Mission Trip 2010 - June 19-26 RECAP

RECAP • TRAVEL TEAM

Thank you for supporting the 2010 mission trip to Alvarado through your prayers and financial support. This year was challenging as we lost our mission trip site and had to regroup and locate a new site within months. While we missed the people of El Paso, God had us exactly where we needed to be -- with our neighbors, the people of Luterana Mission San Gabriel. This is a rural rodeo community south of the metroplex, where many of its members ride their horses to Sunday worship.

In Alvarado our day camp and sports teams worked in the mornings to finish out the sanctuary that the people of San Gabriel had pieced together over the past year. We made a raised altar area, painted the walls and ceilings, painted the exterior and installed flooring.

Each afternoon the day camp team shared God’s love with children of the community through games, songs, Bible stories and a slip and slide. It was an amazing site to see the faces of these little ones as they played and learned from our teens. These children learned about God’s love and they got to see that love in action! Just today one of our student leaders shared that several of the moms had been so excited about this opportunity of learning for their children. She had the idea of gathering Sunday School material for San Gabriel and surprising them with this gift in August!

The building team worked all day to build a fellowship hall right next door to the sanctuary with space for gathering, a kitchen and restrooms. This team did everything from digging the holes for piers and pouring them to putting on the tin roof. They even installed a hitching post. This building will be so important for this congregation. It will allow them to have space for Sunday School and fellowship activities for the congregation. This building will also allow them to minister to the community! It was fun to have members of San Gabriel and Pastor Jesus and his son Brian working side by side with us. One man from the community just stopped in to help after watching all of the building occurring day after day. We believe he has now found a church home!

The building is not totally finished out, but members of San Gabriel and Calvary will work together over the next month to do the finish out! The mission trip team will join San Gabriel for worship in August.

The sports team celebrated the community one night with soccer and volleyball and snow cones. Unfortunately the ground was too full of holes to continue the rest of the week without injury. The sports team had to make the hard decision to err on the side of caution and cancel sports activities for the rest of the week. They did share equipment, clothing and snow cones with the children of the community all week – even if they didn’t get to play soccer with them.

The cooking team and logistics team worked behind the scenes to keep everyone fed (6 times a day), hydrated, injury free and happy.

Once again, our young people have lived
“it is more blessed to give than to receive”!

Statement of Our Faith