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.