Day 1 (Saturday)

Hello all! Thanks for taking your time to read about my experience in Mexico City! Me along with 7 other members from my fellowship at UCI decided to use our spring break to serve and explore various places throughout Mexico City!

On my first day of my trip, my team arrived in Mexico City around 12 - 1pm after a 4 hour long flight. Our first stop was going to Benny and Janice's home (the family that housed and planned the activities of our trip). After settling in, we walked to the nearby mall to eat lunch and to buy groceries for the week. Many of us were very tired from lack of sleep due to the early flight (7am) from LAX. Luckily, we had a gap to rest before going into the main event of the night. That night, we hosted a 'block party' along with other members of "El Pozo De Vida" (The Well of Life), which is the organization that helps fight human trafficking. You can read more about them here: http://www.elpozodevida.org.mx .

To clarify, a 'block party' is an event where we set up in an area where human trafficking / prostitution occurs in an attempt to detour the sex business happening on the streets. Most of the women who are on the streets are being overlooked by 'pimps', who are people who are in charge of watching over the prostitutes / trafficking to make sure they are doing their job. This makes it hard to convince the women to come to our block party.

At around 9PM, we started out by walking around the nearby streets to invite the women with food and water to come over to our corner where we played music, offered manicures and feet washing, and just held community to talk. At first, it was fairly empty and hard to convince them to come over. However, by 11PM, we were able to get many women to come over as well as a pimp as well. There was a lot of emotion but also a lot of hope that filled the place. By 12PM, we began to clean up and went home and that concluded Day 1!

Reflection:
Today was the first day of the trip but I was already shocked by the whole situation. Coming into this mission trip, I didn't know too much about human trafficking and to see it all unfold right in front of my eyes was both mind-blowing and confusing. As saddening as the situation seemed, I was glad that we were able to make a difference tonight. One crazy thing is that I would look up every few minutes but the landscape would be totally different. Sometimes it would be empty one minute, and the next minute, the streets would be filled with women. Everything moved so quickly that I felt overwhelmed at one point. But to see so many women come to our block party for cleansing and healing was a sign of hope that has impacted my perspective already.

Day 2 (Sunday)

Today was another cool experience in terms of serving and learning more about the different aspects of El Pozo De Vida. To start of the day, the 5 guys on the team including me woke up at 7:45AM to help set up their church service at a local school. From about 8 - 9AM, many of us carried heavy equipment to prepare for the 11AM church service. Something that stood out was talking and meeting new people while doing the labor work. Everyone had positive vibes without complaint and it made the experience that much more enjoyable. After both the 11AM service, some of us helped out in the children's ministry while the 12:30 service went on. It was fun singing and dancing with the kids who were full of energy. Here's a picture of the amazing service inside the auditorium!

After church, our team headed back to Benny and Janice's place where we were able to relax and have lunch. For our meal, we brought a HUGE marinated chicken that was super tasty. Along with the salsa and guacamole (both were pretty spicy, everything here is so spicy haha), we enjoyed a nice meal at around 3PM.

Side Note: Meal times in Mexico are very odd... Lunch seems to be around 2-3 while dinner is at 8-9.

After a quick rest, our team headed to out to visit another part of the ministry. This time, we went to a place called "Casa Transitorio", which directly translates to Transition Home. This place houses girls over the age of 18 that are moving on from the "The Well" (the place we will be visiting the next few days!). Here, we talked to some of the girls over dinner (we got some Little Caesars haha) and learned a lot about what goes on in the daily life in the transition home. After a few hours, we finally headed back home and got some well needed rest after a day of hard work.

Reflection:
Today's highlight was hearing about the different stories of the transition home. It's cool to see how the girls are put into the real world and while not being totally on their own, they finally get to see how to live life independently. Another highlight was meeting members of the church in the morning and seeing how genuine they are and friendly they are to newcomers! I hope to see some of them throughout the week!

Day 3 (Monday)

Today was another amazing day! After making breakfast, we headed to another place in connection. This one was called 'Nunayu'. Here, we met an older group of women that had previously been rescued from human trafficking when they were younger. They held a workshop for us and individually helped us make our own personal bracelets. Ultimately, the goal for each of the women is to be able to create their business in this form of art. You can see the bracelets that the guys created below!

