One of the more amazing things about going on these mission trips is seeing the changes they make in people’s lives. Generally, the incoming group and our organization are there to make a long term beneficial impact to our community partners. However, often, it is the community that brings greater benefit to the people who serve them. Never has that been more true over my past six weeks with Experience Mission than here in Seattle.

During typical rural or international mission trips, it is easy for group’s to gauge their contribution to the area they serve. They see homes built nail by nail or walls painted stroke by stroke. Here, though, on this urban mission trip, there are no benchmarks to measure against. The team is here to serve the homeless of the city, but they cannot cure it. On a macro level, the meals they serve and the conversations they have do not create more shelter beds, affordable housing or job opportunities. But it does fill stomachs. And hearts.

The team from Harbor Trinity Church this week has served meals every day at lunchtime out of the Union Gospel Mission shelters and passed out sacked lunches to homeless around the area as well. These meals are necessary, but unlike building a home, they are a temporary solution. They are a beaver dam when the Hoover is needed.

But still, Harbor Trinity has served with patience and grace during this week, understanding the role they play in the scheme. They may not end homelessness, but without volunteers like them, an end would be impossible.

Because they understand this, they have been able connect with the homeless of the city, to listen to their stories, issues and jokes. This has forced them to put away some of their preconceived ideas about the homeless. They are not all drug-addicts, most do not choose to be on the street, and, most alarming, it truly can happen to anyone – many families are only a paycheck away.

As we were in a Seattle park, next to the county courthouse, I spoke with one of our first-time missionaries. He had connected with many of the stories he had heard in the park while passing out lunches, and many had connected with his. He said he was going to try and organize his church to hand out lunches in this way near the courthouse in his county.

This means that while the mission trip may end tomorrow, the impact of it will continue and its spirit will spread with those who have been here. What better result could there be?

For me, one of the most challenging things about being here in Ruiz is working in the overwhelming poverty. From what I’ve seen, it manifests itself in all aspects of their daily life. The roofs over the people’s heads leak in the rain and some children swim naked in streams that double as sewers. I’ve learned to see beyond these things and become envious of the joy many of the people display even in these circumstances. They are hospitable and talkative, even as many of them go hungry. But what I didn’t realize until today was the ways that the poverty of the area affects people in ways I could have never seen at first glance.

I had the chance to sit down and talk with one of our translators, Carlos, today at a work site and ask some specific questions about Ruiz and the struggle in the area. The biggest problem, he says, is the lack of jobs. The jobs that do exist, mainly construction, pay very little even by Mexican standards. Carlos, one of the top in his class at the University of Nayarit, estimates that only about 8 percent of students make it past high school. With the lack of education and the lack of job opportunities the men of Ruiz look elsewhere. Many leave their homes, families and lives behind to try and find a route across the border to the United States risking life and limb to do it. Some make it across, some stay in the border towns to work at factories and some are sent back to Ruiz.

Carlos personally knows a man of only 24 who has tried and failed three times to cross the border. On one attempt he rode for hours gripping the undercarriage of a freight train inches from the track. He then walked for almost three days through the desert with no food or water. He was caught and sent back to Ruiz.

Once the men leave Ruiz for better pay, the true problems begin. While they begin to send back money for their families it often slows down and eventually stops coming at all. It is common for the men who left to start new families across or along the border and never look back at what they left. The money stops coming in and the boys grow up without fathers to learn the harsh reality of their town on their own.

In the United States, we tend to thing of illegal immigration as an American problem – just another topic for the pundits on television to fight about. But being here has shown me that immigration is not only an American issue, but also a Mexican one. It is not only a political problem, but a personal one as well.

- Matt Grager

I came into Ruiz Saturday along with Yonathan and Alison from the Tecate intern team. We were replacements for another intern who became ill as well as reinforcements for the sixty or so youth missionaries who arrived the same day.

The bus ride from Puerto Vallarta took over four hours, but there was a lot to learn about the area along the way. Immediately the beauty of the land strikes. The green ground cover grows about knee-high off the roadway and across the fields before it rises along the mountains into lush forest where the rain clouds hang like soggy laundry on the line.

Once you look past the landscape you quickly realize the poverty of the area. The ribs of the roadside livestock are visible, while the homes constructed of second hand materials and thatched roof are more hidden amongst the vegetation.

Sunday morning after breakfast at a local church, we converted the dining area into a sanctuary and Pastor Abel, our main EM contact in the area, led a service with Yonathan translating to English for us gringos.

Later that night a storm blew through Ruiz, dumping warm rain and flashing lightning directly over our three story hotel. This morning, the storm was still going strong, giving us a late start to the work day.

After the rain stopped at about 10 a.m., I had the chance to visit the four worksites for this week. Each group is constructing a single brick room for families in the area.

While at a site in Tijuanita, a town adjacent to Ruiz, I came across some local children playing in a street that the storm had converted to a stream. The kids were playful, splashing me and one another. They were curious about the United States and asked me a few questions that I tried to answer in my broken Spanish. When I took out the camera to take a few shots the kids posed in every which way, absorbing all the attention they could, even joking that their model services would cost me a hundred pesos each.

As we left the kids and the site, we got only a block up the cobblestone street before we were forced to the roadside. I couldn’t have been more surprised by the herd of cattle being driven through the streets directly toward us. The vaqueros even tipped their hats and smiled as they rode by us while I snapped more photos.

