San Quintin

This past weekend Becky and I got invited to go to San Quintin, a city about 2 and 1/2 hours down the Baja coast. We have some friends there that we know through Agua Viva youth camps, in particular, a guy named Cesar and another named Nani. Cesar is our age and helped us do games at the youth camp last summer. So we got to hang out with all week and now see him from time to time at events in Ensenada. Nani is a bit older, and has spoken at several of our youth camps. He is married to a gringa named Cheryl who works at an orphanage. Nani, along with Cesar and some other friends who live in Ensenada make up a ministry called Jabes. Jabes works on outreach and discipleship of youth, particularly street kids. They have some different centers where kids can come and use the internet, do homework, play x-box and just hang out, all for free. They take time to get to know the kids and have meetings and sharing times with them, slowly feeding them the Gospel and discipling them once they become Christians. Jabes' most recent endevour is a skate park, which has an outdoor skating area with ramps and a large indoor space for hanging out, meetings, etc.

So Cesar had invited us to come on Saturday, which would be both the pre-inaguaration of the skate park, and his birthday party in the evening. We got there on Friday evening and Cesar showed us one of the centers and the skate park (making use of our car on the way over to bring some sound equipment they would need the next day. We went out for dinner and he told us all about Jabes and the vision for the skate park and the plan for Saturday.

We headed to the skate park at around 9am Saturday and were put to work cleaning the indoor portion of the skate park, mopping the cement floor, cleaning the bathroom, getting a gazillion spider webs out of the rafters, etc. A small army of teenage skaters worked on cleaning up outside and putting up all the ramps. It was all very Mexican last-minute.

We finished up around noon and went to meet with Nani and our friend Eric (one of the Jabes crew from Ensenada) for lunch. We ate in Nani and his wife's trailer at the orphanage and Nani told us more about Jabes and what they are doing and what they have planned. From my point of view, it's a very cool ministry that seeks to meet the youth where they at, provide them a safe haven where they can be themselves free from the drugs and violence of life on the streets, and take time to know each kid personally and help them get to know Jesus. Nani made us feel very welcome, and told us that we could back whenever we wanted, just let them know when we wanted to come and they would make sure we had a place to stay and food to eat.

After lunch we went to the house we were staying to take bucket showers...in this case drawing water with a cup out of a five gallon bucket...and get cleaned up for the pre-inaguaration and the party later on. Now, I'm still not entirely clear on why it was a pre-inaguaration and not an inaguaration, but whatever. There some government officials present and the Jabes team and a bunch of kids. They shared about the skate park and its function in the community, and one guy performed a rap and another group did a song. And then they sent everyone out to skate, providing them with mandatory helmets and optional knee and elbow pads.





People started skating, while the non-skater types did some graffiti decorations on the big walls enclosing the park. Becky and I even got to tag our names. Eventually we started pulling out the party decorations and getting the inside ready for the birthday party, blowing up a ton of balloons and putting up streamers that kept falling back down. The party was slightly uneventful, due in part to the fact that Cesar kept disappearing. It was typical cultural differences: he left right around seven, the starting time of the party, and then got back around 8:15 and then left again. It was hilarious. Here we are with the birthday boy, when we was actually present at the party:

All in all, it was a really fun weekend. It was neat to see a fresh ministry and hang out with new friends and be in a new place in Baja. I'm hoping we will get to go back soon.