Pizza

Thank you to our friends in ALABAMA who provided ingredients for an awesome pizza dinner! 

School Is Underway

School is underway and our kids are eager to learn.  What a joy to serve God in this place.

We're back!

It's great to be back for another school year!  We love our town, our kids, and our tacos!!

Quiet Before The Storm

The calm before the storm.  We are waiting for our students to return, and we are planning on a few new ones.  We have been praying for them already.

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Home

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Home:

My last days at the Rancho Sordo Mudo were quiet. After graduation on Saturday, all of the students went home for the summer, and many of the staff left right on their heels. In just a few hours the ranch was transformed from a high-energy melting pot of adolescent emotions to an almost eerily quiet place of calm reflection.



I had almost every minute of my last 48 hours alone, and that being the first time I really stopped moving for the past four months, I was able to think back on the most eventful third of a year in my life up to this point. From adventuring in the Mexican wilderness to exploring Ensenada on my days off to sweating 15 gallons a day for three weeks in Sinaloa, I’ve had more crazy experiences in the past 113 days of my life than the previous 6845 days combined. But without question, what’s going to sick with me for longer than everything else is the children at the ranch.



Years after I’ve forgotten the taste of cow intestines, head, tongue and rattle snake, I will remember my meals of plain beans and rice with Saúl, Alexis and Axel. Long after the literally breathtaking view from the highest point for miles of the rolling hills spreading out in every direction around me untouched by man canopied by the perfectly clear blue skies and beaming Mexican son have faded from memory, I’ll be thinking about the hours spent in the plain, worn-down, paint-chipping walls of the boy’s dorm wrestling on the stained and spotted carpet with Rubén, Fernando, Ricardo and Avi. When the faces of the friends I made and shared hours of taco trips and movie nights with are nothing more than blurry images in my mind, I will see clear as day the squinty-eyed face of Orlando grinning from ear to ear as he runs across the room to give me a hug as soon as I walk in the door.



I wish my time at the ranch wasn’t over. I wish the four months I had would have gone slower instead of flashing past me in the blink of an eye. It’s hard to accept I won’t get to be a part of those kid’s lives any more, but I know that God will continue to use them to teach and shape me for the rest of my life. It’s time for me to move on the next stage of His plan for my life, and after the truly amazing time I’ve had at the ranch, I can’t wait to see what He has in store for me in the future.



As I sit here in the San Diego airport waiting to catch my flight back to Washington, the phrase “home is where your heart is” comes to mind. I’ve always thought of it as a cheesy phrase, but now I see it in a whole new light. Even though I may never get to live at RSM again, I know that wherever God puts me in the future, whatever He has me doing, I will always have a home at Rancho Sordo Mudo.

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Bee Boxes, Hot Dogs and my Eight-Year-Old Roommate...

When I left Rancho Sordo Mudo on May 1st (my birthday) to catch a plane to Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico, I was admittedly skeptical. I knew that the previous three months I spent at the ranch would be a tough act to follow, and was not all that excited to leave what I have come to view as home to go to an area with an active and dangerous drug cartel. I didn't really know what to expect from my time in Los Mochis, but I think it's safe to say that almost nothing I did there was not something I would have expected to find myself doing 1300 miles or so south of the Mexican-American border.



On my first Sunday all of the staff from the school piled into a suburban and drove to a ranch out in the middle of nowhere for church. The first two-and-a-half to three hours were spent listening to announcements and impromptu personal testimonies, singing worship songs, and watching the pastor stand up and preach for well over an hour. I say watching because he was speaking in rapid Spanish, which I hardly understood a word of, so I did quite a bit more watching than listening. It turns out that I had made it for a very special Sunday, because after the service was concluded everyone from the church stuck around to celebrate the combination of Día de Niños and Día de Madres AND the church's 13th anniversary. We feasted, we played group games (that I lost every time because the directions were, of course, still in Spanish), and we talked for five hours before finally taking off. Then two days later, the students arrived.



Things were stepped up several notches after the arrival of the children (unlike the ranch, only three were deaf and the other couple dozen were hearing). I went from doing nothing all day to constantly moving from one task to another. Over those two-and-a-half weeks that the students were in school, I did so many different things I can't take the time to list them all, so I'll just hit the main ones. I worked on constructing bee boxes for a few days (the ones used by bee keepers to harvest honeycomb from the bees), I spent three nights working from 9:30pm to around 4:30am scraping paint off of the ceiling of the kitchen, I taught math to the three deaf students almost every day, and I ate. Oh man, did I eat. We went out to hot dog stands several times to have the biggest, most delicious, most covered-with-everything hot dogs I have ever eaten. We also had some amazing chicken, and, of course, tacos.



