I love this photo from a few years ago on a high school mission trip to Mexico!  An Irish high school student with us using an American snowboard in Mexico decided to snowboard down a steep dusty road.  I stood there that day and watched her courageously jump on the board and sail off into the great unknown.  When she got to the bottom of the hill, she crashed...tumbling...laughing hysterically!  When the dust cleared, she stood up and said "Aye!!  Me bum hurts!"  We all laughed till we cried..

What a great memory!  Where else in your life do you step out of your comfort zone to do something you've never done before in a part of the world you normally have no business being in!?  Doesn't happen often, that's for sure!  But....for nearly 300 people this summer...God is opening a door for exactly that!  This summer we Americans and Irish get to walk down dust covered streets with no names in rural Tijuana and for that week...we belong there!  We become part of the fabric of that community.   We get to do things we've never done before in a place we'll probably never be in again.  We get to spend time with the people of Mexico and receive from them something really special...a relationship that supercedes words.  So get ready to be stretched...challenged...and changed this summer as you take one of the greatest rides of your life!

By the way...we left the snowboard at the basecamp that year...it's probably still there waiting for you.  Surf's up!