GO Team to Mexicali

As a way to promote YWAM's Discipleship Training School (DTS) and recruit students for the Fall and Winter schools, our staff went as a GO team to visit churches and youth groups in another part of Baja. We left on Friday and drove about 3 hours to Mexicali, the capital of the Mexican state of Baja California Norte (quick geography lesson: the Baja peninsula is separated into two mexican states- Baja California Norte (north) and Baja California Sur (south)). We drove through mountains and desert to get to this huge city. These videos show part of our road trip...

Driving along through the mountains east towards Mexicali

Making a stop on our scenic drive to check out the desert we are about to enter

We also spent some time in a town called, San Luis Rio Colorado, which is in the Mexican state of Sonora (just south of Yuma, Arizona). This means now I've been to 12 of the 31 Mexican states and to the capital as well. :)

Our first night in Mexicali, we visited 2 megachurches there, with hundreds of youth at each church. But in Mexicali, they don't know anything about our organization, and so we spent some time talking to the pastors about YWAM, but mostly just got rejected, with them telling us that they already had opportunities for their youth to serve within their own church. They also said we would have to come back and talk to them alot more about YWAM if we were going to be able to present at one of their services. So we were kinda bummed out about that, but we knew that we were there for a purpose. So we prayed and just asked God to give us a new strategy for sharing with the city about YWAM and DTS.

The next day we spent driving around Mexicali, visiting Christian bookstores, asking them to put up our promo posters in their stores. We also drove around the neighborhoods looking for smaller churches and put our promo cards in their mailboxes. At night we had the great privilege of presenting our promo video and speaking at a Pentecostal church in Mexicali. The pastora (female pastor) was very welcoming and so happy to let us share with her church about our school and the opportunities we have for young people in missions. One of the things that YWAM Tijuana is really focusing on is bringing more nationals into the organization - we want to empower Mexicans to reach their own people and also to go into the nations with the Gospel message. That night we had several young people approach us afterwards and ask for more information and applications for the school. We even got to pray with a guy and his family as they have decided together to have him come do the DTS in September. This church was so inviting that they asked us to come back Sunday night to present everything again, in case there were different people there the next night!!

A word about the food in Mexicali - so as I may have shared before, its very rude here to refuse food that is offered to you, especially if it was made by the person offering it. So after the church service on Saturday night there was a woman selling these cucumbers, but not just any cucumbers, cucumbers filled with some kind of hot chile salsa. And as the 'honored' guests, we were given them as snacks to eat after the service. Now, there were not small cucumbers, they were big, how was I supposed to eat an entire cucumber, plus having it full of hot salsa?! It was so slimy and messy and like nothing I had ever eaten before (which makes sense because she told me that she had 'invented' this snack).

Lorena and I with our chile-stuffed cucumbers

We also at a lot of Chinese restaurants in Mexicali. Mexicali has the largest population of Chinese people in Mexico, so there are a ton of chinese restaurants. Too bad I dont like Chinese food, but the rest of our team did. It was more like Chinese food with a Mexican flare anyway...

Rob, our DTS director, eating chinese food with salsa habanera that claimed it came from the "hottest chiles in the world"

Ok so on Sunday, we were in San Luis, Sonora and had the privilege of speaking at 4 church services. We had so many invitations to present abou the DTS that we had to split our group in half to go to different churches in order to meet all of our committments. We went to churches of all different denominations and sizes. We were very well received at all the churches and had the chance to talk to many of the youth at each church about the DTS.

Amy and Sergio (right) sharing information about DTS with the youth of a church in San Luis

Oh, did I mention that it got to over 110 degrees farenheit there? Yes, that was very... special. Luckily, the place we were staying at had A/C, as did most of the churches. But seriously, as soon as we stepped out of the Air conditioned van, it was like walking into a sauna. But overall, it was a wonderful trip, and we were able to make lots of connections and hopefully will be able to go back there soon, as well as see the fruit of our labor with lots of Mexicans in the upcoming DTS!!

"A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the LORD;
make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
~Isaiah 40: 3-5~