Up and at ‘em early!  We loaded the trailer Thursday eve so just needed to pack up sleeping bags, air mattresses and people.  After tearful hugs and goodbyes to the Molinas and Ruth, we pulled out of the church at 6:10.  Since El Divino Redentor is literally 1/2 mile from the border, we only had to drive a few blocks to get in line.  Slooooooow moving line.  It took us 1 1/2 hours to get to the guard station.  Thanks to Kelly’s charm, the small van slid right through but the big van and trailer were diverted to the search area.  Might’ve been my answer to the guard’s question about what we were bringing back from Mexico.  ”A few souvenirs”, I said.  ”Like what?” he asked.  ”Blankets, some wall hangings and a pot”.  ”Pot?”  ”Let me rephrase that.  A planter”.  Oops!  Poor choice of words…

Interesting experience.  They had me open the trailer, everyone get out and walked over to a holding pen while various guards snooped around the van and trailer.  A lot of standing and looking and not much obvious searching.  After 20 minutes, we were allowed to reload and head on our way.  They confiscated 3 apples due to the possibility of importing Mexican fruit flies.  Of course, the apples came from Oregon as the stickers on them said.

As we waited in line we were entertained by watching someone scale the border wall and drop down into the US.  The lines have all sorts of folks peddling wares and asking for money.  We had someone wash our windshield, desperately needed, but must’ve i must’ve paid too much as a few minutes later his buddy came and washed all the pigeon poop off our hood.  He really had to scrub and certainly earned the little bit we gave him.  Mindy bought tamales – always a sure bet and always good.  Some to eat on the road and some to take home to a special someone who wasn’t able to come on the trip this year.

When we finally really hit the road, we sailed along with the usual alternating stopping every 2 or 2 1/2 hours for food or fuel. LA was a breeze and, even with the late start, made it to our lunch spot in Santa Clarita at noon.  The sky was thick and brown as soon as we hit San Bernandino.  Yuk!

Julie spelled me behind the wheel of the big van and trailer for a while and when I started driving again, I noticed it was really jerky.  The jerkiness seemed to get worse as we rolled across the Central Valley so I pulled off to a large gas station to check the tires.  Sure enough, the left rear tire was obviously coming apart.  Glad we caught it!  Nathan, Julie and I swapped out the bad tire for the spare (full size) and hit the road again after 45  minutes.  Could’ve been much worse.  Problem solved and we made good time the rest of the way to our overnight in Davis.

Heidi’s aunt and uncle met us at the University Covenant Church with hot pizza, fresh salad, cold drinks and chocolate chip cookies.  A welcome sight for road weary travelers.  Lyndsay led devotions and lights out at 10:00. Hopefully the last leg tomorrow will be slightly less adventuresome!

The mission team outreach has become a church-wide project in each of the involved churches. Folks who aren’t able to make the trip participate by supporting the team in a variety of ways. Some write little notes that are doled our day-by-day on the trip, (It’s great to get messages from home!) some pray, some help with financing the adventure and some donate snacks. We typically have enough cookies, chips and other treats to feed a good sized high school. Fortunately, Robin helps our nutritional balance by providing veggie bags. Good stuff but with the amount of between meal food and the amazing meals prepared by the women of the church, even the additional physical work doesn’t usually balance out the calorie intake.

Today was our last day to work on projects. After our team meeting at 7:30 and devotions led by Julie, the teams jumped into their projects. By 1:00, everyone felt really good about all that had been accomplished in the past three days. Lois and Becky hung the curtains they’d created for the parsonage and the additional color really looks sharp. The church crew finished everything they’d started, painted an extra room and scrubbed walls, doors and windows. The parsonage team finished the roof and ceiling repair work, painted a couple extra walls and the trim on the outside of the house and scrubbed the floors. After lunch some folks took a little down time while a number of people practiced making balloon animals. Balloon animals are always a huge hit with the kids – swords being the number one choice and dogs and butterflies trailing in popularity. We pre-blow up a lot of balloons to speed up the process but when the suns out, the heat pops a number of them. As they continued bursting all afternoon I kept hoping the pop, pop, pop wouldn’t invite return fire!

While there are lots of people asking for handouts on the streets (especially asking gringos who look like soft touches…), there are quite a few performers who work to earn tips. They’re especially popular at stop lights. We’ve seen clowns, jugglers, unicyclists, fire breathers, dancers and acrobats. Helps pass the time at some incredibly long red lights but I try not to stare too much or take pictures ‘cause I’m too cheap to want to give anyone money.

