My personal response

With Spring Break just around the corner students have a week off from all school responsibilities and maybe even from work. The talk of today is "what are you doing for spring break?" Some are vacationing, some "doing nothing", some seeing family and friends and others are responding to a crisis.

There is a group of UH students heading down to the border to do some mission work next week which I will be part of. I'm really looking forward to this! I am very passionate about the Mexican culture and it is a dream of mine to do a long term mission in a spanish-speaking country. This trip is a stepping stone to getting there.

The particular place we are going is a colonia located in Mission, Texas. (we aren't actually crossing the border but could throw a stone and hit it!) Colonias are basically illegal subdivisions created by rural settlers and are founded near the U.S./Mexico border. Residents lack essential elements of infrastructure because they build their own homes and use what they can get. I had the opportunity to go down there this past December for a pre-visit and we saw how a family of 9 was living in a gutted out school bus! See pic below.. the house structure on the left was built by folks like us who went down to serve this community.

We will be working with Buckner International and have a kids program planned, construction projects and a block party for Wednesday night where we will give the community dinner, have a worship night at the little baptist church they built there and also give the families donated items that were collected from us.

Stay tuned and I'll post pics from the trip and give a report on how it went! Send us your prayers!