One blessed weekend

This last weekend I had the opportunity to travel to Tijuana, Mexico with a group of 25 people from church and a few other friends. The group from our church has been going for the past 6 years and have had pretty wonderful experiences every year. This year was certainly no exception. The reason for our trip was to build a house with the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) ministry Homes of Hope. The past two years the group from church has gone it has rained. One year so severely that they had trouble completing the house. The other year just enough to slow things down and make it slightly less comfortable. This was my first year going and it was a great experience. We left on Friday the 21st and went to the YWAM base in Tijuana. On Saturday we started building and through much prayer and God's providence the skies were clear and the work was incredibly quick. We had a few of the staff from YWAM come and help us and one of them (who has built hundreds of houses) said that this was one of the fastest builds. On top of that, she said it was the best looking house she had ever built. It was amazing to hear that God could use a bunch of people with just a little skill to perform a task with such precision. This is just a basic rundown of the trip. What i really want to focus on is what God was doing in my life and in the lives of those around me. The people we built the house for were complete strangers to us. Someone from YWAM had interviewed them and decided that they really were in need of house. The only things we knew about this family is that they were a family of three, lived in Mexico and needed a house. What we found out when we got to meet them was that they ran an orphanage in Tijuana and used their time and money supporting more the 50 orphans. They really are an example of pure and undefiled religion. For me the trip was a reminder about how I need to always be living a Christ-centered life and how incredibly spoiled I am. It's odd to think of myself as spoiled because I come from a large family and I really don't have a lot of expensive things (and the expensive things I do have I actually had to buy). But when we were in Mexico I got to see and be reminded of the poverty that some can live in and still joyously proclaim that they are blessed beyond measure. Something all of us should strive for is to live in a way that is always giving out of what we have. No matter how much we really have or don't have. It's an amazing thing to be able to give those who have practically nothing something that is so special. I hope and pray that I will always be grateful for what I have and always give some part of that. All for the glory of God.