By Mo Scarpelli

Twins Arnet and Noel Le used to see their friend Trizznie Van every day in the neighborhood. He remembers her watching them play basketball, he remembers her playing Uno and checkers, and he remembers her sitting out on the steps leading up to his apartment building.

Two years ago, though, he formed a memory he wishes never happened – he saw her body wheeled away from her house in a body bag.

“It really shocked me,” said 16-year-old Arnet Le, who glimpsed Trizznie’s feet as she was taken out of her house a final time by the paramedics. “She’d talk about wanting to kill herself when she was angry, but I didn’t think she had the guts to really do it.”

Not more than a week after graduating from Gideons Elementary, the 14-year-old girl allegedly rigged two belts to a closet rod in her room in Capital View Apartments and hung herself.
The tragedy barely made the newspaper in a city of more than half a million people, especially coming from the Pittsburgh Community, a neighborhood where residents hear gunshots several nights a week.
But it devastated a core of people in the local neighborhood, too – the Salvation Army Lakewood Corps, to be precise.

“For her to turn up dead really shocked us into action,” said Captain Platt, director of the Lakewood Corps. “After Trizznie was buried, it really began to affect us that she was one of our kids. We decided we didn’t want to do outreach for outreach’s sake there – she gave us focus and mission for the kids.”
Captain Platt remembers first hearing the news. He grabbed a one of his cadets and drove to CVA, an area visited every so often by the Corps.

Platt, whose own daughter is only a couple of days from Trizzie’s age, shakenly walked up to the young girl’s house, ready to console and assist her family and neighbors.

“Some of the kids were outside talking, just hours after it happened,” Platt said. “And I realized, here I am trying to compose myself and these kids standing outside are already in the gossiping.”

To Platt, the scene was a clear example of how at-risk youth develop a defense mode that’s hard to break down.

“One of the chief survival mechanisms is knowing how to shut down any sense of pain,” said Platt. “It cripples you if you empathize or sympathize with all the pain you see here because you’ll see so much of it that you wouldn’t be able to function.”

Platt realized then the need for the Corps’ presence at CVA, where children may lose a sense of compassion amid violence and pain.

But the Corps as a whole realized the need for South Atlanta at-risk youth in general.

Captain Platt and a Lakewood Soldier, Jason Pope, approached CVA owner ** Leathers about creating a time and place to spend with the complex’s kids. He excitedly showed them a furnished basement already complete with books, games and a television. The area had been previously used for summer camp, adult English as a Second Language classes, and several other events during the year.
In just three months, the Lakewood Corps set up a full program with a Bible study, crafts, and free time with the kids.

Children’s ministry didn’t stop where Trizznie used to live, though.

Once the CVA program was up and running, Platt turned to another area the Corps visited often, but hadn’t quite dived into fully.

“My wife and I had been riding by Jonesboro [Colony Park] for three years and every time we did, we’d point to the community and say, ‘We need to be here,’” said Platt.

The Colony Park trailer park sits on Jonesboro road, across from a rundown liquor store and a welding factory. Most of the about 500 residents are Latino, and few adults speak fluid English.
Almost all the trailers in the park house at least three children. On sunny days, some come out to play on streets ridden with broken beer bottles and trash.

Platt and Pope wanted to form a constant presence in Jonesboro, but they lacked resources and helpers to show up four afternoons a week.

That’s when 24-year-old Daynas Viera, a recent graduate from Taccoa Falls College, found Captain Platt. She told him she felt called to minister specifically in Lakewood.

“It would scare the paints off some people to come here and minister permanently,” said Platt. “But Daynas did it. And as a Spanish-speaker, with her heart for kids, she was a perfect fit for Jonesboro.”
Daynas asked Platt what she could help with and his reply was, “Make friends.” After a Three Kings Day celebration for Colony Park families in January, that’s exactly what she and several other Salvation Army volunteers did in Jonesboro.

Now, more than thirty Jonesboro kids show up for the day’s activities.
Experience Mission volunteers also chip in each day for the summer. They lead games, scribble chalk drawings, and role-play Bible stories for the kids, but more importantly, they just maintain a positive presence for the Salvation Army.

“Trust is the most expensive commodity,” said Platt. “You could give Christmas dinners to a whole community, but that wouldn’t gain the trust. You need to have faithful accountability, people need to see you from time to time.”

