Skagit Mission Trip - Day 1

We made it to the Skagit Valley safely and had a great first day!  Thank you for your prayers for safe travel and the work we are doing.

Upon arrival on Sunday afternoon, we set up camp.  With 25 people, this was no small undertaking.  The youth all pitched in to get the tents and kitchen area set up.  All 10 of our tents survived the brief rain shower last night with no leaks! After we organized our campsite, we headed over to La Iglesia de la Resurreccion for Misa (Eucharist) and dinner with the Resurreccion community.  Even though very few of us speak Spanish well, we did our best to follow along during the Spanish language service.  Emilio, the pastor of Resurreccion, graciously translated his sermon into English for us as well.  It was fun to see the youth trying to say all of the prayers in Spanish!  Several of the Reusurreccion families prepared an amazing soup dinner for us, which was a great time of conversation and fellowship with our host community.

Our daily routine of work and VBS started this morning…with a 4am wake up call!  Half of our group headed out to the raspberry fields at 5am to work alongside the Paz family.  Mr. and Mrs. Paz, along with three of their children as young as 12, work 7 days a week in the fields to support their family.  It was a great opportunity for our youth to experience a way of life that is very different than theirs.  Although we only worked until 11am, the Paz family often works until 9pm.  If you do the math, that is a 16 hour day.  We were tired after only 6 hours.  The other half of our group started work at 7am at Viva Farms.  Salvador – one of the parishioners at Resurreccion – leases an acre of land at Viva Farms and produces organic vegetables that end up in several restaurants and retail locations around the Northwest.  Our youth helped Salvador care for his farm by weeding row upon row of vegetables.

Today was also our first day of Vacation Bible Camp.  We went to the Raspberry Ridge apartment complex, a subsidized housing project for Hispanic farmworkers.  We rounded up around 30 children to play games, eat some snacks, hear a Bible story, and work on a craft.  Today’s Bible story was the story of creation.  The children heard how God created everything they see – including themselves – out of love.  It is all good!  To bring out their own creative abilities, we decorated t-shirts together with paint and stamps of animals and plants.  We hope that when the children wear their t-shirts in the future, they remember that God loves them deeply and thinks they are very good.

Our day ended with some time to reflect on all that we have experienced so far.  We took some quiet time by ourselves to journal and reflect on questions of how the relationships that are forming with the community and our work in the fields connect with our faith and what we believe about God. After that we prayed Compline together. The people we have met have a very different way of life than we do, but hopefully throughout the week we will discover that we are not so different after all.  We hope that our understandings of community, ourselves, and God are enlarged so that we can embrace all of God’s children with love and compassion.