Day 1 - Journal

Buenos noches from Billings, Montana! After our first day marathon road trip, we arrived safely and received a warm welcome from Barb, our host at Cornerstone Community Church and Billings Christian School. We are staying the night and will be up early to head to Colorado Springs tomorrow. Our day began with family and friends bidding us a misty morning farewell from First Christian Reformed Church at 7:30 a.m. We left Calgary after picking up the rest of our group at Mackenzie Town. Our 61 person team includes a vibrant group led by YWAM (Youth With A Mission) leaders and their students in Principles in Child and Youth Ministries plus a motley crew of members and friends from Epic Ministry, New Hope Church, First Christian Reformed Church and Covenant Christian through Lethbridge we had an unexpected two hour delay at the border. In Reformed Church. From babies to grandparents, we are blessed to have such a dynamic age range as we build community and head south.

We are traveling in a bus and van convoy and after passing previous years the group has proceeded through customs quickly but this morning we had to unboard and it just meant that we unfortunately we reached out destination much later than planned.

It was a good start to Spring Break and we cruised across the vast prairie landscape shouldered by the Rocky Mountains as we slept, visited, played cards, read, had quiet devotion time and watched the movie Chicken Little. We had a pit stop in Moore, population 200, and both there and in Billings, a few locals were surprised to see a group of Canadians with funny accents enroute to Mexico.

After a hearty pizza feast, we had time to shoot some hoops and toss the football around before bed. I’m really enjoying getting to know new friends and our team is gelling together. We are all eager to get to Juarez and see what God has in store for us!

Cindy JB