Your Life, Recharged - A Trip to and from Mexico

We just watched something incredible happen. 21 people from our community showed up in Mexico and, together with local families and donated resources by you, built a home that didn’t exist before. This Sunday, we’re going to celebrate that story - but not just to look back. We’re creating space for you to step into something that can shift your life right now. Because “Taking Water” isn’t just about going somewhere far away - it’s about breaking out of the patterns that keep you stuck, isolated, or playing it safe. It’s about discovering what happens when you actually live generous, connected, purpose-filled in your everyday life. 

If you’ve been feeling a little dry, a little disconnected, or just ready for something more - this is for you. Come celebrate, but also come expectant. Come ready to be inspired to step into the next phase of life

Join us at the spiritual gym to be inspired and to find purpose.

P.S. We are bringing a little taste of mexico to you all.  So save some room for a little Churro inspired snack after the service.

Donate to Friends Church

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

There's something about that song that captures a feeling that probably we've all experienced. Sitting in front of a TV watching something that you don't really care about. Scrolling on your phone, just realizing you're mindlessly just spinning through social media. There's no purpose, there's no meaning. And it's funny how we can have these moments and we we don't even realize they're there until you have a moment that kind of points them out. You realize how much of our life is dust in a wind. How much of it is lacking meaning. Or it can. You know that feeling? It's not just like, eh. It's like, wait a second, I'm trying to get someplace. I'm trying to go someplace. So we've all had that. If you go into to grade school, your teachers gave you purpose. They said you need to graduate. So you're like, okay, well, go do my class, show up, do my homework until you hit grade 12. And all of a sudden you're looking around going, okay, but now what? For those of you who've retired, you know that feeling. You've you've done this job where you had purpose. You go in to do something, to get something accomplished. And then one day you're you have the party and the farewell, and you wake up one morning in your bed and you're thinking, What's my life about?

SPEAKER_04 1:44

What's my purpose?

SPEAKER_03 1:49

Any main time of our life where there's a big shift, it's often purpose that's the thing we've lost. I was talking to someone recently, his children suffered from a certain illness. He has a purpose of raising money for that cause, for that specific part of his life. It gets him up at three o'clock in the morning every day to train.

SPEAKER_04 2:17

That's purpose.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Parents who get up early to feed their kids and get them off to school or wherever you are in the journey, that's purpose. And when you're missing that purpose, when you don't have that purpose, when life is just, I'm just killing time, I'm just putting in time, there's nothing I need to do, there's nothing that means anything. It seems to be hard on our souls. There's a story from our tradition. A guy named Peter. He's gone fishing. Now, fishing seems very purposeful to us, but think of it differently. They don't have social media, they don't have Netflix. So fishing for him was kind of like zoning out in front of the TV. It's the thing he knew. He didn't have to think about it, he didn't have to pay attention. Because you know what? He woke up one day and his purpose was gone. The purpose, the person he was following, Jesus, was just murdered.

SPEAKER_04 3:15

And he woke up going, like, what is my life even about? What is my purpose?

SPEAKER_03 3:27

Now, in the story, a character shows up, and it's in the resurrected moments. The Jesus story, we have the murder, then we have the resurrection. When Jesus shows up again, oftentimes people don't recognize him. It's not the same as before. And Peter doesn't recognize either. And Jesus says, No, no, no, it's me. And I don't, we don't quite know why this is.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

But Peter goes, Is it you? And Jesus says, Peter, do you love me?

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Peter says, Of course, of course. Like, I gave everything for you. I'm despondent right now. I'm dust in the wind right now because you're not here.