VBS went great this afternoon. When we pulled up to the park a group of 10 or so kids came running to meet the vans and help us unload. We had well over 200 kids – likely around 250, and actually ran out of some of the crafts. There were also at least twice as many adults watching or participating as there were yesterday. We had 300 cloth bags to decorate – an item as popular with the adults as the kids, and ran out of those. There was one man who brought his own folding chair, bought an ice cream from the traveling ice cream guy on a bike who decided to hang out near us, and sat and watched the whole event. We have a tradition of giving away Bibles on the last day. We had 200 with us, gave them only to kids and ran out. We told everyone else they’d have to come back next year! It was a good thing we had 10 or 12 local youth helping us at VBS this week. We needed the extra hands.

Spirits were high as we wrapped up our final day of VBS and gave parting hugs to new friends. On the way back to the church, we stopped by the parsonage so the church work team could see and admire all of the work accomplished. Fun to share successes! After dinner on Wednesday, we have another tradition of having a longer worship service, sharing communion, giving people a chance to pray for each other and taking an offering for Pastor Martin to use as he sees fit. The service went for about 2 hours with Pastor Martin sharing a message about the miracles God provides and Jane and me providing background music for the prayer time. Fingers are a little sore from so much guitar.

Wednesday night is also facial night. Karen brings facial masks for all who want to participate. Originally it was just the kitchen ladies but once Martin let himself be talked into the idea, it became open forum and many of the team members take advantage of the opportunity to look ten years younger. Off to bed by 11:00 or so. Tomorrow is play day. We’re heading to San Felipe, a really cute tourist town on the Baja peninsula.

When we were over at the Molina’s house on Sunday afternoon, I noticed that the power wasn’t working. Andrew’s lived with them since October and explained that when it’s windy, the power tends to go out only in the front part of the house. Odd.  Apparently  someone connected  to the church works at the power company and heard about the problem.  Pastor Martin said that last night at 11:00 (pm!), a couple of folks from the power company showed up, climbed the pole and fixed the issue. Funny the cultural differences in how problems are addressed.

The team was up and ready to go by 7:30 with devotions led by Kelly. Heidi was not feeling well so went back to bed and ended up sleeping for another four or five hours.  She seems to be much better tonight. Hayley was a little ill this afternoon as well but seems to be much improved.  Seems like a heavy cold is traveling around.

The teams hit the ground running and Andrew and I headed to Home Depot to get some self-adhesive tile for one of the Sunday School rooms.  I may have mentioned before, driving is a bit of an adventure.  Even though people drive quickly, generally they are not overly aggressive like in some cities.  There are really clear unspoken rules about taking turns and merging and, for the most part, people follow them.  However , there are a lot of cars and the police seem to be a little too busy to deal with traffic infractions.  I was a little concerned and quite surprised when we ended up driving down a road closed for construction.  Had to keep dodging workers and backhoes!  Folks hardly gave us a second glance.  Must be normal behavior.   Although there are lots of buses around, it’s certainly a car driven culture (pun intended).

By the time lunch rolled around, Julie and Julene had the tiling over half done , Maddi and Marian had finished painting the doors and scraped the spilled paint off the floor and Robin and Mindy had the first coat of blue on the hallway.  Lois and Becky ventured out on foot in search of additional fabric for curtains for the parsonage and Martha was pleased with their fabric finds.

I may have mentioned that next door to the church is a, ahem, working hotel.  There are a pretty good number of them in the area. I walked up a few blocks to get ice and had all sorts of nice ladies ask me to do Bible studies with them.  At least that’s what I think they were asking.  My Spanish is limited to things I learned in middle school and words I learned in church. I was afraid the ice would melt so I declined their nice offers.

After lunch and about an hour of down time, we loaded the vans and headed out to the colonia.  No one blocking our exit this time!  We were set up and crafting by 4:00 and the number of kids grew quickly. By 5:00 we had over 70 kids and when we stopped crafts to do the skit and puppets, we had over 130.  Cute kids and lots of fun.  The skit today was the story of the lost sheep and, once again, the kids were captivated.

