I just got back from an intense 3 week mission trip back to Washington (I live in Illinois now). I was leading Adventure Community Church's High School youth group into the migrant camps. I'll post more blogs about the individual days and my thoughts and feelings about it all, but I want to start off with this entry as an overview.
It was an amazing trip and God was so evident all over it. It's absolutely the most taxing mission trip I've ever been on. Perhaps even moreso than what I did last year, which was Nicaragua for 10 days, around 2 weeks to prep and pack, then off to the Philippines for 2 weeks, and then got back and had 1 week in Burlington. I was wiped from that, but only physically. This year was a serious taxation mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well.
I think the reason is in part, that I was in a leadership role and that I was invested in doing right by the kids at Sakuma migrant camps 1 and 2. My motivation in prep was really to prepare the Adventure Church youth group to be aware of what those kids were going through and what they needed.
Our training for them was intense. Four days of what we called "Training Camp" or "Boot Camp" depending on the leader took place before we hit the deck on the 20th. Starting the evening of the 15 we took them through a day and a half of essentially immersive role play. We made them go through a border crossing scenario devised by us, the leaders, leaning on my knowledge of stories of border crossings, BJ's (head youth leader) experience running similar sorts of training, and Seth's (other youth leader and youth "mascot" if you will, great guy) imagination and practical theatrical insights and experience living with refugees to make it both an intense and as close as we could realistic experience.
We divided the students up into families with stories I'd created based on my knowledge from hearing and reading stories. They ranged from children traveling without parents, to larger families traveling together and getting separated. Everyone had a reason to cross and take the risk. It really put the students in the mindset for meeting their Coyote (man who would guide them through the "desert" and get them their passports.) They experienced having to pay off the Mexican border guards, stay under blankets and stay quiet in a vehicle, sneak through brush, and then be abandoned by their Coyote and try to make it across the border without being captured by guards. None of them made it fully successfully.
My role was playing the member of another family with another youth leader, Lydia. Our job was sneaking through the brush ahead of the family and then getting captured by the US border patrol. I was full on tackled each time and abandoned by the family, who would retreat onto their next crossing attempt.
I changed to the role of a border guard keeping the captured in line when we reached the final location. This was completely improvised, but definitely captured at least for me a lot of the tension that exists on the border and the anger on both sides.
They all came into the States with debt and the corrupt border guard that we happened to be, decided to sell them to a land owner who needed his property cleared.
This ended day 1.
Day 2 dawned with us waking up the students and telling them they had fifteen minutes to get on the bus or we were docking their pay out of breakfast. Being the brutal youth leaders we are it was somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes in reality. A lot of the students didn't even have time to use the bathroom before they left. We drove out to the property and gave them assigned tasks. My job was overseeing some weed whacking initially. Being harsh is not my foretay (I'm a people pleaser and I happened to want these people to still like me and one of my spiritual gifts is mercy so that also played a factor), so they got an easy task master, hard as I tried. I just got to stand there and make sure that they did their jobs. I know some of them got mad at me a few times, or at least the situation.
Their meals were small (we provided them with a rigged economy where they were only able to get meager amounts of food to split between their families.)
As the day went on the student's despair and desperation got pretty intense. We told them they were working the whole next day as well and they believed it. I myself started to wonder if the plans had actually changed and we were working them the whole next day. Clearly we were persuasive.
The end of the day was a massive push, convincing them that they needed to work extra hard to get done before the sun went down or the mosquitoes would pretty much own them (not an empty threat, as I'd already received at least 10 bites that day). By the time they'd finished they were exhausted and pretty much owned.
They really got on a whole new level how tough it is working a labor job. Picking fruit, the going pay rate for workers in Skagit county for Strawberries is 14 cents a pound, so they have to pick fast and long to make it by. The students were all set for the next day of hard work...
It was an amazing trip and God was so evident all over it. It's absolutely the most taxing mission trip I've ever been on. Perhaps even moreso than what I did last year, which was Nicaragua for 10 days, around 2 weeks to prep and pack, then off to the Philippines for 2 weeks, and then got back and had 1 week in Burlington. I was wiped from that, but only physically. This year was a serious taxation mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well.
I think the reason is in part, that I was in a leadership role and that I was invested in doing right by the kids at Sakuma migrant camps 1 and 2. My motivation in prep was really to prepare the Adventure Church youth group to be aware of what those kids were going through and what they needed.
Our training for them was intense. Four days of what we called "Training Camp" or "Boot Camp" depending on the leader took place before we hit the deck on the 20th. Starting the evening of the 15 we took them through a day and a half of essentially immersive role play. We made them go through a border crossing scenario devised by us, the leaders, leaning on my knowledge of stories of border crossings, BJ's (head youth leader) experience running similar sorts of training, and Seth's (other youth leader and youth "mascot" if you will, great guy) imagination and practical theatrical insights and experience living with refugees to make it both an intense and as close as we could realistic experience.
We divided the students up into families with stories I'd created based on my knowledge from hearing and reading stories. They ranged from children traveling without parents, to larger families traveling together and getting separated. Everyone had a reason to cross and take the risk. It really put the students in the mindset for meeting their Coyote (man who would guide them through the "desert" and get them their passports.) They experienced having to pay off the Mexican border guards, stay under blankets and stay quiet in a vehicle, sneak through brush, and then be abandoned by their Coyote and try to make it across the border without being captured by guards. None of them made it fully successfully.
My role was playing the member of another family with another youth leader, Lydia. Our job was sneaking through the brush ahead of the family and then getting captured by the US border patrol. I was full on tackled each time and abandoned by the family, who would retreat onto their next crossing attempt.
I changed to the role of a border guard keeping the captured in line when we reached the final location. This was completely improvised, but definitely captured at least for me a lot of the tension that exists on the border and the anger on both sides.
They all came into the States with debt and the corrupt border guard that we happened to be, decided to sell them to a land owner who needed his property cleared.
This ended day 1.
Day 2 dawned with us waking up the students and telling them they had fifteen minutes to get on the bus or we were docking their pay out of breakfast. Being the brutal youth leaders we are it was somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes in reality. A lot of the students didn't even have time to use the bathroom before they left. We drove out to the property and gave them assigned tasks. My job was overseeing some weed whacking initially. Being harsh is not my foretay (I'm a people pleaser and I happened to want these people to still like me and one of my spiritual gifts is mercy so that also played a factor), so they got an easy task master, hard as I tried. I just got to stand there and make sure that they did their jobs. I know some of them got mad at me a few times, or at least the situation.
Their meals were small (we provided them with a rigged economy where they were only able to get meager amounts of food to split between their families.)
As the day went on the student's despair and desperation got pretty intense. We told them they were working the whole next day as well and they believed it. I myself started to wonder if the plans had actually changed and we were working them the whole next day. Clearly we were persuasive.
The end of the day was a massive push, convincing them that they needed to work extra hard to get done before the sun went down or the mosquitoes would pretty much own them (not an empty threat, as I'd already received at least 10 bites that day). By the time they'd finished they were exhausted and pretty much owned.
They really got on a whole new level how tough it is working a labor job. Picking fruit, the going pay rate for workers in Skagit county for Strawberries is 14 cents a pound, so they have to pick fast and long to make it by. The students were all set for the next day of hard work...
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