SPEAKER_04 4:16

And Jesus says, If you love me, he'll take water to the people I care about. He'll make sure they have clothing if they need it, and food if they need it.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Your purpose will be that you will take care of the people I love like I did. Will you do that? And Peter went from hopeless scrolling social media for lack of a better term, to saying, I have purpose again. And it's that purpose that drove a lot of our community, 22, 20, sorry, 21 people, plus a whole ton more who donated, who volunteered to be a part of Friends Church so that these trips can happen, so that we could go down to Mexico because we have a purpose to make life better for people who need it. Now that purpose started beautifully. We all got to the airport, 21 of us, all in our messing shirts. We looked great. Thank you, Kennedy, for our shirts. And then we got loaded onto a plane, and then we sat on that plane for six and a half hours before they canceled it and we went home and we went, wait a second. But the purpose was enough. We knew why we were there. And even though I was ready to kill the person sitting next to me because they did not have enough arm room, and the travel gods did not seem happy with us that day, we finally made it all the way down to Ensenada, Mexico. To fulfill that very same thing. Would you take water to the people who need it? And there's a part of the story that I want you to see so you know what you did this year. You see, I was this one's a little hard for me, so I'm gonna get emotional quite a few times during this. I went into their house, which is we would call it a shack. It's made of pallets wrapped in tar paper. They open up some of the tar paper, they peel it back, and that's the window. As Merel does is standing there, and she's she's this gorgeous woman. Her skin is like, I am so jealous of the color of her skin, her teeth are bright white, and she's got this like she's soft, and yet when she barks, the kids jump, and she's like that mum side. But there's still something fragile in her. She was making tortillas, there's a tear running down her cheek. There's no place to sit, there's just a bed and a cooler. And it's me and Gregorio, the translator. And she starts telling me her story. And her story is so heartbreaking. You see, she grew up in this area, but like most families in in this area, it's a blended family. She has stepchildren, or sorry, stepsisters, siblings, half-siblings. They live together sometimes, not apart. And there's so much animosity between them. Her dad and her mom are at each other's throats. Her dad's abusing her mom. They move and they move and they move. Constantly trying to find a place that's safe, a place to live. She tells me of the day that she says to her mom, I will not sleep in the same bed with you and your boyfriend. Because he's hurting me at night.

SPEAKER_04 10:37

And I'm just got it.

SPEAKER_03 10:43

Her mom left her dad because, again, abuse. And they moved across, they moved, they moved, they moved. At one point, they're in a bus station sleeping on the benches, and her mom is riffling through her purse. She pulls out random pieces of paper and she sees phone numbers. She doesn't even know who they are, and they start calling and saying, Can we stay with you? Can is there a place we can live? Her godparents say yes. So the family moves in with them. But the godparents' kids don't like Esmeralda. And she's abused by the very people who swore before God, I will take care of you.

SPEAKER_04 11:28

Her godparents. And so they left.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

They finally go into a place where uh they've they've established a home. There's no shelters in Mexico, not in this area. It's not like if you're an abused mother with children, you can go to a shelter and somebody will help you. There's nothing. All you have is people taking you in.

SPEAKER_04 11:54

And every person who took them in, it was like there's a string attached.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

When she finally told her mum, and this is she told me. I'll always remember how wooden her voice was. And she told me all the people who had abused her. She never once stopped making tortillas. It was like this was so natural to her that it was just part of life. And as the tear dripped down her cheek, the thought in my head was, How do you live through this? When she was twelve, she said to her mom, I will not sleep in the same bed with your boyfriend anymore.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

Her mum got mad at her.

SPEAKER_03 12:59

You're being a troublemaker. Because in their culture, if something happens, we no longer have a place to sleep.

SPEAKER_04 13:10

And you hear the choice between safety and abuse and a place to live.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

She grabs her her bin of tortillas. She'd made tortillas or burritos for everybody. And it's kind of like without even realizing the gravity of what's just she's told me, she takes them out to the team and says, These are for the team, and she leaves. And I'm sitting there, I can't even like the idea of eating. I'm so sick to my stomach at this moment.

SPEAKER_04 13:54

How could people live this way?