Experience Intern Matt Crouch knows this – the first several weeks he spent in Jonesboro, some mothers would hardly crack their doors open for him when he asked if their kids would come out and play.

Now, after six weeks, mothers chat and joke with him in Spanish and then smile as he walks away, hand in tiny hand with their young ones, to where the Salvation Army hold activities.

“The parents have been burned a little more,” said Platt. “They hold their cards a little closer. If you lived in a jungle, you’d be suspicious of every little thing you saw, heard, or ate. When the Salvation Army shows up, what they really want to know is, ‘Are these people my friends?’”
Gregoria Sanchez, a 28-year-old mother of three, has been living in Colony Park for four years and speaks almost no English. She usually sticks around the house, but she is grateful that her kids don’t have to anymore.

“If they didn’t come, the kids would not go out, I would keep them here and they would play in a small room,” says Sanchez. “They are excited to go to the activities, and I trust they will stay out of trouble there.”

Sanchez’s main concern is that her kids stay in school. In such a tight-knit community, the children are influenced mostly by the teens around them – and the Salvation Army has noticed that many Colony Park teens drop out.

“If you are well educated, you will stay away from drugs and drinking,” says Sanchez, whose parents attended only primary school in Mexico. “I want my children to be well-educated.”
Platt knows many parents of at-risk youth in South Atlanta like Sanchez that would give anything for their kids to have better, but simply don’t have the resources.

“Every day I see a place where we need to be,” said Platt. “The fields are white, we want to be out there.”

As the Corps tries to maintain a constant presence in both Jonesboro and Pittsburgh, street ministry proves to be hard work for both Salvation Army workers and Experience Mission volunteers alike.

“The important thing to remember is that when Experience Mission partners with us, they become the Salvation Army,” said Captain Platt. “They are the face of the Corps, that’s how the neighborhoods see it. And it’s been a blessing, because we could make a lot of things happen without money, but not without people.”

By Mo Scarpelli

At the Christian Community Center in West Baltimore, a familiar chorus is heard every day across the playground area: “Mr. Tom! Mr. Tom!”

More than 50 kids show up at the community center at any one time, where they take Bible classes, play on the jungle gym, and this past summer, spent time with senior high Experience Mission volunteers.

“This is the best summer I’ve ever had here,” said Tom Homans, director of the Christian Community Center on Hollins Street. “Experience Mission has been such a blessing. The kids especially love the one-on-one time.”

One-on-one time is something Homans, or “Mr. Tom,” has had trouble giving all the children that attend the Community Center since he stepped into the full-time position almost exactly five years ago.

And although the kids in West Baltimore have a laundry list of needs, Homans says their need for meaningful relationships should be at the top of the list, even if it’s somewhat new to them.

“You can tell from some of the kids, the way they act, they just need attention,” said Homans. “They need someone to come in and hang out and listen to them. ”

This kind of ministry can be new to some volunteers, even if they’ve been on the mission-field for years.

TJ Speer of Peqauannoc, New Jersey spent a week in Arizona in 2006 and then another in Gary, WV in 2007, working under Experience Mission. He says he spent most of his time building and repairing homes.

This summer, Speer got to see a different side of mission work in Baltimore when he spent a day at the Christian Community Center.

“Just having the chance to interact with them on a more friendship basis than a service level has been really meaningful,” said 18-year-old Speer. “It’s very important for them because some have troubled backgrounds. They get to see that people care about them and they take on a positive uplifting spirit.”

Sleeping just around the block from the community center and passing by old row houses every day, Speer noticed that West Baltimore is not the safest place for a child.

Homans says drugs and alcohol are a constant temptation.

“The kids in the neighborhood are out 24/7,” said Homans. “Some of them have been through some rough stuff, they want to be happy, so they can’t say no to drugs or alcohol.”

Actually, that was Homans’ brothers’ story. Before Homans considered himself a Christian, he watched his brother become addicted to crack cocaine.

“I thought I’d get a call that he’s dead, even though he had a wife and kids,” said  Homans, thinking back to just six years ago. “I didn’t think he’d ever get clean.”

But to Homans’ surprise, he did. Furthermore, he found God in the process. And then he told Homans about his faith, and instilled a sense of conviction in his brother.

“My brother - he helped me know God’s power,” said Homans. “God got a hold of him and one night, he just started witnessing to me and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

Homans started pursuing his faith and volunteering with youth ministry at his church in “the County” (what Baltimoreans call the suburban area around the inner city). He heard about the Christian Community Center in Baltimore through his girlfriend and started stopping by to help out twice a week, when he wasn’t working.