The Tijuanita kids and cowboys reinforced what I had learned already here in Ruiz – that the only thing more engulfing than the humidity is the hospitality. I can’t wait to see the work we accomplish this week.

- Matt Grager

Last night our team from South Carolina had a joint evening program with another church from their area staying a few miles up the road in Waveland, giving us interns the night off. Rather than take off for the beach or head into New Orleans, we took the opportunity to lend an extra hand.

I met Sonny Wilkinson on my first day here in Pearlington and have had to go back and talk with him almost every day of my stay. Despite his hard financial luck after the storm, the 75-year-old man wears a cheery attitude and wide grin as consistently as he wears a plaid shirt and blue jeans.

Yesterday we noticed that one of our groups had left the vinyl siding on his new house crooked. Cory had the idea to spend our evening bringing him dinner and fixing the siding. We also invited along his two friends Bud and Dilbert to join us.

We brought over a feast of barbeque brisquit, watermelon, strawberries, macaroni salad and a staple of our deep southern diet–sweet tea.

While helping Sonny with his siding was a rewarding task, it was small in comparison to listening to the old men. They shared their stories and jokes with the precision and timing that only years of practice can bring. And they still laughed genuinely at each one.

Sitting there on the porch swing with Sonny, it was clear to me, and I would think to the rest of the group, that these are the most important moments of our Experience Mission work. The homes that are built are a necessity for the community, but they are ultimately temporary. However, the relationships we build with the community are permanent. The vinyl siding at Sonny’s house will ultimately wear down and weather, but his hearty laughter will not.

-Matt Grager

One of the most appealing things about staying here in Pearlington is the amazing people I have met. Like no other place I’ve traveled to, this community has come together to help one another. The same small town unity that spreads the local gossip so easily has also, it seems, spread the resources and connections.

After the eye of Hurricane Katrina came straight through the town of about 1,600 every building was either destroyed or severely damaged. The only fresh water left after the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico rose between 12 and 20 feet above the ground was at the artesian well of Larry and Beth Randall. They can look back now and laugh at the nudity in their lawn as people came to shower. Even the small outhouse they built as a community shower, toilet and vanity still stands outside their home.

But the Randalls didn’t stop there, after the disaster relief organizations left, the couple started the Pearlington Recovery Center using the land and buildings of the former schoolhouse, as a base for the rebuilding effort.

The PRC, where the Pearlington Team and I are staying, is made up of six bunkhouses, a few temporary cottages, some military tents and a half dozen trailers that have housed and fed volunteers from organizations across the world. The PRC also has what has come to be known as the Pearl Mart in the old gymnasium. At the Pearl Mart the community can come to get supplies from ice and water to building materials and even borrow tools.

Other members of the community have raised tools to help as well. A man I met today, who asked not to be spotlighted for his work, has worked since his retirement over a year ago to repair his neighbor’s homes. Right now, he has a few of our Experience Missionaries from South Carolina are working with him to take the rotted sheetrock from a home built in 1922 that sits only a hundred yards down the road from his own home.

It’s reassuring to see that the workers that come to the area are only the supporting cast of the effort, and that the community has decided to spend its time swinging a hammer rather than reaching for handouts.

- Matt Grager

I was lucky enough, amidst my trips to Mexico this summer, to be stateside for the most American of holidays – the fourth of July. The team down here in Pearlington has accepted me as one of their own, and took me along for their Independence Day adventures.

After a wake up call of bottle rockets outside our bunkhouse, delivered by on of the project coordinators, Glenn, we were able to use a small five-person fishing boat to head out onto the river for the afternoon. We spent a few hours exploring the Pearl River and a few of its fingers that amble off amongst the lush greenery. The hope was to find a few alligators along the way, but the closes we came were some rotting logs with a similar shape.

When dusk came, it was time to build our relationships with the community and here in Pearlington there is only one place go – Turtle Landing. The restaurant and bar is the only local hang out in town. After Katrina devastated the area, the owner, Janine, kept the kitchen open to help feed the local residents whose homes had been destroyed. Because of this Glenn has made it his personal project to help rebuild her home and can often be found working there late into the night.

While at Turtle Landing, us guys, tried to show a little patriotism on the karaoke stage. Mark, Corey and I sang Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.” Our voices were off-key, but the song choice alone earned us a few sparing cheers.

Shortly after the fireworks display ended, Corey’s child-like excitement flared up as we watched two gators swim past on the bayou off the porch of the restaurant. Before we had time to realize our inexperience with alligators, the five of us were back out on the Pearl in the fishing boat armed a spotlight, seeking them out in the endless dark of a bayou midnight.

The alligators were much easier to spot at night, not only because there were more of them out, but because their eyes reflect the spotlight with a sparkling glow that can be spotted from over a hundred yards away.

Unlike our daytime trip, we saw an abundance of gators at night. Most of them were small, from three to five feet, but we were able to get close enough while blinding them with the light to nearly touch them. We watched another seven-footer glide slowly beneath our tiny boat as we killed the engine and paddled by.

By the time we docked the boat at 4:30 a.m. we were already recounting our gator stories, which Corey described as “like fishing stories, but more awesome.”

What better way to celebrate the nation we live in, than to slip into some of its local culture?

Matt