SPEAKER_03 13:59

I step out and I the translator Gregorio is right there, and I say to him, and I'm like, I can feel I remember my voice. It's like pleading. I'm like, tell me this is a one-off story. Tell me this is just I got the worst one, and I'm just gonna have to deal with this. And he's got tears trying going down his cheek, too.

SPEAKER_04 14:20

He's like, I'm crying because her story is my mom's story.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

I told my mom that he was abusing me, and she said, You're being a troublemaker. Even though he was the person who had beating the mum, the he was the person who spent all their money was gambling and drinking, she still didn't believe him. They didn't talk to each other for 20 years.

SPEAKER_04 14:53

This is life in this area of town, this area of Mexico.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

The thought that was in my head over and over again was when does this beautiful, incredible mom, when has she ever felt safe? When I'm sitting in a shack with a blanket for a door and tar paper for walls. They don't they don't get up at night to go to the bathroom because there's scorpions and spiders. We were picking stones for her garden, which is just a rock bed. We're picking stones, and all of a sudden Fernando the dad's like starts yelling, and we go over and he realizes he's got two scorpions on his shovel right in the stones that we were just picking. Suddenly we're all like this. From then on, every stone was I think that one's safe. This is their life every day. They don't even get out of bed without checking the floor, the dirt floor. They keep a blanket over top of their bed that's hung like this. So when the spiders drop off the roof, they don't land in bed while they're sleeping. When have you ever felt safe when I first met Esmeralda and Fernando? I was trying to be charming, as charming as I get. And I said, When you met I was saying to Esmeralda through the translator, when you met Fernando, was he handsome? Was he guapa? That's technically the term that's pronounced poorly, but whatever. Was he handsome? And she laughed and she's like, Oh, when we first met, we were both working cutting flowers in a field, and so we were wearing like pieces of cloth wrapped around her face. For two years, I didn't even know what he looked like. He didn't even know what I looked like. We became friends first. She was 12 when she said, I will no longer sleep in the same bed as your boyfriend. She was 12 when she said, I want the money that I'm making in the fields. She's 12 years old, cutting flowers next to adults. I want part of that money. And when she was 14, she left home. It wasn't safe. Two years later, her and Fernando got together three years after that. They had Fernanda, two years after that, Malin. Now they live in a small shack with a dirt floor. I remember later on the day I got them both to come in and they sat down on the bed. I sat on the cooler because there was no other furniture. And I started off with the normal questions how is this house going to change your life? Right? The pastor of the group that's building your house, what kind of an answer do you think I got for that? I realized after about two of those kind of questions, I was like, these are bad questions. And then I asked a question that had been on my heart since that morning. Where have you ever felt safe? I remember them both looking at the translator as he translated what I said. And they both looked at me and instantly went like this. A key. Here. They pointed to the dirt floor between their feet. Wrapped in a pallet shack with tar paper around it. Where they have to make sure that they don't know to get out of bed because of spiders and scorpions. Where their shower was a bucket that they fill with water in the s next to the bed and they splash themselves. A key right here. Because there's no strings attached. This is ours. And it's on that land that we built them a house. For the first time, they have a cement floor. I know it doesn't sound like a big idea, but if you ever if you ever get a chance, go down. Standing in a shack with a dirt floor, and realizing a family of four live there, it'll change you.

SPEAKER_04 19:57

A key. Right here is where we felt safe for the first time.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