The next activity of the day was visiting 'Dunamis' at the community center, which last year's team helped to build. The goal of Dunamis is to allow the women (who are still in the trafficking business) to have an outlet and independence if they choose to. There are workshops and classes held there as well! At the community center, we served food and talked to the women for a couple hours before leaving. Since the community center is very close to the Zocalo of Mexico City (the main square), we decided to walk over. In our route, we passed by many stands and street vendors who were selling various things (I bought a super cheap soccer jersey haha). Here is a picture below of us at El Zocalo!

The last part of the night concluded with something that everyone on the team was waiting for. TACOS!!! If you ever go to Mexico City, you have to visit "Tacos Express"! My favorite meat was suadero while the arracherra (skirt steak) was a close second! Here's a picture of me eating one of them!

Reflection:

Today was an exploring type of day and it was a good mid-trip break of just learning about different parts of El Pozo De Vida while also exploring Mexico City and its food as well. I'm excited to finally visit The Well tomorrow! One thing that stood out today was the positivity seen at 'Nunayu''. It's still shocking to hear of the things that they went through individually when they were younger but it's amazing to see the result in the present.

Day 4 (Tuesday)

It's officially the middle part of the trip! Today was exciting for many reasons. Once again, we woke fairly early to eat breakfast before heading to The Well at 10AM. If you don't already know, The Well is the main reason that our team came to visit Mexico City over the break. Here, 8 girls currently live at this safe house and have been rescued from human trafficking. They are all around high school age and each have unique stories about their past.

After introducing ourselves, the girls were immediately interested in playing a variety of games, dancing (they love to dance!), and just having fun. Despite just meeting us, the girls and our team alike had a great time. After lunch, our team, the girls, and Benny's family all headed to the movie theater at the local mall to watch Pacific Rim 2 (interesting movie choice haha). The craziest thing though: this was the FANCIEST theater I've ever been to in my life! They had reclining seats, a desk, a food menu, and a personal waiter/waitress to take our orders! I wish I had a took a picture of the actual theater. Anyways, the girls and most of our team had a great time!

The rest of the night consisted of staying home, having dinner, and debriefing about today back at home. We ordered some pizza from a legit Italian place that was very satisfying!

I wish I could share some pictures from The Well, but we can't due to privacy reasons! Instead, here's a picture of us at the Cathedral yesterday!

Reflection:
Today was definitely kind of intimidating at first. I remember thinking to myself on the car ride there. There were a lot of what if's going on in my mind and it was hard to stay calm because I didn't know exactly what I was supposed to do. Still, despite the language barrier, I found myself enjoying every moment of today's time. You could tell that the girls were so genuine because they were so happy just to see us and I quickly realized that I didn't need to bring anything special except my time to make a difference in their lives. I remember hearing from others that the girls have a false view of men because of the abuse they've gone through, and every moment that we smile and spend time with them goes a long way in changing that narrative and fixing their knowledge of what love really is.

Day 5 (Wednesday)

Happy Wednesday! Today was another amazing day in experiencing new things. A recurring theme so far of this trip is that each day offers a new perspective. Anyways, today started off rather the same as yesterday. We woke up and went to The Well at 10AM to spend more time with the girls. We played a bunch of games again, both board games and active games and it was soothing to continue spending quality time with them. Today, we spent much more time with them since we didn't leave to go to the movies as we did yesterday. Still, we brought COCO to watch with the girls at it was enjoyable for everyone! (very emotional for some people)...

At around 6:30 PM, we said our goodbyes and headed off the another part of the city for a worship/prayer night called "Upper Room", which was started by Benny & Janice. Here, we saw some old faces that we saw on Sunday at the church service. The night composed of many times of prayer as well as worship! You can see more of my thoughts about it in the reflection below...

For dinner, we went to the famous "Don Pedro" which is another amazing taco place! We had their al pastor and bistec tacos and once again had an amazing time of food and fellowship with our team and the family. This place definitely had the better al pastor for those who love pork! Anyways, that's all for tonight! 

Reflection:

The highlight of today was "Upper Room". It was a good time of reflection and just being able to focus on myself tonight. There was a great vibe that filled the place and even though all the worship was in Spanish, there was a different level of praise going on and it was easy to feel God's presence filling the place. There weren't any crazy instruments or effects but just the voices and outcries made the experience very touching and memorable.

