Day 5 - Tuesday

Go figure, we travel over 2500 km to get to Juarez and another team of 51 (mostly young people) are at work on the same site as us…and they are from Edmonton…and they are CRC young people on a SERVE project. They were connected to the same ministry as we are but through the CRWRC and a local CRC in El Paso. God does indeed have a sense of humour.

Today the work crews continued on the ‘Great Wall of Juarez’ project. We laid over 750 blocks to put a wall around the new 4 acre plot of land recently given the ministry by the Mexican government. The site is sand, 20 feet thick according to Dave Arnold our YWAM El Paso Construction Coordinator. The Edmonton team works ahead of us digging trenches and laying the foundation. We follow and are building a 5’wall of cinder block.


Why are we building a wall? Well, Mexican law allows people to ‘squat’ on land that is not in use and once they are there, they cannot be removed. It is important to complete this wall so that squatters cannot make a claim on the land. Also, due to generous donations made by our supporting churches, Dave was able to hire local workers to put the roof on the skills training center. That’s OK, it may have been too dangerous for us amateurs to undertake.

We had a very inspirational talk from Tim Gamwell, the visionary for the project. He challenged us to look at what we are doing as not just laying bricks or building a wall but rather to see the vision of the completed project. This includes a medical clinic, a mission school and dorms for visiting missions groups.

We are staying at Centro Vida, a Christian School with dorms that are unused at the moment. They also have a staff that prepare meals for us and large meeting rooms so we can get together to worship in the evenings. School is still in session. As we are getting into the bus to go to the Colonias, we see parents drive into the parking lot to drop off their kids.

John S.