What we did is we brought them a door that locks. They decide who comes and goes. The door keeps the spiders and the scorpions out. The snakes, a week earlier they found a snake just down like on the corner of the thing. The girls are playing. They found a snake. I'm like, sweet mother. They called the neighbors to come kill it. They said, actually, it's good eating. We'll eat that. A key. For the first time since Fernando was born, they will have their own beds. The girls got their own beds. They've never slept in their own bed before. They were so happy. But more than all of that, it was a key. This is the place that's safe. This is ours. That is our home. I kept watching Fernando. I don't know if this is a this is a thing that makes sense to me. He would stand outside of his house and just look at it. Memorizing every bit. I was like, oh, I could feel myself doing the same thing in my house. The first time Esmeralda turned on the light in her bedroom. They don't have lights in their shock. The smile on her face. I think we should probably budget for a new light switch because those girls they were so excited. Here is where we feel safe. That's what we brought to this family. Now that parse of land that they have. The rock bed. I'm not even sure how they got a cement pad port in there. We would not have, like structural engineering or the substrate engineering was not. This wasn't their first pick. There's another place that they could have bought that was down the way. It had a better view. It was gorgeous. The whole land is gorgeous, but theirs overlooking the ocean, it was stunning. They said, no, no. We picked this for a reason. When I asked Fernando, he said it within two to four years, Esmeralda quite quickly corrected him, no, in three years, buddy. He was very much a one-word kind of guy. She would add the color. In three years, they plan to build a taco stand. They picked this neighborhood because it's an up-and-coming neighborhood where there's a whole bunch of people like them showing up. And if you're in a small area in Mexico, what do you need? A taco stand. Fernando's like, no, no, we're gonna build a taco stand. Esmeralda, she has to walk 40 minutes to the school with her daughters. And then 40 minutes back. Right now, what she does is she'll make little bags of jello. And she sells them to uh school kids. Carries, that's what I was sitting on. That's the cooler I was sitting on. She fills it up and carries it 40 minutes and then sells on the way back. No, no, she'll be able to work with Fernando in the taco stand. The girls, when they're finished school or when they're outside of school, instead of having to be someplace that's not safe, they can come work with dad and mom.

SPEAKER_04 23:31

Fernando's got a plan to take care of his family, to build something better. The land was the first.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

The house was the second. They are ready to change their lives.

SPEAKER_04 23:58

That is what we did. I gotta say, I'm pretty proud of what we did.

SPEAKER_03 24:10

I don't think you guys just want to hear me talk about this though. So I've asked six of our community to come up, share with you a little bit of what this story meant to them. And then we're gonna do a few more things. Come on up. Joe, Amy. I'll start with you, Amy. Amy actually co-led the trip this year. How to go?

SPEAKER_07 24:35

It was great. Aside from Wednesday morning and the snowstorm. So we could have arranged that a little better.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Tell me a little bit about your experience coming there. You said you watched Esmerald and her kids. How did that impact you as a mom of two girls seeing another mom of two girls?

SPEAKER_07 24:55

Yeah, it's interesting because those girls are similar ages to my girls, right? Yeah. Um, so I definitely I find as a mom, I think about like for me, it's I don't know, this sounds this sounds and is so privileged. It's just, it's so easy. It's like, of course, they're gonna have their own beds, right? And but you see the same, like it's the exact same love, of course, in Esmeralda. We're all the exact same, and you watch her watch her kids, and like she wants that, but I don't think she even really knew that that could be a possibility. So seeing her and seeing um Fernando kind of I don't I feel like you could just see them suddenly go, okay. We have like a little bit more hope. Yeah, we have more hope for the future, and our girls have more hope for the future, and they can become something.

SPEAKER_03 25:49

Isn't that incredible?

SPEAKER_07 25:50

Sounds pretty cool. Yeah, Joe?

unknown 25:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

Now, for you, you're a fellow renovator, so you probably started renovating with a small project in your house here in Calgary.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Yeah, just one small project. It's been going how many years now? Oh how long have we on the house?