Seems like everyone around here has a dog or two and fences and/or leashes are not particularly well used. There are dogs everywhere. I’ll see people walking down the street cradling what looks like a baby and, on closer examination, realize it’s a dog.  There are usually a few of them around VBS.  This afternoon there was a puppyish blond yappy dog that was only somewhat of a nuisance until the skit started. He did not take kindly to Mitchell in a sheep outfit crawling across the ground.  The pup was determined to scare the invading man/sheep away with his vociferous barking.

The evening was really low key.  Team meeting with devotions led by Heidi and Julene, an hour or two of charades and off to bed.  The Mexicali youth group took over the sanctuary and practiced their skit for nationals and Jane and Martin head for off for a racquetball match that’s been talked about for months.  Turns out the court had a tournament going on so the match was rescheduled for Thursday morning.

Six months ago the Molina family had their car stolen. Martin said when the police recovered it two weeks later, it was totally stripped – engine, seats, transmission, everything. Since a number of people contribute to the mission fund all year round, we had built a little balance in our account. After talking to the Mark and Laura at Canby UMC, we decided to help the Molinas buy a new vehicle. According to Pastor Martin they had been looking at cars for some time when they came across the black Malibu pictured in one of the posted photos. Marian, the Molina’s youngest daughter, was enamored with the car and especially loved the drink holders in the back seat. She was excited beyond belief when they brought it home.

Team meeting this morning was 7:30 am. Nathan and I were quite surprised to find that the men’s shower was warm – even hot! Neither one of us said anything to anyone for fear of causing an outbreak of jealousy. However, inline propane water heaters are a new addition to the church and this evening the women are enjoying their own hot shower. Since there’s only the two of us guys, the women get to rotate through our shower as well. Best to keep everyone happy!

After the team meeting and morning devotional delivered by Hayley, we split into our work teams. Jane took a group to the parsonage (pastor’s house) to tackle a couple of projects. Jane, Andrew and Marco are resealing the roof using a liquid plastiseal that brushed on with a broom. The house is a 2 bedroom ranch-style home with stucco outside and a slightly pitched roof. It developed a number of leaks this winter. Andrew commented that even though he is from Oregon and used to the rain, he’s used to the rain being on the outside of the house, not the inside. It doesn’t rain often in Mexicali but every time it did, they’d line the living room and dining room up with buckets. Lyndsay, Nathan, Kristin and Hayley are tasked with scraping the peeling texture and paint from the ceiling, resealing the drywall and retexturing and painting.

Mindy’s crew consists of Maddi, Marian, Heidi and Julene and they’re painting the hallway on the third floor of the church a cheerful bright blue. Mindy also had the idea to paint every door (6 of them) a different bright color. It’ll really liven up the Sunday School hall. Robin and Julie are scraping some old tiles off a concrete floor on the third level and laying new tiles. Kelly and Karen are freshening up the nursery with some new paint and painting the sound booth. Lois and Becky are on a curtain project. I took them out to the parsonage (about a 15 minute drive from the church) first thing this morning so they could figure out what curtains are needed and match colors and styles to the house. Pastor Martin brought them back to the church and they did some fabric shopping at a store near the church and have been busily ironing and sewing all day.

One of our learnings over the years is that there is never enough time to get everything done that we’d like to do. One of our ways of maximizing the people hours of project time is to minimize the supply shopping impact. So I became the official shopper. I spent most of my day running back and forth to the hardware store – 3 trips this morning. Mixing paint is a long slow process and with the number of colors we needed mixed, my first trip to the store took over two hours. The pace is a little different here and I’ve learned to adjust. the checkout lines are typically long and the cashier are painstakingly methodical. Good opportunity for me to practice patience! While they were waiting for me to return with supplies and paint, most of the teams did prep work and cleaning. The team at the parsonage pulled a bunch of weeds that had sprung up around the house. There’s not a lot of green anywhere around the city and when I asked for some weed killer at the hardware store, I wasn’t particularly surprised that they don’t have any. Doesn’t sell well ‘cause no one needs it. They do, however, sell ant killer that is likely able to stop an elephant and is probably illegal in the US.

All of the teams were feeling good about their work progress when we got together for lunch at 1:00. Another excellent meal – rice, beans and beef with homemade corn tortillas. One of the best surprises was an iced coconut/pineapple drink that Martha made for lunch. After spending the morning in the dry, dusty heat, it was incredibly refreshing. After lunch we had an hour break which gave folks time to nap, shower or relax for a bit. As I mentioned, Mexicali is in a dry climate. With the lack of moisture and foliage of any sort and so many empty lots and undeveloped areas around town, the wind really moves a lot of dust around. It seems like most of us feel a little bit gritty all of the time so are always ready for another shower. The dry air also brings dry skin and chapped lips to we moisture loving Oregonians.

