House Building in Tijuana for MLK Weekend!

This past weekend, 15 Pepperdine students went to Tijuana to build a house for a needy family with Amor Ministries, a San Diego based organization. I was fortunate enough to go on the trip last year and so I was ready and so excited to make the trip again this year! Aaron wasn't able to go last year and so he was probably even more excited to be a part of this awesome opportunity.

A little background: Greer Illingworth is a 2L student at Pepperdine from Irvine, CA. He is one of 5 Illingworth kids and one of his older brothers works for Amor. For the past 6 years, the Illingworth family has made MLK weekend the "Friends and Family trip" and each of the kids brings some friends to build a house and camp for the weekend down in Mexico. We are so blessed that Greer opens up this trip to Pepperdine students and it really is such a blast! Some of the best memories I had from last year were getting to know more about Greer through his family telling stories around the campfire. Sure makes you want to have a big family!

Anywho, between the generosity of the Illingworth family and the law school, each of us only had to pay $90 and $10 for gas for the whole weekend: building materials, food, tents, transportation...it definitely is money well spent. It really helps you put things in perspective when you think that after 2.5 days, a family now has a HOME. So, how do you build a house?

Friday: We all met on Friday evening at school to load up the cars. We spent the night at Greer's church, Irvine Presbyterian, which is about halfway to San Diego, where the Amor office is located. This means that we didn't have to get up as early on Saturday morning!

Saturday: We got up bright and early and thankfully, Greer's dad brought us donuts and coffee to get us moving! We jumped in the vans and headed to San Diego to meet the rest of the group at Amor. At Amor, we shuffled some stuff around in cars and then prepared to cross the border. There isn't a long line to get into Mexico but you can see from the road the LONG line of people waiting to get back into the US. We sat at customs for a long time while Greer's brother sorted out all the paperwork and insurance for the vans...thank God for him! We all just stayed in the car and tried to not look suspicious or draw any attention to ourselves. The US/Mexico border is definitely not a place that you want to be messing around! We got through and drove through Tijuana straight to the worksites. The other group was building across the road from us but our site was set on this magnificent hill. From the site, the view of the valley was just spectacular. As for the house, the concrete slab had been poured for us by a local church. There was a big pile of wood so we had to go into another house and get all the tools out and begin to cut pieces for the frame of the house. After lots of sawing pieces and nailing, we got the frame up by the end of the day! Unfortunately I don't have any pictures because my camera was in my luggage which was in another truck that wasn't at our worksite! After we finished working for the day, we headed to camp. To save some money, we brought our own tents and so we had to set those up before it got dark. After all that was set up and everyone had had their chance to take a "baby wipe bath":), the dinner bell rang and we had some AWESOME tacos for dinner around the campfire. We all laughed because we were done eating dinner and dessert by 7pm! We stayed up and chatted a bit and then pretty much all headed to bed by about 8:30.

Sunday: Waking up at camp is pretty funny...one of the Illingworth brothers turns on his truck and blasts a song on his stereo that is loud enough for everyone to hear in their tents. So on Sunday morning we woke up to some Air Supply, haha! Anywho, we got up, got dressed and got some breakfast and headed back to our worksites. I definitely had my camera that day so here come the pictures!

This is the frame that we made on Saturday.



We had to park the van on the road and hike up towards the site so here are some friends doing just that!



Here are some of the views from the house...amazing!





The family that we were building the house for were the Mendoza family. There were 2little boys and they had been living with their aunt and uncle in this house. Their new house is now right next door:)



Here are some work pictures. Aaron spent a lot of time on the roof with the boys while the rest of us did various tasks: sifted sand to make into stucco, put baling wire on the house--then tar paper--then chicken wire! The last job of day 2 is mixing stucco and cement (extremely hard and tiring work!) and putting on a thin layer of stucco.




I love when the kids want to help. This is Abriel--he is only 5 and such a hard little worker!


I took so many pictures of the boys up on the roof...so cute! (I mean, manly!)






Another friend who kept us company at the worksite:)



We only do 1 layer so that the stucco can dry overnight before we put the second and final coat on the house on Monday morning. After we finished working for the day, we headed back to camp and enjoyed more time around the campfire together. Our law school friend Mitchell, who is from Dallas, started talking at one point in the night about dancing the Two-Step so Aaron taught me and a bunch of us started dancing as music played from one of the trucks! So fun! (haha, sorry there are no pictures of that!)

Monday: On Monday, we got up and got ready for the day and then packed everything up to head home. Check out this AWESOME sunrise...the pictures don't even do it justice.




We drove to the worksite and our stucco had dried, for sure!


Aaron and I looked SO LOVELY after 2 days of not showering and working up a sweat that we took a picture to remember the moment, haha!


We immediately began mixing more stucco and cement and got 'er done! The kids were so precious and put their handprints in the cement that made up their door stoop:)



After some group pictures, we prayed with the family for the home. This brought tears to my eyes because the family prayed in Spanish and Greer's brother translated for us. We then prayed for them and their home in English and then it was hugs all around...it was the best part of the trip by far.

Here's the group:


The group with the family (gotta love how yours truly isn't paying attention):


The finished house:


The boys:


The girls:


Us with our dear friends, Randy and Christie who made the trip as well!


The whole group stopped for tacos and then it was back to California! I hope that everyone had a wonderful weekend. The opportunity to go and serve people in need reminds me of how thankful I am for everything that I take for granted in my life and how little work and time we can put in to really help those around us. Please pray for that family--that they will come to know God and His love for their family and all of His children. Also, please pray for the Illingworth family and Amor Ministries for their generous servant hearts. I am constantly encouraged by people and organizations like that and the work that they do.

This is a super long post, but if you would like to see more pictures, click on this

Have a wonderful week!

"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men." Matthew 5:13