Our story starts a long time ago in 2006. It was the summer in between my sophomore and junior year of high school. I had been out of the country one time to Cambodia on a missions trip and had caught the travel bug there. So when the opportunity came for me to travel once again and do service work in a different country, I took it. This time we would be driving to Tijuana, Mexico. I spoke a tiny bit of Spanish and LOVED Mexican food, so I was ready.
A much skinnier version of me with Mo and Berry
My two best friends, Alex (Berry) and Justine (Mo), were joining me on the trip along with my sister, my parents, and a couple other friends in our youth group. We spent time fundraising, praying, and preparing for what we hoped to be life-changing. The day finally arrived, we loaded in the church van and drove to Madras where we would meet up with the rest of the students from our state who we would be traveling with. The trip isn't something I remember a lot other than sitting in the very back, not a lot of air conditioning, and gazing out the window as the scenery made an extreme change from southern California, the border crossing, to the slums of Mexico.
As we drove in Rancho De Sus Ninos, the orphanage we would be staying and doing most of our work with, another group was already there, also from Oregon. They had driven in from Pendleton, I place I had heard of but never been in the eastern part of my home state. I don't remember a lot about the first parts of the trip other than we mixed A LOT of concrete for building projects and loved on a lot of orphans, all while enjoying the best, most authentic Mexican food I had ever had.
It wasn't the biggest group in the world, big enough to get things done, but small enough to really be close. I started to get to know the guys from Pendleton, and Mo even found a summer fling with a boy from their church. That was when I first met Daimian. He looks a lot like he does now, but with a lot less facial hair. I remember him, I remember his name and what he looked like, though he would remember only my dad, Berry, and Mo, but that story is for a different time.
Baby Daimian
So little facial hair....
