Our group just finished helping with the biggest mission trip in the history of AIM. The Johnson Ferry Baptist Church (JFBC) project was a large group but with everyone working together it was a huge success. We had 350 participants, 42 translators, and 11 staff. It was crazy. In the course of five days we built 21 houses, had 12 children's programs, evangelized several communities, encouraged countless Christians, and saw over 300 people come to know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. It was a load of work but the results of so many lives being changed made it all worth it.

My group, the FYM's were in charge of making sure chores got done. That meant I had to over see and help with chores for almost four hundred people. Mostly our chores included setting up and tearing down tables and making lunches. The table tear down and set was done once a day and with JFBC students helping it was a fairly, quick and smooth process. Making and packing lunches for four hundred people proved to be more of a challenge.

Each night we made over six hundred and fifty sandwiches and packed enough chips, cookies, and fruit for four hundred people's lunches. We had the participants helping us but even with five teams of eight or nine people helping it took at least a forty-five minutes every night to make the lunches. It was funny some of our helpers did not understand they had to count the sandwiches or that they should not be eating sandwiches as they were being made. Even with the bumps it went well and everyone had food for lunch.

The project was a definite growth experience for the FYM's and myself. In addition to overseeing chores we also each were helping with different ministries during the days. We were drivers, prayer partners, translators, evangelism coordinators, errand runners, question answerers, VBS helpers, feeding ministry experts and anything else you could possibly think of. It was a great time for the FYMers to practice many of the things they have been learning over the last several months. I saw every FYMer step into a role/ministry they had never tried before. It was fun seeing God's work in their lives and knowing I had a small part in helping with that process.

The trip was a huge success. JFBC had nothing but good things to say about how well the project went. The people from the three communities we worked in had great things to say about our group. The Mexican adults and children were very open and accepted the American's as friends. Many of the JFBC student's lives were changed. Some for the first time saw the world is a much different place then the American suburbs they are used too. At times it was hard for them to see the poverty of Mexico but I hope this experience has somehow changed the way they view the world. When they think about the trip I pray they see that when Jesus said, "Go into all the world and make disciples," He actually was speaking literally.

UPDATE: The family I wrote about in the article Stuck in the Mud have continued growing in their relationships with God. Every Sunday the whole family comes to church and they participate in a weekly cell group. When Johnson Ferry Church was here one of the twenty-one houses they built was a house for this family. It is amazing to the way God works.