Bins of crafts, crayons, paints, and coloring books are part of the tools this team brings to help build in Anapra

For sixteen years, the students of Mayer Lutheran High School in Mayer, Minnesota work year-round to raise funds for a end of the year mission trip through Ysleta Lutheran Mission Human Care (YLM). Though, like many other Servant Event teams, they had to cancel their annual mission trip in 2020, they stayed hopeful and worked hard to return in December of 2021.

Mayer Lutheran High School students learn building skills during their week in Anapra

Close to forty missionaries, from freshmen to seniors, parents, and teachers, arrived early in the morning on December 29^th, ready and eager to get started on their mission to build three houses, meet new people, and build relationships, both new and old. After vising the building sites in Anapra Wednesday afternoon, they divided into three smaller teams, students and adults assigned to each casa.

The young children of surrounding families in Anapra are loved on by the Mayer students

What most of these students look forward to is getting to connect with the children and youth who have grown up alongside them through these mission trips. Dave Lane, leader and organizer of these mission trips, reminds all the participants though their goal is to complete the three houses, the building of relationships is so much more important. For this reason, bins of crayons, crafts, coloring books, jump ropes, and balls are brought along with the hammers, saws, nails, and measuring tapes.

Kids and teenagers of Anapra flock to the building sites to spend quality time with Mayer students

For the juniors and seniors of Mayer, it was a joyful reunion with teenagers who were children when they first came as freshmen. For all of them, it was a wonderful time of laughter, games, and communicating across language barriers as they played games, braided hair, shared about video games and anime, and so many other things.

Of course, somewhere in between all the friendship making, boards were measured and cut, houses were framed, roofs were nailed down, insulation and sheetrock were cut and installed after electrical wiring was set in place. Paint ended up on walls, faces, and hands, windows and doors put in place, dogs named and petted, teenagers taught building skills by adults, trips to nearby abarrotes (small neighborhood stores) for sodas, chips, and candy were made.

One of the largest Servant Event teams, Mayer Lutheran has been working through YLM for sixteen years…and counting!

Overall, this week of building was like the last sixteen, and yet, it was different too.

“We were happy and worked well as a team,” one of the older girls shared about her team at the end of the third day, “It was good to see everyone and be able to accomplish something together.”

Challenges had the teams working at different speeds, but at the end of the week, they completed their goal of providing each of their families a little two-room insulated house they can turn into a home.

Yet, most importantly, the team left having spent quality time with old friends and getting to make new ones, knowing they not only had the joyful blessing to be Jesus to these children and teenagers of Anapra, but they too encountered Jesus through the love and care given to them by the people they came to serve.

Our 2022 calendar is filling up, so if you are interested in bringing down a team of students, church members, or your family and friends to serve as missionaries in El Paso or in Juarez, Mexico, you can email our Servant Event Logistics Facilitator at luz.soto@ylm.org or call at (915) 858-2588.