 people here including staff. In our team time, I shared a passage last night about Gideon and how God turned 22,000 soldiers away from battling the Midianites because he did not want Israel to boast in their strength. God is doing the same thing with this group and the people here - we are few but we are going to do great things through Him and we cannot boast in our strength because of it.

The worship has been excellent. The worship leader is a guy named Axel. he's Mexican, his English is not very good, and he's hilarious. They taught us a song in Spanish and it was really good. The team is extremely talented. Four guitars and they sound really really good. The girl Katlyn has a beautiful voice.

I'm looking forward to the outreach time. I think we're going to be working with an orphanage, a disabled kids' ministry, and hopefully hooking up with the church from last time. Tonight, we're gonna have the sin bag service and some other special stuff. Please pray that God would move in our hearts to meet each one us personally, speak to us, and remove the obstacles that keep us from hearing His voice.

A Night In Mira Mesa

We spent an awesome night here at Simon Huang, Simon Hsu, Randy and Stanley's place. Its a very nice house that they just moved into. We're getting ready to leave to be picked up by the YWAM vans in San Diego. Its nice and cool here in Mira Mesa, near San Diego. It was slightly chilly last night; we had all the windows open and the birds chirping provided a tropical feel. Our team is doing well. We have some peeps playing cards and Alex, Jack, and I recently returned from a donut run. Peace out.

Arrival!

We made it here safely! All of us in our single one pieces! Anywho, the trip down was a bit rough, a long drive, but over all, it was a fun ride down. We stopped by In N Out/Wendy's and got some dinner, and then continued. On the car I was in, we listened to some awesome worship jam music, as while playing games to get to know each other better. Often times it got really quiet because people got tired, but that's when those of us who were awake got to start taking pictures! A great start to our trip! More to come later on...!

Pictures of the Trip from YWAM

The link for the pictures is www.missionadventuresphotos.org

I believe it is updated daily during the trip. We're outta here!

Car Wash Fundraiser

This past Saturday 6/20, we had a fundraiser to raise money and promote the trip within our neighborhood. We washed 44 cars and at least 15 of the cars belonged to people in our neighborhood who were passing by!!! Great job holding the signs Jasmine, Jenny, Erin, and Kim!!!

For pics go here

Welcome to the CCIC-SV Ensenada 2009 blog

Welcome to the CCIC-SV Ensenada 2009 Blog! From June 29^th to July 8^th, a group of high school students and youth counselors from our church, Chinese Church in Christ - South Valley (CCIC-SV), will embark on a trip to Ensenada, Mexico to participate in a Youth With A Mission (YWAM) missions adventure. Our youth group has been doing a trip to Mexico almost every year since 2001. This summer we’ll be partnering with a local church to help them in a variety of ways tasks such as putting on children’s programs and park outreaches and helping with various work crew activities. Its going to be a blast!

This trip has already been quite a journey. Mexico has been all over the news recently due to swine flu and drug-related violence. On May 15^th, Center for Disease Control (CDC) downgraded their health warning to a health precaution. No cases of swine flu have been identified at any of YWAM’s operating locations and precautions are in place to keep it that way. Based on this and other factors, our church leadership decided it was safe to proceed.