Every spring, Mike & Sandy's church sends hundreds of teenagers and their adult overseers to Baja California where they build simple new houses for poor people. These projects are supported by a San Diego ministry that works with Mexican pastors to identify families and obtain building supplies, and also operates a large "base camp" capable of feeding up to 1000 campers. The following pictures start at the church, show the overnight at the Boys and Girls Club in San Diego, and on through the week.
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The Base Camp had about 700 campers this week, living in boys and girls "tent cities," and run entirely by lots of small generators. There was a campfire program every night, and each morning, local school buses came to take the teams out to the 14 work sites.
Here's the neighborhood where we worked, the family Mike's team would build a house for, and the family's cooking arangements. (There is no running water, very little electricity, and out-house "toilets" are the norm.)
We no power, we hand mixed concrete and got busy creating the foundation slab for the new house. By afternoon, the slab was half done, and some of the team broke off to start framing walls out in the street, the only space available.
The next day framing continued, and soon it was time to raise the walls. The team took a break to visit a (similarly basic) new church just down the street.
At the Base Camp each day, we cleaned up and enjoyed really good food (here's the line for dinner). Sunset was behind the mountains, where our building sites were located, and the next morning at 6am, we were all up and at it for another day.
Back at the work site, the roof plywood went on perfectly, building paper and chicken wire were attached, the first coat of stucco was laid on, shingles put on the roof, the windows and and front door were installed, and we were almost done. With tears all around, we presented a bi-lingual Bible and door keys to the family.
The rains came, and messed with our good mood, as well as our camp ground. But the week was over, so we packed everything up, and loaded back onto the big inter-city buses that had brought us south. A long 13 hours later, we were all back in Danville -- job well done, hope spread to 14 more families, and some teenagers a bit wiser about the world outside of Danville.