I can't properly describe my experience at CCMR without talking about how much fun the students were. And since I can't talk about everyone of them in one blog post, I'll limit myself to one: Brayan (pronounced almost the same as the American name Brian). Once the kids got to school, I shared a room at night with three boys: Juan Pablo, Alex, and Alex's little brother, Brayan. Brayan is eight years old and has to be one of the cutest children I have ever met in my entire life. After my first night of scraping paint off the ceiling, I didn't get to bed until the boys were just waking up to get ready for school. When Brayan realized that I hadn't slept all night and was about to spend the whole day sleeping, he came back in the room after I was already in bed. He walked over to me and proceeded to tuck me in. Yes, the eight-year-old child tucked in the 19-year-old man. He even pulled the blanket all the way up to my chin to make sure I stayed warm (the temperatures during the day there were consistently above 90 degrees so the last thing I needed was a warm blanked covering my entire body, but I decided to let him do his thing). Then he prayed for me, kissed me on the forehead, and whispered "buenos noches" in my ear before turning off the light and closing the door behind him. And if that wasn't cute enough, he couldn't say "Andrew" right so he spent the entirety of my stay calling me "Anduke."



I have many more stories from my three weeks in Los Mochis, and if I tried to fit them all into one writing it's length might cause people to mistake it for a copy of the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy. So I'm going to end this post with a quick update on where I'm at for my friends and family back home.



Today is Saturday, May 24, and I leave in exactly 10 days. It hasn't really sunk in yet that I'm about to leave this amazing, beautiful, blessed place in less than two weeks, and I'm not eager for the day when it does. It doesn't help that I'm still feeling profoundly uncertain about the direction my life is headed after I'm done at the ranch. If there is one thing I would like to ask for prayer for, it is that I will be able to put God's plan for my life above my plan for my life over the following days, weeks and months as I am faced with decisions that will affect where I will spend the next several years of my life and what I will spend them doing. As always, I appreciate all of the prayer and words of encouragement I receive from friends and family very much.



Thanks for taking a glimpse into my time at Colegio Christiano Magdelena Rincon in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico. I'll be posting more than usual as my time here comes to a close, so stay tuned for more of Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures.

2 Weeks Until Los Moches!

Two weeks from today (on my birthday) I will be getting on a plane and flying to the deaf school in Los Moches! Everyone I've talked to that has been to Los Moches loves the place, so I'm pretty excited to get down there and check it out for myself. I'm also sad that I'm going to spending a whole three weeks away from the ranch and the kids here, but I'm sure I'll love the students down there as well!

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: A Strange View of Ordinary

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: A Strange View of Ordinary:
The past few weeks have gone by without anything I would call "out of the ordinary" happening. I've just been keeping up with my regular tasks at the ranch, not doing anything exceptionally spectacular. Nothing strange, just the normal, everyday life of Rancho Sordo Mudo. This morning I saw that it's been several weeks since my last post on the blog so I wanted to write something to update all of my friends and family back home, but I sat there for a few minutes, stumped. I couldn't think of a single exceptionally-interesting thing that had happened for almost a month. But when I started thinking of my life over the past month and comparing it to my life back in America, I realized something: I have a very strange view of ordinary.

On an average day, I eat all three meals with the kids. After breakfast I assist in teaching a chapel class (basically Sunday School, except for 30 minutes every day instead of just once a week). I also often oversee a group of boys after lunch as they do various cleaning and yard work projects around the ranch. Then after dinner I hang out with the kids on the playground and play basketball, soccer or even volleyball for an hour or so before they head back to the dorms for the night. A couple times a week I'll go back with the the boys and help watch them until they go to bed.