“I felt called to work with kids and the church was a great place but my heart was really here,” said Homans, sweeping his hands to show his small office in the middle of the Community Center’s ground floor.

The Center first opened its doors in the fifties, in partnership with the Helping Up Mission, a drug rehabilitation center for men. In 1992, the Center became an independent institution, owned and operated by Betty and Charlie Horn, who still live in the area.

EM teams tour and help serve lunch at the Helping Up Mission, where volunteers get another shot at relational ministry - this time with adults trying to overcome their addictions with their faith.

The Helping Up Mission boasts a recovery rate of 67 percent - more than twice that of the average drug rehabilitation center. Mission employees attribute this to implementing faith in recovery.

Homans feels certain that faith helps everybody, no matter how hard the situation seems. After all, he was introduced to a living faith through his drug-addicted brother.

“If they don’t have the Lord, there’s not much you can do to help them,” said Homans of children and adults alike. “Around here, the temptation is so great to find pleasure that everyone needs the Lord.”

Experience Mission is facilitating mission trips to Honduras and Belize for Summer 2009. To learn more, visit <a href=”http://www.experiencemission.org”>ExperienceMission.org</a> or call the EM office at  360-732-0986

It’s nothing unusual to participate in a service project that benefits the community while on a short-term mission trip—in fact, that’s what one would hope for.

But Experience Mission is taking that model a step further. While partner community needs have always been taken heavily into consideration, EM has started an increased effort to let local community leaders determine the specific projects they need and see what can be done to support those needs, even if they fall outside the scope of a traditional short-term mission trip.

For example, in Jamaica this past summer, residents said they needed help building two new kindergartens. In Costa Rica the year before, residents of the village of Coroma said they needed a suspension bridge.

The idea, EM Executive Director Chris Clum said, is to make a more practical impact in residents’ lives and to inspire them toward a greater sense of ownership regarding community improvement efforts.

Clum said one concern has been making sure that such centralized projects do not take away from one-on-one time with community members—time that is practically guaranteed if home repair and construction comprises the majority of the work. But as it has turned out thus far, the inclusion of larger community projects has allowed for plenty of personal interaction.

“We’re actually engaging the community more, because we’re impacting more people’s lives,” Clum said.

Clum mentioned the schools built in Jamaica.

There, in the small rural town of Catadupa and nearby villages, Pastor Leroy Gordon of the Christian Fellowship Church and community members have maximized minimal government funding and led an effort to run community-based kindergartens for children between three and six years old. The classes of between 20 and 30 children are held in small churches without indoor plumbing; the children use pit toilets outside. The facilities were extremely basic, but they got by.

But newly imposed government regulations forced them out of those facilities and—if they wanted to continue holding kindergarten classes—required them to construct new buildings. The community of Catadupa, he said, would have to provide the government with blueprints designed by an architect. The process cost money the community didn’t have.

“What we have to do is hire people–skilled men–you are dealing now with a proper building,” Gordon said.

At that point, a grant from Canada-based S.O.S. became crucial, as did EM’s large volunteer teams. Gordon said the combination of the donation and enough manpower made it possible to make significant progress on the buildings, and this helped rally the community together.

“There was a tremendous sense of ownership in Jamaica,” Clum said. “This was their project, and we were just coming to help them with their project. The workers there were going to continue on.”

(Click here to read more about the school construction effort there.)

There was similar participation in Coroma, Costa Rica, the year before. The suspension bridge volunteers built would allow children to get the school and the elderly to seek medical care in those cases when the river there rose. Knowing this, community members took time off work to volunteer and took turns cooking for the volunteer teams.

Selecting projects like these does not, Clum said, mean that mission trips won’t involve plenty of spiritual outreach.

“The spiritual needs aren’t going to be met unless we’re connecting and engaging with people. So whatever we’re doing during the week, we have to involve interacting with people,” Clum said. He said if work projects don’t lend themselves to a great deal of interaction, a trip might incorporate outreach programs such as community barbeques, additional Kids Club activities or supporting Meals on Wheels programs in urban communities.

Clum said allowing the community to determine what the work projects will be is an important component of EM’s burgeoning Community Affiliate Program, in which community leaders are identified to work with residents toward year-round change, as opposed to solely relying on outside involvement during the summer months.

