Mexico Missions 2022
Here at StoneBridge, we offer an annual mission trip to Mexico that’s as impactful for participants as the people we serve. For Americans who have never witnessed or experienced true poverty, this trip is an eye-opening, transformative experience that opens hearts and moves helping hands and feet into inspired action. If you’re interested in serving globally, then going to Mexico with our team is a great place to begin.
StoneBridge volunteers who travel to Mexico serve alongside the families they help. They work to renovate and build homes for families in rural areas, establishing relationships with them along the way. The teams camp in tents with limited resources during each project.
“The trip helps the group to encounter what it feels like to live in poverty, in many ways,” says Kristi Bebermeyer, Operations Pastor at StoneBridge and an annual Mexico trip leader. “There's no running water for us to utilize. We have a campsite with a Porta Potty that we use, and we shower with shower bags, like if you were camping and roughing it - while also working hard and building a house.”
Time and again, the Mexico mission trip has proven itself to be an immersive experience that inspires tremendous growth in each participant. For many who have attended, the trip has been life-changing, forever altering the way they encounter the world - both during the trip and after they’ve returned home.
According to Kristi, it’s a wildly different experience from mission trips that involve sightseeing, leisure activities, or a comfortable hotel stay at the end of a long day serving.
“At the end of the day, you don’t go back to life the way it was,” she says. “We’re working hard all day, then sleeping in the same conditions. If you’ve never experienced something like that, you don’t have the same kind of empathy.”
Our Mexico mission trip is currently scheduled for President’s Day weekend annually, and in 2022, we took 41 participants, including five teenagers. Prior to COVID, up to 60 volunteers participated each year. With COVID restrictions in place this year, we reduced our team size, but were still able to build 2 houses.
On most of our trips, the team focuses on building additions onto existing homes. Families often live in a community of small houses with very little square footage, and often few resources. Often, we go in and add space to their homes to make them more livable and functional.
However, this year one of the families we served needed an entire home built.
“A couple and their four daughters were living in a lean-to that was half the size of the building we were constructing,” Kristi says. “The house we built for them was the first real home they had.”
The girls’ parents were concerned with their safety, so the mother worked the night shift to ensure one adult was home with them at all times. Ultimately, we partnered the family with a local church that could assist them further.
In 2022, our team was able to get both families we built with into contact with local churches. Neither family had been involved in church, and both were excited to learn more and to visit worship services.
“They felt compelled to explore it because we came from a church background, and they understood the value in it after that,” Kristi says. “Hopefully, that sticks and the church helps them get equipped with what they need, like resources and jobs.
Kristi says the Mexico trip is a stepping stone to further opportunities for the families we serve.
“The hope is that they say yes to the local church when we’re done. We don’t want to go there, do something nice, and come in with a savior complex,” she says. “We want to be there, help equip them, teach them what we’re doing so they can do it on their own, and then partner them with locals who can help them move forward even more from there.”
Giving Teens a Heart for International Missions
The Mexico mission trip is eye-opening not only for the adults, but for the teens who participate. Some parents bring their teenagers on the trip each year, and the learning and bonding experiences are unparalleled.
“One of the things I love most about bringing a child of yours on the trip is the growth and exposure they get,” Kristi says. “Their eyes are opened, especially the first day you walk onto a worksite. The basic things we take for granted are just not available there.”
Once the initial impact of the experience has sunk in, Kristi says the teens are ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
“They become years older than you ever expected they would, in their maturity,” she says. “The way they interact with their parents and the work team, and the way they talk about the world after that, is really cool.”
Each group of volunteer workers from StoneBridge who travel to Mexico become mentors for the next generation. Over the years, they can train, inspire, and pass the torch to younger members who take on the task themselves. Their own experiences of support and camaraderie will translate into teachable moments they can pass on.
A Truly Life-Changing Experience
Dan Freeman first joined the Mexico mission trip in February of 2020, prior to COVID lockdowns. He was in the midst of a divorce and had been struggling to find his footing as a father during that long, difficult season. He’d checked himself into rehab in summer 2019 for alcohol abuse, crediting the program as life-saving.