Day 6 (Thursday)

Hola! Thanks for reading this far into my trip to Mexico City!

Today was the final day of actually serving and seeing another portion of El Pozo De Vida. At around 9AM, our team headed out to the Immigration Center of Mexico City. The Immigration Center holds immigrants who are found to be without their passports or identification (always keep your passport with you if you are in Mexico!). The process of verifying their identity and claims can range from hours to days to even weeks before each immigrant is sent back to their home country. As for our task, our team tagged along with other members of El Pozo De Vida and went in to provide a worship service consisting of songs, a message, and a taking of communion. Side Note: only 3 guys (including me) of the 8 in our team were allowed into the immigration center because some didn't have their passport (once again, always keep your passport with you!). Unfortunately, this meant that the team only got to experience the men's side of the location because the center is split into men, teens, and women & children. The experience was definitely not expected and you can see more of my thoughts in the reflection at the bottom of this post.

The next part of day consisted of a BBQ held at our place with the girls from The Well. There was a nice time of bonding and fellowship over food, games, dancing, worship, and even working out (odd...) . We then walked over to a nearby park to hike and to use the playground. Throughout these couple hours, a lot of us engaged in conversation and it was cool to get to know the girls a lot better! After saying our goodbyes, our team headed to get some good food!

The place we headed was called Coyocán. This village is near the center of Mexico City and the streets basically felt like a giant food fair. There were food stands everywhere and tons of people lining up for various things. The first thing that we got was hot/iced chocolate! Apparently, it's very famous and the line was about 20 minutes long (crazy for hot chocolate!). We also had some amazingly crunchy churros that were definitely the best I've had so far in my life. 

Other foods were tried was this giant pork stick (see below) that had some 'death sauce' (totally ruined me...) and a fried quesadilla from another food stand (also messed me up...). Here's some pictures below!

Reflection:

I think today was easily the most memorable day of my trip for a few reasons. 

First, going to the immigration center was pretty insane. When I walked into the detention area with all the other men, I was definitely intimidated not only because I was the odd one out but because they were all looking at us. It felt almost like a scene straight out of 'Prison Break'. Still, I saw that there was something different because when the group leading us went to the other end of the spectrum, almost all the men followed. To see so many of them interested in the Word, worship, and communion was mind-blowing because you would think that the only thing on the immigrant's mind is trying to get home as soon as possible.

Next, today's time spent with the girls was much more memorable than the previous two. Playing games and watching movies was also great, but there was a different connection that I made with some of the girls today. (I actually spoke a good amount of Spanish today, crazy...) It was cool to get past that language barrier and ultimately become closer in our relationship with them. 

Finally, tonight's trip to Coyocán was a nice getaway to spend with the team, Benny's family, and others. It almost felt like a celebration as a conclusion to us serving this week and I definitely enjoyed every last bit of it!

Day 7 & 8 (Friday and Saturday)

So I'm just gonna combine the last 2 days because there's not too much substance.

On Friday morning, we had breakfast at some restaurant (kind of like an IHOP vibe) before heading to the Pyramids at Teotihuacan. It took about 3 hours to get there because we had to take the Subway and also take a bus because it's located on the outskirts of Mexico City. Apparently, everyone (all the tourists) were at the Pyramids today because it is Spring Break so it took about 2.5 hours to wait in line and climb up the main pyramid!

After having a nice dinner nearby (had some rabbit!), we traveled for another couple of hours before arriving home pretty late at around 10PM. After a night of debriefing and prayer, we spent time together as a team just hanging around!

The following morning, our team went to a very fancy restaurant (castle?) for breakfast where I had lamb for breakfast along with other fancy parts of the course. The last thing we did before heading to the airport was saying our final goodbyes to the girls at The Well. It was sad but also a joyful moment and it made me think about all the good things that had happened over the week!

THANK FOR YOUR ALL YOUR SUPPORT THROUGHOUT THE PAST WEEK AND THE WEEKS BEFORE THAT! None of the amazing things that happened this week would have happened without your prayer and support! Until my next missions trip, BYEBYE!