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Hi everyone! This was my third year on the Tijuana Ministry Trip. For those who don't know, we (volunteers from various churches or volunteers without a parish) go to Tijuana for a week in July to build houses and help out the people there. We had about ninety volunteers this year.
Just like last year, I spent my time in the Children's Program. From Monday through Thursday, the people in the Children's Program did fun crafts with the local kids there. We worked in the morning and then headed to a different site (with different local kids) to do the same in the afternoon.
This post will mostly be photos, but I have more words if you scroll to the very bottom. That part includes deeper reflection, coverage on negative aspects of the trip, etc.
A note about the Children's Program: there are several rooms (or tables, if we're on the second site) dedicated to this and each room/table has a different craft. The crafts I describe here are only the ones that I was in charge of. Other crafts took place in different rooms ^ _ ^
These are the things we donated to them. You can't really see too much but there are three wheelchairs, tons of boxes/suitcases, and some food. We also made a delivery in the afternoon of more stuff!
At the end of last year (second trip), there was an afternoon where I picked up trash (basically cleaning up after all of us) for an hour while everyone else ate candy and talked to each other. The part I hated the most was when people would make eye contact with me and look away. To be honest, I'm the kind of person that tries to make excuses for other people, and I usually blame myself for things first. But it was pretty clear in this situation that no one wanted to do the dirty work. After this happened, I was very hesitant about coming back the next year...but I still did because the experience was worth it.
I felt like this third year might be my last, at least for a bit. Even before I went on the trip, I was a bit iffy about it. A week prior to the trip, I found out that the famous cosplayer Reika (my idol and inspiration basically) was coming to Japantown (SF), which is only an hour away from me. Unfortunately, I had to miss that amazing opportunity to see/meet Reika because of this trip. I hope Reika comes to Japantown or somewhere nearby again!
But yeah, more about the actual trip this year. I definitely did connect better with the volunteers and the local kids from the Kid's Program. However, I felt pretty stressed out. I love helping out but for two days straight I was upstairs in the classrooms setting up each classroom for an hour or two. No one "asked" me to do it but it's something that has to done. If no one had done it, we would have been all stressed out setting up for the next day.
Anyways, the stress really got to me sometimes. On Thursday afternoon, there was a time when we ran short of some supplies. Also, I don't really like the afternoon because it's not in classrooms so there's tons of wind. I ended up sitting on the ground, hurriedly making more supplies and putting them in a box so they wouldn't blow away. Eventually someone helped me and I was really thankful for that, but before that I was immensely stressed out. An adult volunteer that I look up to a lot came over and gave me a hug, and that felt really nice ^ _ ^
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