“The ownership rests in the community. Our role at EM is to help them connect to opportunities, resources and networks,” Clum said. “If one component is that they want teams to come down, then that’s great, but it’s part of their thing. And if it is one of those components—and we assume that it will be—then we bring the labor and the materials down there, and we go down to help them. It’s exactly flipped around, and exactly as it should be.”

Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 mission trips to locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call  360-732-0986  to learn more.

Though Hurricane Gustav was played down as a near-miss storm that largely spared the Gulf Coast, the flooding and consequent damage did deal a devastating blow to the morale of many residents who had finally begun to regain a sense of stability for the first time since Katrina struck in 2005.

Some are calling it quits, including residents of Pearlington, Miss., an Experience Mission partner community. While Gustav’s damage was light in comparison to Hurricane Katrina and newer structures withstood the storm, a general sense of discouragement is sinking in among those who have twice suffered significant property damage.

Janyne Evans, 52, owns the popular Turtle Landing restaurant in Pearlington. She said two good friends of hers—who are also good customers—are choosing to skip town.

“They’re going to pack up and they’re moving out. They can’t handle losing everything continuously,” Evans said during a telephone interview. She said she had just gotten back to the Turtle Landing to find the bottom floor flooded with water and was assessing the overall damage.

As she spoke, she said, she was awaiting an evacuation order for Hurricane Ike.

Other residents who suffered through Hurricane Katrina, however, had cause to be thankful. While 137 homes in Pearlington suffered water damage due to Gustav, those built in accordance with more stringent new building codes remained largely unscathed.

Many of those homes, which are raised on sturdy posts to sit at least 15 feet above sea level, were built by EM volunteers in partnership with the Pearlington Recovery Center (PRC).

“All the new houses are fine, because they’re all on posts. None of them got water, none of them lost a single possession,” PRC Director Glenn Lockin said. “All the houses are perfect, which is just a blessing.”

Locklin said that while the storm set community restoration work back about 90 days, the return to normalcy seemed streamlined, and just days after the residents returned from a mandatory evacuation, Pearlington was up and running as it had been before. Still, he said that rather than the optimistic sense of community that has fueled much of the Katrina recovery effort, many people appear downtrodden.

“The faith is not here, which I was kind of surprised by,” Locklin said. “They’re nervous, and I do understand that.”

Locklin is trying to stay positive. He himself lost a car to the storm, but said he wasn’t sweating it too much.

“It’s all good. It’s just a car,” he said. “It’s not the same as a house—it’s not the same as rebuilding again.”

Back at the Turtle Landing, Evans said that despite her soaked restaurant and more difficulty on the horizon, she was fighting to keep her spirits up as well, since she had no plans to leave Pearlington.

“I’m going to try to stick it out because I got six years into it, and life savings. I can’t really just walk away from it right now,” she said.

Locklins estimated it would take about two more years to get Pearlington back to normal once and for all. Meanwhile, he’s also attempting to plant a Foursquare church there.

He said volunteer teams serving Pearlington through EM helped speed the recovery process along this year and enriched local youth—including his daughters—by giving exposing them to people from all over the country.

“We had a positive experience with all the groups. The kids had a ball, and we got a lot done. We worked on so many houses, it was scary,” he said.

Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 mission trips to Pearlington and other locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call 360-732-0986 to learn more.

Christian Youth Mission Trip
Walking through the Jonesboro Trailer Park in Atlanta this summer, Jason Pope of the Salvation Army saw something that in most communities would be considered fairly shocking: As a black lab with no apparent owner wandered along, several teenagers drove up, stopped to shoot the animal with a BB gun, and then drove away.

Sadly, the incident was one of many reflecting a general environment of chaos and instability in the dilapidated, impoverished community comprised mostly of struggling immigrants.

“It’s hard to describe it exactly, but it would remind you of being in a two-thirds world country and seeing poverty when you’re there,” Pope said. “There are no boundaries for the kids in that community. Another kid walks up with a dead squirrel, playing with it like it’s a puppet, trying to get it to climb up trees, and we try to explain to him that he shouldn’t do that, that he could get sick.”

“When there’s no hope there, they just make stuff up,” Pope said.

Like other teams working in new urban communities across the country this year, the Experience Mission Summer Staff Intern team assigned to Atlanta had to adopt an approach of patience, consistency and sensitivity to try to reach the children.