SPEAKER_03 26:04

A very long time. Seven years. Yeah. Now, along the way, you learned a bunch of skills drywall, yeah, electrical, all that stuff. Yeah. Tell me how it did it feel to use those hobbies now as a way to take water in a way that felt very different.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Yeah. I it really got me thinking about how, like you just said, like it's a hobby. Like it's not we don't need an updated kitchen. We don't need, you know, the lights and the switches and the outlets rearranged in our basement storage area. Like these are these are frivolities in some sense. Right. Um and I also didn't need to learn any of that stuff myself. Like we could have just had somebody else do it. Yeah. But I have the time and and the privilege to be able to, and you too. And so I did, and it's a hobby. And but then going down there and then seeing like the first time when we had the girls come in when we had the electrical all working, and like you said, with the light switch, and just their their eyes light up when they saw they could flip this on and for the first time in their lives have a light in their bedroom, and a light in the main room, and a light in their mom and dad's room. Um that really that was a magical kind of moment and really like reframed a lot of my understanding of privilege. Yeah. Like I carry a lot of privilege based on my station in our society. And there's nothing that I can do that'll ever change how much privilege I have. Like that's that's said. Like I'm a fairly well-off white cis hetero male in a developed country. Um, so the only thing I really can control is what do I choose to do with that privilege. Yeah, I could leverage it to keep accumulating more within our family, yeah, or I could take up the responsibility that that presents to change some other people's lives. Yeah, I love that. Thanks, you guys.

SPEAKER_03 28:04

Okay. Next, I'm gonna have Addison and Randall. Addison, I'm gonna start with you. Okay. You showed up, so our teams got separated. We missed our flight, so we had to overnight in San Diego. You guys got there first thing.

SPEAKER_06 28:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

Tell me what it felt like to roll in on the bus the first thing and to meet the family.

SPEAKER_06 28:25

Um, it was like when you drove up to the job site, you could immediately see like the smiles and like the happiness on their faces, just knowing that they are finally getting the house that they well over deserved.

SPEAKER_03 28:36

Yeah. How are the girls really strange with you guys at all at the beginning?

SPEAKER_06 28:40

No. They were immediately in our arms, hugging us, wanting to get to know us, and like wanting us to play with them, go see their how their house and like all the toys that they had.

SPEAKER_03 28:50

Yeah, I love it. Tell me how that impacted you to see again this moment of like we show up to a job site and suddenly there's so much potential there. How did that impact you?

SPEAKER_06 29:02

Um, it was like oh well, they w opened their doors with welcoming arms and like let us learn about their family and like everything that they've been through and like how they still trust people and like want a better life for themselves.

SPEAKER_03 29:21

Yeah, that was incredible. Yeah, Randall. Now, Randall, you were the other co-leader of the trip, so you took on a lot of responsibility for this one.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Was forced.

SPEAKER_03 29:31

Not by me, we're gonna throw that one on Jeff, but you did an incredible job, both you and A V. Um, tell me what it's like, because this is your third year coming down with Addison, right? Yeah, what is it like to be a dad watching their daughter take water like this? How does that impact you?

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Well, it's the just seeing the the look on her face, um, just seeing the kids and just naturally gravitating towards her. It that's been her her whole life. And just seeing it out in the public, out in the open, um, just made me feel real proud as a dad of okay, we've done done this. And it's just an amazing feeling.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

When you think back to kind of the highlights of your life together, does this one rank these builds rank as like these are the ones that really have some legacy to them?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah, just being able to share the experiences with Addison, um, sharing the life-changing moments, the the times when we're we're working together hand in hand, building something, um, has been been amazing.

SPEAKER_03 30:40

Has she taught you how to mud a corner? Because she is a damn good corner mudder.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

I taught her that.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

Them fighting words. I'll let you guys deal with that after. Thanks to you guys. Can I get Kennedy and Patrick over here? This is another father-daughter team. I'm gonna start with you, Patrick. This is how many times have you gone down to build houses with us? Uh seven. Seven. Incredible. There's a moment you talked about. The reason I asked you to come up here today is you're up on the roof with the other non-vampire people, uh, Nathan, uh, Isaac. You guys are up in the sun building the roof, and someone showed up. Can you tell them a bit about that story?

