Hola from South of the Border!

Greetings Walnut Creek friends! This is Brendan, writing from Rancho Agua Viva in Ensenada. We arrived safe and sound around 3:30 this afternoon and promptly "dibbed" which beds were ours. The American team director here, Ineke, gave us a tour of the grounds and told us the story behind how Rancho got started. One of the things that came out in that time is that 20 people from our team have never been here before. How cool is that? So exciting to be part of such a new experience for our team. And only two of us came on 209's last Mexico trip 18 months ago, so this is foreign territory for many of us.

We have some free time this evening before dinner, and then a campfire where we will get to meet some of the seminary students who live on the grounds as well as hear more of the story of Rancho Agua Viva. Then it's an early night to bed, because have some ministry to do in the morning!

Thanks so much for your prayers for our safe travel and team connection. We would love continued prayer for those things, but please also pray for our spirits to stay high. Now that we're here, everyone is excited for ministry tomorrow; we don't want to lose that feeling! Right about now is when people start to feel worn down, so pray that we keep our energy up and continue to be gracious with one another as we live together for the week.

I'll be posting again tomorrow evening around 5:30, so check back in a little after that! Hopefully I'll have some good stories from the day to share with all our family and friends stateside.

--Brendan