I posted a picture of one of our vans driving down the driveway beside the church. There’s a smallish parking lot accessible through a roll up steel door and this narrow driveway which opens onto a busy street. We’ve always parked back there with little problem. It’s a little unnerving the first few times you negotiate the path but we’ve only lost a little paint to the concrete walls. The big van we’re using is one we’ve rented before from the Oregon Crusaders Drum and Bugle Corps. Since we were here last year, the church added a metal frame around an in-window air conditioning unit that overhangs into the driveway space. The frame added just enough size that the big van can no longer get past it. Our solution is to get everyone and everything out, drive it as far into the driveway as we can and shut the gate behind it. Squeezing out of one of the van doors and sliding past the van to exit the driveway has me regretting not sticking a little closer to my running regimen.

We gathered to load the vehicles and head out to the colonia for our afternoon Vacation Bible School at 2:30 only to find someone had parked their car in the driveway in front of the church trapping our small van and the trailer. We went to neighboring businesses, waited a while and called a tow truck. The flyers we passed out said VSB would be starting at 4:00 and we began to get concerned about getting there and set up. After stressing and discussing, we stacked 5 tables, 6 folding chairs, an amp, the pieces of the puppet stage and our 7 bins of crafts, costumes and puppets on the laps of 9 of the 10 people we stuffed into the big van (the 10th being the driver…), piled 6 people into Pastor Martin’s car and 5 people into Andrew’s car and headed out. We left Martin, Marco and his girlfriend at the church to bring the small van when the driveway was cleared. (They arrived at the colonia about an hour after we did.) Nothing like a little unplanned adventure to keep everyone focused!

Although we were a little late getting set up, the crowd quickly grew. Beautiful afternoon, not too windy. We use the concrete basketball pad in a park in the middle of the neighborhood to set up our tables and stage. Today there were 5 different crafts plus face painting and bubble blowing. The crafts will change every day but the face painting and bubbles are very popular and remain constant. After about 1 ½ hours of crafts, we gathered everyone in front of the stage for our skit – Daniel and the lion’s den. Pastor Martin told the story while various team members acted out the roles. Mindy put together the costumes and the kids were mesmerized. Following the skit the puppets took the stage. Lyndsay organized the puppet team this year and the show they performed today was about some ducklings. The puppets act out a Spanish cd with numerous stories. Today’s had a lot of quacking in it and the Ducks on the team were not disappointed to hear many of the kids quacking after the show was long over! Near the end of the show, the narrator started talking and Lyndsay had picked a baboon puppet to play the part. When the baboon poked up onto the stage there were a few surprised screams from the audience.

VBS concluded with Pastor Martin talking to the kids for about 5 minutes and a brief prayer. Then it was time to load the vans and hit the road back to wonderful smells and hot food! At one time I counted about 80 kids at VBS plus at least 30 adults. That’s a pretty good first day for us and we’re likely to see the crowd grow over the next few days.

We talked about highlights of the day on our way back from the colonia. As usual, VBS and seeing the joy of discovery on the faces of the kids was the overwhelming winner. However, at least one person was pretty thrilled to experience their first earthquake today. There was a 3.4 quake late morning. Not unusual for this area but surprising for those of us that felt it and didn’t assume it was a passing truck.

During the hour between dinner and team meeting (with devotions led by Mindy and Maddi), a group of folks hand wrote the name and address of the church in the front of the 200 Bibles we brought to give away the last night of VBS. Lots of great fellowship this evening and a bunch of satisfied and tired mission trippers. We do have a couple of folks that brought colds and sore throats with them. Hopefully another good night’s rest will help them all get back to 100%.

