Tecaté Adventures - Asher

Day 0

Hello, my name is Asher Castro. I am a freshman at TKA this year, and this is my first year going to Tecate. I am really excited to meet the families down there and connect with them as we help serve them by building houses. I hope that we can share the gospel to the children there through our words and through our actions. My goal for the trip is to bond and become friends with the people on my worksite as well as bond with the family we are serving and understand their story. My other goal is to hang out with the kids there (and hopefully they can understand my rough Spanish!). Regardless, I'm so excited to go down there on Saturday, so please pray for safe travels!

Day 1

I’m gonna be totally honest. I forgot to blog the first day, but I’ll tell it anyway! The first day I arrived at King’s at 4:45 am (earlier than I was supposed to be!!) and at around 6:30 am we left campus and started our 12 or 13-something hour journey to Mexico. The ride was long and tiring, but we finally made it to the campsite in the late afternoon. The cooking staff provided a taco dinner for us, and afterwards we went to a short chapel led by Mr. Starke. Soon, we had free time and time to get ready for the night and our first day of construction.

Day 2

The second day of our trip was definitely one for the books. Today was our first day of construction for the house. When we got to the site, we met the family and exchanged handshakes and greeted them in Spanish. We also got the opportunity to eat our lunch with them! After 8 hours of work, we successfully installed four walls today: three exterior walls and one interior wall. According to our site leaders, this was a huge accomplishment! This is because last year’s team didn’t get as far as we did, and this made us happy.

My favorite part about today was that it wasn’t just us who helped contribute to building the house. Two of the children of the family helped out as well. The second eldest son, Alejandro, is around my age, and he helped us by lifting wood and painting the walls. The second youngest is Bryan, and he helped paint the cracks in the walls as well, and he’s only 7 years old!

This reminded me that no matter what age you are, God designed you to serve. The age and language gap didn’t matter because they still helped out even though they didn’t understand us. They had the servant’s heart we should all have.

Day 3

Today was our third day of our trip, but our second construction day! My group got to our worksite after the morning chapel, and we greeted the family once again. We also had a translator today who helped us communicate with them. During lunch, we were able to ask them questions and connect with one another. I learned that sadly the family we were serving didn’t go to church, but my hope is that through our actions they will be able to see God.

My group also accomplished the main goals we had today. We successfully installed the missing exterior wall I talked about yesterday and also a bedroom wall. We also installed three windows and nailed in frames to accompany them. The roofing team, I believe, was almost halfway done with the roof of the house. We celebrated by going to the gas station and getting Mexican Coke. 

I also reached two personal goals today that I didn’t get the chance to reach on the first construction day: hammer at least ONE nail and cut wood with the chopsaw. I was really happy that I reached these, and I hope that I will be able to help with roofing tomorrow. Good night from Tecate!

Day 4

Second to Last Day of Construction!!

“He said, ‘If it wasn’t for you guys, I don’t know where I would be.’” 

Those were words from our speaker this morning, Mr. Ghiossi, as he was speaking about a man named Felix who was helping out the workers at one of the sites. He wasn’t associated with the group, but he wanted to help out. He revealed that his family was blessed by King’s a few years ago when they came down and built a house for them. He decided to give back to the people who blessed him by contributing to the work of another house in his community.

This reminded me of this year’s service trip verse, Galatians 5:6. The second half of that verse says, “…The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

Continuing from what I’ve been talking about in my past entries, these people that we are serving in Tecate don’t have much. Yet through our actions, we are showing our love and God’s love to them. Through that love God is shining in us. This love has also encouraged people like Felix, who again didn’t have much, to give back the love of God he received so many years ago to different people in his community who needed it as well. Our actions have impacted these people’s lives so much, and it’s amazing! 

The story resonated with me the whole day, and it reminded me that the reason we do this is to show God’s love to these people. My group is almost done with our house, and I hope by the time we are finished with it, the family we are serving will realize what God is doing for them and they would do the same thing Felix did in the future.

That’s it for me on Day 4.

Day 5

We Finished!!! The End is Only The Beginning…

(This entry is gonna be shorter than the others because I just got back from my site an hour ago… but we finished!!!)

This was it! Today was officially our last day at the worksite, and I am proud to say that my team successfully finished the house. We did plenty of things today that made us reach our goal to finish the house: we installed the sheetrock on the walls, fixed the electrical for the lights, repainted the walls, and cut and nailed in trim for the outside walls. 

As we were presenting the key and the Bible that all of us signed to the family, I could feel God moving in the room. I knew God was gonna bless the family and their new home. This may have been the end of our visit, but I knew that this was a brand new start for them. 

Buenas noches desde Tecate!

…hopefully I translated that correctly…