Most kids in the struggling community were generally defiant and uncontrollable and had grown up surrounded by outside influences that glorified gang culture, intern Matt Crouch said, adding that one gang in particular had a heavy influence on the community.

“These guys growing up are seeing that’s the way to get the money, that’s the way to be cool,” he said. “So they’re 10, 11 years old and they’re trying to be part of the gang.”

Crouch said he and fellow interns were the regular objects of curse-laden tirades or obscene gestures as they returned to the community day after day to forge new inroads. At one point, Crouch was even bitten by one boy.

“He just wasn’t happy that he got out in four square. He was just going crazy, and I had to hold him back from hitting another kid, so he decided to bite my arm,” Crouch said. “I just had teeth marks and bruises for a week.”

But they didn’t let that incident or the constant deriding they received from many children dissuade them, and instead showed up every day and walked through the community to talk with families there. Crouch speaks Spanish—something that allowed him to communicate more personably with the dozens of Mexican families living there.

It was slow going, but Crouch said he found that if was able to win over the confidence of one family member, it most often translated into an open door with the entire family.

He said it was startling to see some poverty stricken families working to instill healthy discipline in their kids while others approached parenting with a sort of abandon. More active parents, he said, were constantly worried about the negative impact of the rebellious, uncontrolled children.

“It was amazing just to see the different sides of the spectrum and how they can exist so close in one community, and how they can affect each other.”

Results worth the effort
Slowly, Crouch said, holding Kids’ Club in the community every day and having the same three interns show up consistently started to send a trickle of structure through the group they were working with. That had been the hope from the beginning.

“One of our great challenges was to build at least some set of boundaries so they could feel safe and have some kind of discipline throughout the summer,” Pope said, adding that the only place they had to hold Kid’s Club, in an open field, didn’t necessarily help add to the sense of order.

Still, Pope said community members noted the improved demeanor of the 25-30 children who regularly participated in the Kid’s Club. He said their language could be used as one barometer of their progress, and recalled one day when a particularly prolific young boy went a whole day without cursing. One of the interns complimented him.

“I asked him how that felt, and he said, ‘It feels good,’” Pope said.

He said major improvements like those were most visible in the last few weeks of the summer. Pope said that while mission teams have been to Jonesboro Trailer Park before, they typically came for one isolated week. Having a stable leadership team and a consistent flow of volunteers made a significant difference this year.

“They always knew they were going to have that consistency week after week and it wasn’t just a drive by deal,” he said.

By the end of the summer, what would have been a five-minute walk through the trailer park turned into an hour-long trek for Crouch—he was stopped for small chats at nearly every home he passed.

“That was what was so hard about leaving,” Crouch said. “It takes about that much time—I was there two months, every day—to finally be accepted, where people finally start trusting you significantly.”

All urban locations initially tough
EM Executive Director Chris Clum said it was similarly difficult to make headway in other stateside urban communities, but that like in Atlanta, volunteer teams ended up spearheading the establishment of new, potentially life-changing bonds.

“Early on, we struggled in the urban communities,” Clum said. “It was a bear the first half of the summer. But the relationships we formed with our partners…it was extremely rewarding to the teams. We were able to make some pretty strong inroads, and it made a significant impact.”

In Portland, Maine and Fort Wayne, Ind., volunteers had the opportunity to work with predominately Muslim refugees—something of a unique experience for a stateside mission trip.

“There were many opportunities to talk about Christ with the Muslims, and it was done in a very appropriate way, so we’re always pleased about that,” Clum said.
Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 trips to Atlanta, Portland, Fort Wayne, Baltimore and other urban locations. Learn more at www.experiencemission.org or call the EM office at 360-732-0986.

Make a Contribution
In a move unique among missions organizations, Experience Mission has launched a new International Exchange Program to send the residents of its partner communities - those from disadvantaged areas who normally host incoming mission teams - on mission trips themselves.

“The International Exchange Program is at the heart of our mission and our passion, which is the communities,” said EM Executive Director Chris Clum. “To provide people from our U.S. urban communities or international locations the opportunity to do something like this has the potential to change their life forever.”

EM’s goal is to send more than 50 partner community members on mission trips in 2009, and 50 former EM summer staff interns are leading the charge to raise the funds needed. The cost of sending one partner community member to another location is about $1,000, and each student has committed to raising that amount through donations and monthly pledges.

The program is being launched in the hope it can help participants ward off the demoralizing, dream-stunting state of mind that can be engrained in those suffering in poverty’s grip.