It was great to catch a little extra sleep and everyone was in good spirits. Karen is the food organizer and sets out breakfast cereal, bagel and fancy breads every morning while Robin is in charge of the coffee and makes sure everyone has their go juice. Instead of Sunday School, there was a combined program where every class did a little presentation. While church members started arriving at 9:00, the program didn’t start until 10:00 so much of the team took the chance to get out in the sun and check out some of the surrounding shops. The service started at 11:30 and the sanctuary was packed. Lots of folks recognized us and greeted us by name but there were also a bunch of people we didn’t recognize. Worship time a lot of great singing, prayer time, Pastor Martin’s message interpreted by Andrew, fellowship, birthday greetings and a song that the mission team prepared and sang in Spanish. (Always good to support (or cover up) our singing with lots of instruments so Jane and Nathan played guitars and I played bass.) A little over two hours later, we all moved downstairs to the fellowship hall for a terrific lunch and celebration of Pastor Martin’s birthday.

During the service, the youth of the church lined up down front for a blessing. There’s a national competition this week for United Methodist youth from all over Mexico that is being hosted by El Divino Redentor (this church). The contests involve sports activities like flag football, basketball, volleyball and soccer as well as chess, Bible knowledge and trivia. Each team also performs some sort of skit or play. The youth from this church are doing an interpretive dance/performance called Disney does the Bible. The players act out different Biblical scenes with music from Disney movies playing in the background. Very interesting!

Andrew’s major project as he’s lived here over the past 6 months has been planning for the national competition. They’ve had to arrange hotels and food as well as secure ball fields and transportation. The local youth have also spent a lot of time practicing for the competition. Andrew planned a flag football game between the mission team – plus some local friends, and the youth competition team. (The local youth team is really organized with play books, coaches and the works.) We headed out to a football field at around 7:00 pm and played under lights. The visitors from out-of-country did very well for themselves and our defensive line, made up of all women and anchored by Kelly and Laura ( a local), won the day and shut down the competition team’s offense. Victory was ours! Since the teams were made up of 9 players each, Mindy grabbed a group of folks that weren’t playing and led a pick-up basketball game. Everyone got some exercise including the group of 4 cheerleaders who led the wave repeatedly from their bench.

Pastor Martin has arranged for the Mayor to come to opening ceremonies and visited his office last week to confirm the details. (The competition starts next Saturday, the day after we leave.) The mayor asked what he could do to help and arranged for a bus and driver to be on call night and day the entire week of the competition at no cost! That eliminated one big obstacle. As one would imagine, there isn’t exactly an abundance of funding available to a small downtown church. Another surprise came when Martin met with the office of the local Senator. They asked what they could do to help and volunteered to pay for all of the trophies saving over $3000!

After the birthday celebration dinner (chicken and rice teriyaki with phenomenal lemon cake with ice cream for dessert), the team changed into casual clothes, loaded vehicles and headed out to the colonia (neighborhood) where we’re going to be doing Vacation Bible School to hand out flyers door to door. The colonia is about 25 minutes away and consists of a few hundred 400 sq ft, one bedroom, cinder block homes. Some have electricity, some do not. The houses cost about $75 per month to purchase and the average income is around $100 per month so it’s very easy to get behind in payments. It looks like around 20% of the homes are abandoned. Judging by the tagging, gangs have moved in. There weren’t a lot of people out and about and the neighborhood seems to lack vibrancy.

When we first started coming on mission trips here 13 years ago, Pastor Martin and the church had a vision to plant a new church. We started doing VBS in the area they’d picked. Through the connections with the kids and their parents, a couple of home groups started. We helped them purchase property and over the period of a few years, built a small chapel. The chapel has thrived, is totally self-supporting and now includes a community center, medical clinic and teaching area. We’ve visited the original colonia a few times and seen how much the community has changed. Now Pastor Martin has a vision to do the same thing and this will be our second year in the new colonia.

After handing out 400 flyers, we came back to the church and changed our clothes in preparation for the big football game. We wrapped up the game and made it back to church by 9:45 for dinner. Tamales! Very good!! Pastor Martin’s wife, Martha, leads the group of women who do make us lunch and dinner each day and the church is always filled with tantalizing smells! By the time we finished our evening worship and team meeting (with devotions led by Nathan), it was after 11:00 yet again. People were quick to get cleaned up and head to bed. Tomorrow the work starts.

The entire team was up and ready to go by 5:45 this morning.  Jane led devotions, we cleaned the church and were on the road by 6:02.  Once again the weather held and the drive was great.  California freeways are not nearly as smooth as we’re used to in Oregon.  Combined with the wind blowing across the Central Valley, the big van pulling the trailer created a bit of white knuckled driving.  We made good time and arrived at our usual park in Santa Clarita for lunch around 11:00 am.  As is traditional, Arlene made chicken salad for our sandwiches.    After lunch, Lyndsay organized a game of Ultimate Frisbee and we burned off a little pent-up energy running around in circles chasing each other for 45 minutes.  Good thing there are only a couple of guys on the trip – the vans didn’t take on that stale male sweat smell!

