A City Not Forgotten: Home Sweet Home

One of the guys rooms at the SHOC - hammocks
are the way to go when on a missions trip to Mexico!

Whew, we're home again.

It was a long trip home on Sunday. We rolled into Big Rapids around 5 a.m. and unloaded the vans, sorted duffles, sleeping bags, pillows and all of the other random odds and ends that get collected on a trip like this. (Pretty sure every front door on the vans had someone's bottle of vanilla stashed in there for safe keeping!). The guys house residents (Devon, Cameron and Justin) helped deliver other students to their apartments around town and made room for a few of the guys to stay overnight at the guys house. CMU students reloaded all of their stuff into their cars and left for the last hour drive back to Mt. Pleasant, while Joe, Mitch and myself got back into the vans and went south again to drop off the vans. We could have just waited and done it today, but once we're home, it's just really nice to be home again and not have to worry about that loose end. Based on Facebook, most of our students slept a majority of the day and are still dragging a little today. It's amazing how tired you are after a trip like this.

It was one of the best trips that we've ever had. All of our students were incredible and willing to do everything and anything we asked them to do. I don't think I've ever had so many volunteers to help with meals before - it was great! They worked hard, laughed harder and served with everything that they had. They worked through burst blisters, slivers, sawdust in their eyes and pulled muscles, all with a smile on their face. We're so proud of them and their efforts! They're all back to a normal routine as of this morning and my Facebook feed has been filled with "I wish I could be back there again!" comments and photos. (I think most of them legitimately want to be back and it's not just because of the homework that is resurfacing again this week!). I'm so glad that we had the opportunity to go to Mexico this year and we're already excited for this year! (Although, I am glad Mitch's dream was only a dream and we're not preparing to leave again with another group on Friday).

Still sorting through all of the photos that we took during the week, but here's some more for you to see. I'll have one more post this year with the link to our Facebook photos for you to see more of them, but here's a few more for you now: