Las Tres Palmas – May 2016
I had the pleasure of traveling to Ensenada, Mexico this past weekend with a group of about 40 people from TerraNova Church to assist on some construction/clean-up projects. We left TerraNova Church early Saturday morning. There was a caravan of seven cars traveling down for the weekend. Amazingly enough, when we entered the town of Ensenada, all seven cars were
still together and had not been separated. It was a perfect drive down and it even included a personal police escort from a nice police officer in Tiajuana when we found ourselves turned around due to some detours and completely lost. It was much better having the flashing lights in front of
us than behind us!
We arrived at our host location, Las Tres Palmas, which is a boarding house for groups like ours. Dennis and Debbie, who run Las Tres Palmas, have lived in Ensanada for almost 20 years and have partnered up with churches in the area to facilitate home building for families that have a verifiable
need. The compound has bunk houses for men and women and a large dining room and kitchen, (with a wonderful cook included!). We split up into groups to work on three separate projects.
The first group actually stayed at Las Tres Palmas to do some projects at the compound. Oneof the three palm trees was dying and needed replaced with a new tree. A new concrete pad was laid in the courtyard and finally, some reinforced doors and windows were put in to help protect the property against theft. The 2nd group went to a local school to meet with some of the local children. We brought goodie bags with crayons, books and games to give to the schoolchildren. While the younger missionaries played with the locals, the rest of the group spent some time cleaning up the classrooms and campus.
While we take janitorial services for granted here, the schools in Ensenada do not have any janitorial services so the place was badly in need of some TLC. The last group of us went to the home of a wonderful lady named Adrianna. She attends a home church with some missionary friends of TerraNova, David and Karen. She recently moved into a home that needed some work. We painted the home inside and out, installed cabinets, cleared out decades of clutter from the previous resident and moved it to a storage garage. We also did some gardening and poured a concrete walkway to from her door to the street. She was so grateful and excited with everything that we were able to do. It’s amazing how quickly you can get things done with many willing hands! I can’t wait to go back for another trip and hopefully get to see my new friends again!
~ Paula
Great trip to be a part of!
Brent