“A combination of people, culture and circumstances can rob your hope and steal any ambition that you have that it can be different than it is,” Clum said.

Clum said the exchange program will allow participants to meet and learn from people in other parts of the world living in the same circumstances they are, equipping them with new tools they can take home to help inspire hope.

“What can be so powerful about this is that it’s like a match—it takes one match to light a fire in a field,” he said. “In so many cases you see that in a small little village in someplace like Jamaica or Mexico, it takes one or two young people who come back who are willing to step out of the status quo or break away from limitations, and it can change the communities and open up the eyes of so many others.”

“You put God in the middle of that, and it can be pretty powerful,” Clum added.

The idea is not untested. In July 2006, EM raised money to send a team of 25 high school students and young adults from Ruiz, a small town in Nayarit - the poorest state in Mexico - on a mission trip to the border town of Tecate. Participants described it as a special opportunity that spurred them toward pursuing further service opportunities. One young woman, then 18-year-old Veronica Bernal, ended up serving as an EM summer staff intern in Mexico the following year.

She said living in poverty left her especially prepared to work with others in similar circumstances.

“We have lived all that,” Bernal said just after her mission trip. “We have felt - at least I have - what it’s like to not have a definite place to live and to have to move from house to house.”

How you can help
Visit our Exchange page to learn the basics about the program and to make a donation. Your one-time contribution or monthly pledge would go entirely toward direct costs associated with the trip and could help make a life-changing impact on an impoverished partner community member - a person who might otherwise never have the opportunity to step outside the confines of their impoverished environment.

Honduras Mission Trips :: Belize Mission Trips
Repeatedly listed by local residents as the most pressing needs in their community, water and food will be the focus of new EM mission trips to Honduras in 2009, while church construction and ministry expansion for the Family of God Church will be the focus of new trips to Belize.

EM staff members Josh Gray and Steven Barry traveled to Honduras on July 4 to assess the possibility of setting up trips there, and while they were prepared to see poverty - Honduras consistently ranks among the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere - seeing it first-hand was still overwhelming.

“There are a lot of places where you see the poor and they stand out and it tugs at your heart, but then most other people seem to be doing OK,” Barry said. “That’s not really the case in Honduras. You see signs of really extreme poverty pretty much everywhere you go.”

Gray and Barry stayed on a small ranch in Junquillo, a village of about 1,000 people that sits in the pine-covered mountains between the capital city of Tegucigalpa and the city of Danlí. Junquillo is known for its remarkably low crime levels compared to the rest of the country, but nonetheless remains just as poor.

Most short-term mission trips deal with basic construction projects–typically things like improving churches or building homes or restroom facilities. While those are all definite needs in Honduras, during a community meeting to help prioritize work projects for next year’s teams, residents of Junquillo and nearby Ocotal said they spend most of their days simply figuring out how to get adequate water and food.

“It’s amazing when you ask somebody, ‘What are the greatest needs you have in your community?’ and they say, ‘Water and food,’” EM Executive Director Chris Clum said. “Our response has to be, ‘Yes, we will come. We will help you with the water, and we will figure out how to help you with food.’”

There are reservoirs in both Junquillo and Santa Clara that contain clean drinking water. However, only Junquillo has a distribution system, and it uses cheap plastic tubing and releases water only twice a week. Ocotal residents, along with Junquillo residents without an effective storage system, must hike up steep hills to the reservoirs. Some spend several hours each day just gathering water.

For those who bear that responsibility—frequently children—it marks yet another obstacle in a day already wrought with challenges families must work together to overcome. Keeping food on the table is a constant battle. Most full-time workers earn less than 100 Lempiras a day, or about $5, and it costs $3.50 to buy beans alone for a few meals.

“The bottom line is just that the cost of living is too great for the amount of wages that are available,” Gray said. “I was surprised by that and just struck by the needs, but also the resilience of the community.”

Some don’t have the wherewithal to provide for themselves at all. One 92-year-man in Junquillo has no regular source of income and only his now elderly daughter to support him however he can. He relies on friends of his gracious enough to bring by food and lives, as one nearby rancher put it, “by the hand of God.”

Belize
In nearby Belize, there is a drastic improvement in the overall quality of life, but the country is still poor.

There, EM hopes to work with the nationwide Family of God Church, which is facilitating successful community outreach programs but needs assistance with infrastructure in order to accommodate growing congregations.

