Arrival

By Nicole Busacca:
This is our first day in Tijuana, and all of the different emotions are incredibly difficult to describe.  I had a fantastic time all morning, the plane ride was a blast and the van ride to Mexico was hilarious, but once passed the border I felt like everything had changed.  When the 2012 mission trip to Tijuana was announced, I felt called to be on it; I knew that somehow God had something big in mind for me and wanted me to be on this trip so that he could work through me in a tremendous way.  My level of excitement for the trip was so high, and I could not wait to see all the wondrous things that the Lord had in store.  Despite the extraordinary pull I felt toward signing up for this trip, after so many months the thought of the trip had become commonplace, such a normal idea that for me it had lost quite a bit of its splendor and its importance in my mind had diminished.  My faith is such an important part of my life, but recently I have felt my relationship with God weaken.  Realizing that it was most likely because, since Core and Sunday Mornings were over, I had not spent much time with him I began trying to pray more often, do the devotionals for the trip (which were PERFECT for the place I was in), and remember to center my life around Christ.  I so longed to regain the close relationship with God that I had before, and without it I began to feel sad, lost, lonely, and angry with myself.  Being a fairly constantly happy person and one that puts great value on my relationship with God I felt like I had lost or forgotten a piece of who I was, but even though I so longed for my relationship with God to strengthen again nothing changed.  I prayed and prayed and prayed for this mission trip to do something about that, and already I feel His presence.  Driving across the border, I could see how easily traffic moved into the city and how the cars attempting to enter the United States were practically at a standstill; there were food stands all along the roads for such drivers.  As we moved into the city we began to see the buildings; homes that looked so unstable they seemed about to fall over, buildings that were merely rubble on the ground that no one had cleaned up, an entire city of homes that from my perspective were far too sketchy to live in.  But these broken-down buildings that existed far beyond the reaches of my eyes were home to hundreds of thousands of people.  Maybe over a million?  House after house appeared with trash littering the ground, graffiti covering the walls, children roaming about, and stray dogs running loose throughout the neighborhood.  It was nothing more than I had expected, but way more than I imagined.  WE lived in such a privileged area, and although we hear that all the time I am not sure that we know exactly how much that means.  Driving past these homes filled me with emotion, but I am not sure what those emotions were.  Mostly, my heart just wanted to cry in a ball in a corner, but I was also in a kind of horrified awe mixed with feelings of praise and determination.  This is the world.  These are our neighbors.  This is who God calls us to love.  We are his hands and feet; we cannot sit by telling ourselves that someone should do something to change all of the tragedy that infests our world because the "someone" that we refer to is someone else.  We pray that God will wield his mighty power to change things, but WE are His mighty power. WE are he hands He will use to change the world.  I am so guilty of this shameful mentality; although I was happy to be serving the world I had mostly been thinking about myself and the fun I was going to have and worrying about me and my needs and me me me me me.  Seeing these houses changed all that and it definitely planted a seed.  Being here, physically here not seeing pictures or hearing stories, gave me the new perspective, new drive, and new center that I needed.  Hearing about poverty is sad, but until you see it with your own eyes it doesn't feel real in your mind and it sure didn't feel real in my heart.  The incredible and immediate need that this town and this world has has made me see how little we can do on our own.  Three houses won't change all of Tijuana, but God can.  It is in Him that we must look to and trust in and depend on, but it is through us that He will do work in this world.  I can already feel my relationship with God strengthening and I cannot wait to see all that He does this week.
Thank you all for praying for us!  We could not have done this without you!  All of our work sites are in the same lot, which allows us to get advice and support from each other the whole time.  God really does work in mysterious ways and prayer does have a monumental effect.
 Nicole Busacca