So that's about what a typical day is at the ranch for me. Sounds normal enough, right? Well, there's one little aspect of the ranch that changes everything. The majority of the people on the ranch--all of the students and several of the staff--are deaf. This means they can't hear the bells that precede every meal or the bell that tells us it's time for prayer, so we need a flashing light that this kids can see to go with it. When they pray before we eat, they do it in sign language, not english. When I teach chapel class it can't involve any kind of sound, only drawings on the white board and signing. If I need to talk to one of the kids during a work project and they're far away from me, I can't just yell to get their attention. I either have to wave my arms until they see me or just run up and tap them on the shoulder. Even playing sports with them is a different experience. Yelling someone's name or "I'm open!" will do you no good, just like shouting "head's up!" will make them no more aware of the ball that's about to smack them on the skull. After that when I hang out with the kids in the dorm and we talk about the day or whatever else is on their minds, I still can't use my voice. The only way they understand me is when I speak not with my voice, but with my hands.

Even if you take out all of the other aspects of living with the deaf students here, simply speaking in sign language is a pretty big difference from speaking with hearing people. For starters, you can't just glance away if you see or hear something happening nearby. For deaf people, that's about what it would feel like if you were talking with a hearing person and they just stuck their fingers in their ears for a few seconds. It's rude. You have to stay focused on the person you're speaking with at all times. Also, when you sign a word, the way you sign it is extremely important. I slight movement from your head or a change in your facial expression can completely alter the meaning of a sign. Then if I want to talk about my family, I can't just say their names. I have to finger spell S-P-E-N-C-E-R and C-O-R-Y every time I want to talk about my brothers. And it doesn't matter how descriptive you are, talking about that weird sound that woke you up last night will never make sense. Even as I was writing part of this I with my friends Noemy and David, and Noemy and I started laughing because we heard a cd skipping in a cd player nearby. When David asked why we were laughing and Noemy tried to explain the idea of a song that's stuck and keeps repeating the same sound over and over to a person that can't even hear music in the first place, he just shrugged and went back to the conversation. And even though they're still talking to each other right next to me at this very moment, I have no trouble focusing on typing because they don't have to make a sound to communicate so there's nothing to distract me.

After explaining all of this, it pretty much goes without saying that everyday life here at the ranch is by no means normal when compared to my life before moving to Mexico (and I haven't even touched on all of the things that are different because I'm in a third-world country that doesn't have access to things like clean water that comes out a of a faucet). Things like having a two hour, one-on-one conversation in sign language just doesn't feel strange to me anymore. And while this may seem like a strange view of ordinary to my friends and family back home, I've come to understand that strange is just a matter of perspective.

My wood burning-staining project for the 2014 staff art contest

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Adventures in the Mexican Wilderness

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Adventures in the Mexican Wilderness:
In several of my previous posts I've mentioned hiking in the hills behind the ranch. I feel like it's time to shed a little bit more light on the difference between that and the hiking I'm used to back home in Washington.

Washington has a lot of beautiful places to hike. With these beautiful hiking trails come lots of regulations and rules about where to hike, how to hike, and when to hike. You can only hike in certain areas so you don't hurt wildlife, you can only use the trails during specific times of the year, and you can't bring certain items or build fires and things like that. You also sometimes can't go hiking for a few days after a storm has hit because the trails will be to muddy. Down here in Mexico, none of that is a problem.

At the ranch, if you want to go hiking, you go hiking. If you see something that looks cool and you want to get closer, you get closer. If you see a rock you want to climb, you climb it. There basically aren't any trails in the hills, so you don't have to worry about following any specific paths. If you want to go somewhere, you take a machete and slash and smash your way through the dry, sharp bushes until you get there. As long as you aren't afraid of a few scrapes, scratches, bumps and hard landings, you can do it.

I have yet to complete a hike and come back unscathed. I never wear pants, so my legs consistently have so many scratches and cuts that there isn't a patch of skin showing that isn't red or bloody (if you can even see my skin through the layers of dirt that cover me by the time I'm finished). But don't worry, there's usually a good dose of internal pain as well. I always have a couple days of aching in my ankles and knees from the hard landings and falls received while rock hopping (the hills here covered in massive boulders).

All that said, I love hiking at the ranch. It is such a blessing to be able to walk for 15 minutes and suddenly have nothing in sight but beautiful, un-developed rolling hills. The weather is almost always nothing but amazing and sunny. There's no better way to get exercise, fresh air, and a chance to take in God's creation, all in my own back yard. Whether it's slowly hacking my way through painful bushes, carefully climbing on boulders, or recklessly sprinting downhill and destroying my legs with scrapes and bumps, it's a great feeling to hike at Rancho Sordo Mudo.