“I was impressed by the Christians that we met in Belize - their warmth and excitement toward us - but I was quite surprised by some of the barriers they have in their ministry, specifically relating to resources,” Gray said. “The churches we visited didn’t have walls, and I’m not even convinced they’re staying dry.”

The term “nationwide” can be deceiving. With only 300,000 people, Belize is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, and the capital, Belmopan, is the smallest national capital on the planet. One example of the country’s lack of infrastructure: The Belizean labor department has a Yahoo e-mail address.

Experience Mission is facilitating mission trips to Honduras and Belize for Summer 2009. To learn more, visit ExperienceMission.org or call the EM office at   360-732-0986  . Join one of EM’s Central America Mission Trips.

This last week in Costa Rica, we had two different teams come down. While Chris and Thatia remained in the BriBri/Cahuita area with a wonderful team from Long Island, I had the privilege of climbing up “Tiger Mountain” with a group of six amazing people. We were a combination of Texas, New Jersey, Washington, and Illinois that was mosaically placed together. Words don’t seem to be able to express the memories and experiences we had this past week.

The journey as a team began with a three-hour hike Sunday morning. Muddy, tired, wet, and yet full of excitement for the coming week, we arrived at Leopoldo and Carlos’ house. They opened up their home to us with a love for Christ that overflowed into their love for us. Days were spent constructing a 36 square meter post house at the top of a mountain. Nights were spent in a time of fellowship with the father-son duo as we shared praise songs in both English and Spanish, and simply enjoyed loving each other. There is so much that I would love to share and am still working to process from the week but what I most want to share with you all is an example of love that I witnessed throughout the week.

There is a song by the band Wedding that says, “if you love me then just love me, don’t you give me pretty words, lay your life down at the altar, let me see how serious you are.” This song has been a challenge to me throughout this summer, and I have seen many examples of it being displayed throughout Costa Rica however the most distinct display appeared this week. So many times, Christians make following Christ difficult or “foo-foo” so to say. It becomes more of a show than a love relationship. This week, we had the pleasure of simply loving God.

Leaving behind all comforts and climbing into the unknown, for at least one week we were unable to “put on a show” and simply love God. Carlos and Leopoldo demonstrated such a love for Christ that was so simple and yet so genuine. No pretty words, no “foo-foo” just simple love for spending time with Christ. A love for Christ that is so real that it’s contagious to everyone around. I hope that I live my life with such a contagious faith that God’s love for me and my love for God overflows into the lives of others. May God be given all the glory.

Desiring Contagious Faith,

Alex Moses

Every day here we see the beautiful kids in this community.  Whether it be one of the hundreds of kids that came through Kids Club, the children playing with us during breakfast in the morning before they had to run to school, or simply those whose home we were building a toilet for.  They were all beautiful, but some we truly made a connection with.  And one of the girls from our last team made an amazing connection with these three little girls in the community of Cambridge. And for this story I asked her to tell it:

“When I came to Jamaica I expected to be working hard for Christ – getting in the mud and shoveling dirt, being His hands and feet. I never expected that my service would be spending time with a group of three small girls – Kimmy, Kacey, and Tiana. Throughout the week we taught each other games, blew bubbles, and just sat and talked. Every time they saw me come off the bus their faces lit up and it put a joy in my heart that I had never felt before. We grew so close as the days went on and it felt as though we would always be together, as though I would never have to leave them.

“Then the last day came and the tears started to fall. Seeing these girls cry made me hurt inside and I spent most of that day comforting them and holding them. As I was getting on the bus, the girls handed me two pieces of paper and we said our last goodbyes. We were headed back to the school where we were staying and everyone else was watching ‘Remember the Titans,’ but I was sitting there crying. The girls had written me a goodbye letter and a poem.

“The relationships God helped us build during this mission trip to Jamaica were incredible and everyone will remember the friends they made, whether they were elderly adults who just needed someone to talk to or small children who just wanted a playmate and someone to hold them. I will keep Kimmy, Kacey, and Tiana in my heart and in my prayers always, and I thank God for putting each one of them in my life,”

- Annabel

It is because of relationships like the ones Annabel made with those three little girls that we are here serving and working.  It is awesome to be able to serve by meeting the physical needs of the people surrounding us but I truly believe that the world will change when it sees the love of Christ in its relationships.  That is why we serve.

Until All Know,

Nathan Heath