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Two weeks ago Allen, Jill and Ellie went down to Tijuana with our church on a mission trip to build houses. There was a huge group of 87 who went down to build 7 houses. They had an amazing experience but I could’t possibly begin to put it into words. So I made them do it!
(Turns out they had a lot to say so I’m breaking it up into three blog posts! Ellie is up first.)
A lot of the stories I hear from other people in Tijuana in my small group are about how much they connected with their family and the key ceremony was especially amazing for them and their build team. That hasn’t really ever happened for me (ever meaning the two times I’ve gone), and I think the main reason for that is probably because I don’t speak any Spanish at all. This being said, of course everything is still touching because we are building these families homes. It is super important for me to at least have good chemistry with the people I work with.
Before we go to Tijuana, our church holds a series of trainings for us to get to know each other and ourselves better, not just physically but also spiritually. The second to last training was when we got to meet our groups for the first time, and of course everything was awkward at first and throughout the trainings we got to know each other a little bit, but me, being the socially awkward person I am, wasn’t really comfortable around all of these new people. By the start of the trip though, it was pretty clear we would have an awesome amount of team chemistry. On the first day, when we sat in the air conditioned van eating our lunch we played hot seat (a game that consists of setting a timer for two minutes and anyone in the group can ask any question they want to the person who is on the hot seat). This definitely helped us relax a bit around each other and we started having more fun with each other while working. This led to a plethora of crazy yet fitting nicknames that we came up with for each other. Such as HGL: Happy Go Lucky, Scosh ( because that was his favorite unit of measurement), and even Brotisserie Chicken (because he wanted something with ‘bro’ in it and everyone thought it was funny).
Okay, yes. I know that this blog post is supposed to be talking about how the trip went and everything, but my biggest highlight of the trip was the team chemistry. However, because I don’t want to bore you, I’ll add in a short, yet detailed description of me week:
The whole week went pretty smoothly (besides that fact that I was showing signs of possible heat stroke on the second day). The first day was relatively easy because it was just leveling and our family was super nice and did most of the work over night. The second day was concrete day (the hardest day) and of course Mother Nature decided the hardest day would be the best day to get all the way up to 87 degrees (note the sarcasm). The third and fourth day were easy and the third day was especially fun because it was one of the girls on my team’s birthday. The fifth day was slightly excruciating partially because we were all so tired and that caused us to get mad at each other, and partially because it was a long day that we got a little behind on. The sixth day was long and hard, but definitely worth it when we saw the faces of the family when they received the keys to the house they had watched us build over the week.
Whew. Well, there you go. So back to the team chemistry… Aww I’m just kidding. The week altogether was a total blast and very rewarding to get to know the people at my church better. I’ll definitely be going again!
Bye! (From Ellie and the Green Team)