SPEAKER_02 31:22

Yeah, we're it's midday, it's as hot as it's gonna be. We're lifting rafters, we're nailing them by hand. It's it's tough. And we already have the the Mexican crew with us, the from Baja Bound. From Baja Bound. We got their their site carpenters and their their apprentices are up there on the roof, they're helping us, and then now there's another local Mexican up on the roof. And I didn't see him get up there, I didn't know how he got up there. I looked at Nathan, I'm like, Do you know who he is? And Nathan's like, I saw him interact with the family, like he knows somebody. So we're up there, we're working probably 20 minutes, half an hour. Then Bell's got the girls' paint on their hands, they're drawing, they're slapping their hands on the wall, they're drawing hearts, just being cute little three and five-year-olds. And I caught a glance at Fernando, and there's unmistakable. That's the dad. Like you just see him looking down with so much love for his little girls, and it hit me for sure. That's the guy on the roof with you. No clue. No, and I didn't know who he was to up to that moment, and then we we bonded for sure. Like we didn't, he didn't speak English, I didn't speak Spanish, but we worked together for two days and for sure bonded. Like he I explained that this is my daughter, and and those are his daughters, and I so it's like Nino, yeah, yeah. Nina, yes, yeah. So it was it was it was amazing for me. I've done this six times previous, and a lot of the time we don't get to spend time with the dad. He's usually off working, and we see him for the key ceremony or that. It was really special for me to actually be there with him hands-on with him, feel bonded, like I was explaining earlier. That kind of feels like we went through a war, like we were teammates, and we we all did this together. None of it was necessarily fun, but we we all pushed through and we got through it. And there's something about building together that bonds, doesn't it? For sure. Yeah, it's it's the hard work kind of we all agreed to endure the suffering and enjoy it. And it's the purpose. Yes. Okay, Kennedy.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

Now, when you reached out, I asked you what this trip did to you. You talked a bit about the moments there, but you talked actually about how it's changed you.

SPEAKER_05 33:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:19

Can you talk a bit about that for us?

SPEAKER_05 33:21

Yeah, I think a big part of the trip that I didn't realize was gonna hit me so hard was embracing that change and like the family dynamic that we had by the end of the trip because we all kind of got there and we realized, like from the first meeting, I knew where we were going, what situation they were in, but seeing it firsthand once we got there, you could tell that it was a really big eye-opening experience for everyone that came. And I think that really helped us bond. We found a lot of things out about ourselves that we didn't know prior. Um, and yeah, like just being able to see the difference that it made for the family, but then also the difference in our whole team. Um, having those girls, like they were, I was lucky they were glued to my hip the whole time, and I got to spend the whole trip with them. But like seeing how happy they were, and just like literally they had a Barbie that they shared between the two of them, and that was what they had to play with, but they were never not singing, never not having the time of their lives.

unknown 34:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:18

So I think, yeah, like seeing how privileged I am because I was born in Canada and have the opportunities that I have, and then seeing that these girls don't have those opportunities, but they're they're making the best of it and they they couldn't be happier. And now they have that support system of their amazing parents, like their bond was incredible, and then now they have that house and that safety and security. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:42

So the day someone was vacuuming, I live in a condo, they're vacuuming in the hallway, and I realized my door shut and locked, and I realized how special I've never thought about that I can lock the door and keep people out of my house until I was there. How has that trip come back to your everyday here?

SPEAKER_05 35:01

Yeah, and like, yeah, like I was saying, like I I knew about their situation, but even like seeing it firsthand and then coming back, and like again, I have my own bed, I have my own room, like I have access to so many opportunities because I live here.

unknown 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:19

And like I believe that if those girls had the same access to those opportunities, they take it right away. But you know, like having again the sports system of my family that they luckily have. Um, but yeah, I think coming back, it makes me appreciate things a lot more. Yeah. Um, and yeah, like I take it, I take a second to notice it now. Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_03 35:42

But yeah, I love that. Thanks, you guys. Let's give them a round of applause.