Our route takes us east around the north side of LA so we avoid as much of the traffic as possible and, once again, it worked well for us.  It’s certainly easier having only two vehicles in our caravan as we weave and dodge through traffic and grab last minute exits that I missed the warning signs for!  No matter how many times we drive through the windmill farms east of LA, they’re a bit surreal.  Miles of windmills of all shapes and sizes on both sides of the road allow for lots of camera shots through the van windows. The weather was good all day but we could feel the temperature climb as we drove east.  It was in the mid-80’s by the time we drove through Calexico (California) and arrived at the border.

We’re all missing Julie and her great sense of humor.  Her Grandpa passed away this week and she wasn’t able to make the trip.  Julie has a way of knowing exactly the right thing to say when nerves are frayed and people are getting a little grumpy after too many hours of road time in a closed vehicle!  I could’ve used her levity when they stopped the big van at the border and asked if they could search the enclosed 8 ft by 6 ft trailer we were pulling.  The entire back wall of the trailer is a ramp that lowers from the top and serves as the door.  When Jason and Tom finished packing on Thursday night, I held the last layer of stuff in while they closed the door.  As one can imagine, there was more than a little shifting on the bumpy 1164 mile drive!

The border guard was about 17 years old and as I gingerly lowered the door to a cascade of candy, pop, water bottles, cereal and luggage, she rolled her eyes and called for help.  Her supervisor was probably 14 and spoke a little English.  (Going into Mexico, the guards are Mexican.  Coming out, they’re American.)  He asked me a couple of times who we were and where we were going and then opened the van doors and flirted with Karen and Julie a bit.  Whatever they said worked and he waved us on our way so, fortunately, I didn’t have to unload the trailer.  Would’ve taken me hours to get it reloaded.

The other van moved right through and was waiting for us at the church which is about ½ mile from the border crossing.  Our son, Andrew, who has been living here since October, and Pastor Martin Molina and his family were waiting to greet us.  The church is in the old downtown area.  It’s a vibrant section of small shops and larger markets with lots of traffic, buzzing sirens and shoppers.  We blocked traffic in one lane for a few minutes, unloaded the entire trailer and disconnected and hand-pushed it up the narrow driveway behind the church.  We parked the vans on the street and spent the next hour greeting good friends and moving into our sleeping areas.

Mitchell, the Molina’s 19 year old son, plays running-back on an American football team so we climbed back into the vehicles  (A much easier process without all of the sleeping bags and luggage piled everywhere!) and headed out to his 7:00 pm game.  Entertaining, run-heavy, penalty-filled football but it was a beautiful evening and great to get a football fix.  Mitchell is very good and his team won 25 – 0 and are 4-0 on the year.  After football – TACOS!!

We have a favorite taco stand that has become our Saturday evening tradition.  You can smell the grilling beef and flame broiled pork from the parking lot.  The tables are laden with a colorfully vibrant assortment of a dozen bowls of salsa, guacamole, grilled green onions, jalepenos, chopped cabbage, carrots and other condiments.  Tacos are brought piping hot in fresh made corn tortillas piled with al pastor (pork), carne asada (beef) or pollo (chicken).  Sodas are served ice cold in old-fashioned glass bottles with condensation dripping down the sides.  Delicious!  As usual, the team was joined by around 10 or 12 local youth and young adults.

We finally made it back to the church by 10:45, had a short team meeting, Robin led devotions, Pastor Martin gave us a formal welcome and we all headed to bed.  A couple of folks braved a cold shower (All of the showers here are cold.) before retiring to their luxurious air mattresses.  Fortunately, we all get to sleep in a bit in the morning as we don’t need to be fully dressed and functional until 9:00 am.

The team gathered at Keizer Clear Lake United Methodist Church at 5:30 this morning. Great to have a clear, dry morning after the snow of the last few days and there was an amazing amount of cheery chatter considering the hour. A good number of folks came to see us off and, after we had a prayer circle, Pastor Dave blessed each of the vehicles.