Once Dan completed rehab, he turned his focus on being a better father to his children. That’s how he decided to get serious about his relationship with Christ. Although he had been attending StoneBridge inconsistently for a few years, he made it a priority to attend StoneBridge regularly, and was baptized in 2019.
“I was trying to think of ways to be not only a good father, but a good Christian,” he says.
On one particular Sunday, Dan heard a sermon about the top reason many people say they don’t join the church: hypocrisy. The message resonated with him, and had been a primary reason why Dan had stayed away from the church for so long. It was also a lightbulb moment for him in his own walk with Christ.
“I can learn as much as I want, and I can talk to people about it,” Dan says, “but the only thing that really matters is when you act. I wanted my kids to see me doing things, whether that was being a greeter at church, going on mission trips, or volunteering.
“Kids absorb everything: what you say and what you do. So that’s a big reason why I decided to take the plunge and go to Mexico.”
Although Dan had attended church from childhood through his college years, he recalls only going through the motions.
“I never really had a relationship with Christ at all,” he says. “It was literally just going to church and leaving, and doing nothing about it.”
Joining the Mexico mission trip altered not only Dan’s experience of the church. It also forever changed his relationship with Jesus, and the depth of his relationships among brothers and sisters in Christ. Jumping into the trip was unnerving for Dan, but it transformed him in ways he didn’t expect.
“I was definitely scared out of my gourd the first time I went because I didn't know anybody,” he says. “By the second year, I felt like I knew everybody and I could joke around.
“Sleeping outside in tents, bunking up with people, sitting around the campfire having dinner and joking around--just building those relationships on mission trips has made a huge difference in my perception of Sundays. I can honestly say that Sundays are my favorite days now.”
Presenting Families with the Keys to Their New Homes
Presenting each family with the keys to their new or renovated homes is always a highlight of the Mexico trip for our volunteer teams. Kristi and Dan say that this year, in particular, was both memorable and emotional.
On the final day of the first build, the father of four wanted to see our team off, but was unable to get home from work before they presented the keys to the family. A member of the volunteer team had additional donation money he wanted to contribute to Amor Ministries, the organization that makes these trips possible, so the team purchased blankets for the family. The wind had been high that day, ripping down our team’s tents and blowing dust into their belongings, so Kristi opted to ride back to the home with the translator to deliver the blankets since the temperature was expected to be particularly cold overnight.
“One of our girls had brought a Polaroid camera with her,” Kristi says, “and she was taking pictures all the time that we were there. We had gotten the family a picture frame, and I had been intending to print some pictures and send them down to them. But when I got to the house, one of the little girls held up the picture frame, and it was filled with all the Polaroid pictures we had taken--we didn’t tell them to do that. They just wanted them on display.
“As we were leaving, the father ran out, put his hands up and made a heart over his head, and called, ‘Bye, Kristi! We love you forever!’”
As Kristi headed back to camp, she considered the team’s flattened tents and precarious sleeping situation for the night, then considered the conditions the family had been living in long-term.
“The reality of the house the family was living in before was that it was an outline of wood covered in trash bags,” she says. “We’d had our tents knocked over that day and it was an incredible inconvenience to us, but how long had it been since they’d had four walls to sleep in?”
Looking Ahead to 2023
If you and your family are interested in participating in the 2023 Mexico mission trip, now is the time to begin considering and praying about it. While the trip is challenging, it’s so rewarding for our volunteers, and many choose to continue attending year after year.
“I can’t emphasize enough how life-altering the trip is,” Kristi says, “not just for your personal growth but for the connection and establishing the bond with the families we serve. It knocks down so many barriers and levels the playing field so much.
“Our hope is that it changes the way you view people in general. We’re here to do the work that we know honors God. My hope is that one of the biggest takeaways would be that there won’t be barriers between you and anyone anymore. That we just love people because we should love them.”
To learn more about the trip, contact Kristi Bebermeyer at kbebermeyer@sbomaha.com
