On June 26, 123 volunteers poured in from 10 states to San Diego Christian College.
As registration began, it was evident this was not a conventional missions trip. The volunteers were not just youth or just adults but a combination of adults, families and church groups all eagerly anticipating what God had in store for the week.
FamilyFEST began with an opening orientation and welcome from the leaders of the San Diego Baptist Association as well as the California and national Woman’s Missionary Unions.
Dwight Simpson, director of missions for San Diego Association, welcomed the group and explained how San Diego presents some of “the most challenging church work in the United States.”
Fernando Martinez, pastor and director of Centro Shalom in Tijuana, Mexico, shared his passion for the impoverished of Tijuana and his desire to “stay and fight to make his country a better place.”
Martinez promised the volunteers that they would be “changed forever” after working with Tijuana’s poor.
Journey into Tijuana
What happened in the next four days was not a missions trip; it was the work of the body of Christ.
Forty of the volunteers loaded their belongings on a charter bus and journeyed into Tijuana. FamilyFEST partnered with Centro Shalom, which serves the areas of Alamar and Miramar in Tijuana, to help further their outreach programs.
A pastor and 11 fellow church members from Greenwood, Miss., led volunteers in Vacation Bible School (VBS) for children in the two areas.
Baptist Nursing Fellowship and other medical volunteers conducted three medical sites. Tijuana volunteers also painted makeshift homes and delivered rice, sugar, beans and clean water to the residents.
While one group traveled to Tijuana, the San Diego volunteers settled into the dorm rooms at the college. These volunteers looked forward to a week of construction, landscaping, prayer walking and VBS at seven different ministry sites around the city.
Three adults from Hawaii led a Bible school alongside a Texas family working with children living at Set Free Ministries, a transitional housing and life skills ministry in San Diego.
Two adult men from Littleton, Colo., did electrical work at First Baptist Southern Church, San Diego, while their friends and family painted and cleaned outside. Teenagers and adults from California prayer walked in the neighborhood, preparing the way for an evangelism conference coming to the neighborhood in November.
At New Seasons Baptist Church, a group of women from Birmingham cleaned and painted the church nursery, while a husband and wife helped the church’s minister do light construction and landscaping.
On June 30, the 123 gathered in San Diego again. They arrived at Encanto Baptist Church after serving in two countries and nine different ministry sites. Though weary, everyone had the energy to worship and share stories from the week.
Alwine Brown, a native of Ghana, shared how missionaries led her to Christ as an 8-year-old in her native country.
Brown encouraged the volunteers, telling them, “These are just seeds you planted. It grows, so don’t give up.” She is now a nurse at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta and brought her own 15-year-old daughter to FamilyFEST.
“The part I liked the most was helping with the kids, just playing with them, just being their friend and smiling,” shared 12-year-old Zack Marlow from Lawrenceville, Ga.
Each person who shared had a unique story of why he or she came to FamilyFEST and how it changed his or her life.
Sixteen Alabama Baptists participated in the San Diego FamilyFEST; fifty-nine others went to North Carolina and one to New York.
Thirty-six Alabamians are signed up to participate in the upcoming FamilyFEST event in Appalachia. More than 300 Alabamians have participated in FamilyFEST since it started in 2001.
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