Best Spring Break Ever! -Tijuana, Mexico

This Week for Spring Break I went with an Organization Called "Charity Anywhere" to Tijuana, Mexico. There were about 33 people, and we were all from Utah State. Originally, I only knew about 3 people but now I have a bunch of new friends! Its great! We Left on Saturday morning at five in the morning. That's right, we drove there. I slept most of the way so it went by really fast.:) I was a little nervous going to Tijuana, with all the things that have been going on there lately, but I'm happy to report that I made it out alive! And I really didn't see anything super skechy, so that was good! The first day we were there, Sunday, we went to church, where I couldn't understand everything, but it was still good to go to church. Then for the next five days we were all split into groups and assigned to work on various projects. Such as, building the walls to a house, building roofs for some house, putting stucko on some houses, building a fence, building a retaining wall made out of tires, digging a hole for a septic tank, etc, etc. There were some members of the church who would feed us every night! They fed us the most delicious mexican food, I think I gained about five pounds this week! One night they even threw us a dance party for one of the girl's birthdays, with a dj, cake and all! It was an amazing trip! Here are some pictures:

This was the view from the roof, we could see the border line fence and San Diego in the distance.

This is my car pool in front of the church on Sunday. I thought it was so interesting, this church building was an exact replica of the churches I've been to in Torreon, Mexico and Cuenca, Ecuador.


This is where we stayed at- it was an abandoned hospital so it was free! It was actually pretty nice. I slept on a cot and lots of others brought blow up mattresses.


This is on Sunday when we went to the orphange and played with the kids. They were adorable, and loved to be played with! Orphanages always break my heart, I wish I could adopt them all!

This is one of the jobs we did, we weeded the grass along this tire stair case so that the kids wouldn't get their pants all wet when they went to school in the morning.

At one of the houses we were helping with, a mom, probably in her mid twenties taught us how to make authentic Mexican flour Tortillas! I wasn't too good at it at first, but they were delicious!

I'm pretty good with a hammer and nail now... haha, We helped to make the framework for the top level of this house. It took quite a lot of team work!

Courteny and I had the daunting task of scraping the cement off this wall. We didn't find out till have way through that cement fumes are really dangerous, so we started wearing the masks.

This night was amazing! At one of the houses, one of the little girls who's family's house we were helping to build turned 8 while we were there! She is the one in the pink hat in the front. It was such an amazing experience! Denise's mom didn't know she was supposed to but together a program, but "coincidentally" two of the girls with us were returned missionaries, and both had spoken Spanish on their missions. So one of them spoke on the Holy Ghost, and the other on Baptism, and then the rest of us sang, "I am a Child of God" in Spanish. Then Denise's uncle who had travelled for 48 hours on a bus from Mexico City baptized her. I loved the Spirit that I felt right before she entered the water. After she was baptized, this sweet little girl bore here testimony. I had it translated to me while she was saying it, she is such an amazing girl with such a strong testimony for an 8 year old girl living in Tijuana, Mexico. What an amazing experience!

Here is Me, Courtney, Todd, Kaden, and our new friend Jorge in front of the main houses we were helping with.

Here is the group of us that built the tire retaining wall. If you can see, there is a place where a river runs behind us. (it was dry at that time) Starting this project, it looked pretty impossible. The tires we were supposed to use were all heaped in a pile and they were filled with nasty, nasty "water." We called it the pee water, it was disgusting! By the time we really started working, hygiene went out the window. We put on our gloves and built that wall. It felt SO good to have it finished!

On the last day, we took a half day of work and hit the beach after! It was the perfect end to the perfect week!