The Casabuilder Story On Memorial Weekend 2002, 21 people loaded into suburbans, vans, and trucks and headed 600 miles south to the California/Mexico border to the fascinating town of Tijuana, Mexico. That marked my third year and sixth house-building trip to this area. But 2002 was to be a different experience. When I first started going to build homes in Mexico, I had been tagging along with other groups and adding to the leadership teams already established. But on that trip, God had impressed on me to be prepared to lead a group in a house-building trip. I was receiving calls and emails from many different people who said, “ I hear you’re going to Mexico to build a house! I want to go help, too!”. I couldn’t believe how God was fulfilling the vision that he had planted in my heart over years before. He had been placing in my heart HIS vision to lead building trips to the area of Mexico. I was overwhelmed by the number of people wanting to go with me. These people were students, working adults, retired adults, and everyone else in between! But they all had the same passion to go a build a house. My non-Christian electrical contractor was one of the first to call me and ask if he could come along. A handful of the King’s Academy grads and current students wanted to go back; And the list goes on and on. I followed God’s lead and gave this new vision a name, “UNLESS THE LORD BUILDS THE CASA” based on the passage in Psalm 127:1. I knew that if it wasn’t a “God-thing” it would be all in vain. So I just kept putting it out there in my prayer time and telling God, “if you want this to happen, then bring people and willing hearts”. The family was a young mother, Sylvia, of 3 chidren who was also taking care of her husband’s 3 children. Her husband was not supporting his family and had put them in financial difficulty. She had purchased this small plot of land in Las Lomas de San Antonio (on the outskirts of Tijuana). She worked hard as a waitress in a restaurant in TJ, and was living with a relative-along with all the kids and her husband. She had recently asked her husband to leave and was trying to make ends meet on her own. She had owned this small piece of land for some time but had never been able to afford to build anything on it. My friend Sergio Gomez met her at the restaurant and knew that she would be the one to get a house! On Friday morning, we set up shop, hammered, sawed, painted, measured, laughed, played with local kids, and got sunburned until the end of the day. We had framed all the walls,and roof, wired the house for electrical, installed the windows, and installed half of the sheetrock. The next day, we came out and finished the entire house by six o’clock! I have never seen one of these “casitas” be built so quickly! I have never seen so much unity and care in one group of builders! I knew that the CASA that God was building was in each of our hearts. That evening we gathered around in front of the house with Sylvia and her children and shared personal thoughts with her as Sergio translated for us. Needless to say there wasn’t a dry eye in the group! We told her how God had built her house and how we were glad to be part of his love for her. There was extra funds donated and we found a used Dodge van for her to drive to work and back so she would have more time with her children and to help save of bus and taxi fares. She was thrilled! Everyone that went is ready to go back and build another one. I got so many reports from the team of how God had used this trip to build more of His Casa in their hearts! That’s what it is all about. Unless God is building his casa in us, then it’s all in vain. This trip was truly God at work and building both in Mexico and in our hearts. CasaBuilders is about seeing God use us to build houses and to watch how He builds more of His "CASA" on our very hearts. Back to "About the Casabuilders"