Loading people into the big van was an interesting challenge. There are 10 captain’s chairs including the driver and front passenger seats, and a wide aisle down the middle. We piled the sleeping bags and air mattresses for all 17 of us in the aisle to avoid having to open the little trailer at our overnight stop in Tracy, California. Additionally, every nook and cranny in both vans – under each seat and between the seats and the walls, was crammed with little bags of chips, cans of pop, water or Gatorade and baggies of cookies and candy so every foot had to be place careful to avoid squishing valuable goods. The 4 college kids climbed over the mounds of luggage one by one and then the over 30 crowd filled in the front 6 seats. Although the painstaking person loading process had to be repeated at every stop on the trip, fortunately it got quicker and quicker.

At 6:21, we pulled onto Wheatland Rd and headed to the freeway. The drive was pretty easy with the usual routine of stopping every 2 or so hours and alternating the stops between gas and rest areas. We moved a little slower than usual as we haven’t historically pulled a trailer. The trailer pulls really easily and turns with the van well but slows the van a bit on the hills and certainly slowed us when we hit the wind tunnels around Mt Shasta and along I-5 across the farmlands of Northern California.

We stopped for lunch at the rest area at Weed (California) airport. Very windy and a crisp bite to the air. Even though the sun was out, most of us ate the lunches we brought with us in the vans. Weather conditions made for a short lunch and having only 17 people on the team made for shorter bathroom breaks all along the trip so we made it through Sacramento ahead of the commute traffic and arrived at Tracy UMC around 5:00 – about an hour earlier than the norm. 10 hours, 35 minutes of travel time including stops and averaged 57.4 miles per hour (including stops).

70ish and sunny and folks enjoyed a chance to stretch their legs, soak up some rays and toss around a Frisbee. Andrew’s not traveling with us so there haven’t been any organized games. : ( Karen and Lois heated up homemade tamales and Spanish rice sent by Tyler who wasn’t able to make the trip this year. Delicious! Thank you, Tyler!! After dinner the team relaxed for an hour chatting, playing games, doing some killer dot-to-dots with 1200+ dots that Jane brought along to share and talking to family and friends left behind.

Evening worship will be at 8:00 with devotions led by Karen followed by lights out at 9:00. (It’ll still be light out when we do lights out!) We want to be on the road by 6:00 tomorrow morning so we’ll try to call it a night early. The weather forecast is for rain and wind tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll not have too much of either!

On the flip side, companies take the blame when we have a less then satisfactory experience with one employee.  The Crowne Plaza in Albuquerque is a good hotel – clean, bigger than usual rooms,  with couches and desk space, conveniently located and priced well.  The hotel served a fajita buffet for dinner and the food was quite decent.  But (Didn’t you know the ‘but’ was coming?) when I asked the server if they had corn tortillas, he pointed to the flour tortillas and said with an inflected roll of his eyes, “They’re right there.”

“Those are flour tortillas.  Do you have corn available?”

“I don’t know.” Long pause while I waited. “Would you like me to check?”

“Yes, please.”

He never checked. (I was watching so he could catch my eye and let me know the outcome.)  I should’ve gotten his name so I could record it on the 12 page email survey I’m sure to receive after this visit.  (Assuming I have the patience to finish the survey!)

What memory of the Crowne Plaza am I taking away with me? Decent place but the service sucks.  Not a fair assessment but a great illustration of why it’s so important to have A++++ front line representatives.  If you’re not sure what every aspect of the face of your company is, you’d better find out!

Our son-in-law and daughter live close to the newest location and are movie buffs so love the amenities. We thought we’d get them a gift card for Christmas but my website search was in vain. Nothing anywhere about gift cards and, since their locations are a bit off my usual track, I wasn’t keen on swinging by and picking one up. The website did have a “contact us” email option so on December 10, 2011, I used their form and asked, “Can I buy a gift card online?” Last week – 6 weeks later, I receive an answer. “I’m sorry but you’ll have to stop by the theater or call us.”

Really? Six weeks later? 4 weeks after Christmas they answer a Christmas gift question? I responded, “Seriously? Six weeks later you’re going to respond to your emails?” They responded, “We get a lot of messages so we’re a little behind.”

Why even have the ‘email us’ option if they’re not going to respond? PET PEEVE!!

Please! If you’re going to pretend you offer customer service, please actually give a little bit of it! Over promising and under delivering is not a good business practice. Turns out that this very fancy, expensive, trendy theater is struggling financially. Coincidence? I think not!