Get The Word Out

Let the world know that Mexican Sign Language is here to stay!  The Biola Missions conference has a time during the second night in which students go on stage one at a time and recite the theme verse in different languages.  This is Drew signing Revelation 5:13 in LSM.  It's all about awareness and tonight we made 6000 people aware!  All glory to God who desires for all to come to salvation.

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Reflections on Month One at RSM

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Reflections on Month One at RSM:
March 9, 2014

"Today is the first day of my second month as the intern here at Rancho Sordo Mundo, and I thought this would be a good time to give a brief summary of my life at the ranch up to this point.

First, I'll fill in the gap since the last time I posted. Since then, I have learned quite a bit of sign language, all of the names of the students and staff, and how to cook several different tasty dishes including how to batter and deeper fry chicken. My day off every week has turned into "Mexican Monday" with Noemy and David (and Lucas Nash one of the days). With them, I have gone on two four-hour hiking adventures exploring the hills behind the ranch, eaten at four or five different taco stands in Ensenada, ridden horses on the beach with the sun setting in the background (it's worth mentioning in a second blog), watched a movie in a Mexican theater, and been to a real Mexican carnival (you haven't been to a carnival until you've been to one in Mexico).

And that's just the highlights from the last two weeks. I've been a busy man!

Now comes the reflecting part: What I think has been the biggest thing that has struck me since my very first day at RSM is how amazing the staff here is. Everyone has been nothing but welcoming to me, actually making me feel like I'm a part of the team. I have to be honest, before I actually got here, I expected to spend most of my time feeling lonely and isolated. I didn't think I would get very close with anyone here, especially not within the first month. But I'm glad to say they've proved me wrong. From movie nights and taco runs with Jason, Chris and Mikaela to "living Mexico" with David and Noemy to a book study about spiritual disciplines with Howard and Lucas, it's not an exaggeration to say that the staff here has helped me to have a lot of fun while pushing me to grow mentally, physically and spiritually during my month here already. I'm continually blessed amazed by the kindness and spiritual maturity of everyone here.

On Tuesday I leave for America. I'll be staying at Biola University to attend the annual missions conference there with Howard and Janet, then returning to the ranch on Saturday. I would appreciate prayer for us for safe travels, as well as open eyes and ears to hear what God wants to speak to us at the conference."

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: View of RSM and the Valle de Guadalupe

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: View of RSM and the Valle de Guadalupe: The view after a short 10 minute hike from my front step.

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Living Mexico

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Living Mexico:
February 24, 2014

"Today I went on what I would consider my first true Mexican Adventure. Every Monday I travel to Ensenada with a few other staff from the ranch to attend a sign language class taught by Carlos, a former student-turned-staff from the Rancho Sordo Mudo. This time it was only David (Pronounced Dah-veed -- also a former student from the ranch, now on staff as a dorm parent) Noemy (girl's dorm parent) and myself.

The three of us got a ride into Ensenada with Luke (El Jefe) and Josefina (La Esposa del Jefe), who dropped us off on the edge of town to find our way alone. Now, David lived in Ensenada for several years working construction all over town, so he was essentially Noemy's and my guide. We caught a crowded bus that was mostly full of kids on their way home from school so we could make it to David's friend's house to get a car (the friend also happens to be Carlos, our sign language teacher). We definitely attracted a fair amount of attention on the bus and the streets, probably because we were a group of two Mexicans and a 6'3" gringo that only spoke to each other in English and sign language.

After we talked with Carlos and his sister Gabby for a while at their house, we left with the car to continue our Mexican Adventure. We drove around looking for place to get some quality Mexican cuisine and eventually ended up at a medium-sized diner where I ate something that a don't even remember the name of, but there was meat in it and it was good. Once we finished, we drove down along the beach looking for something to do. It wasn't too long before Noemy spotted horses on the side of the road that you could rent and take for a trot along the beach. We decided that sounded like fun.

Once we parked and walked back to where the horses were, David told us he didn't actually like horses so he didn't want to go for a ride, but he insisted Noemy and I go without him. So, we paid our dues and embarked on what turned out to be an hour-long jolty ride along the beautiful Mexican beach with the sun setting on the horizon. When our hour was up, we left with David again and went to the church our sign language class is held in. To finish of the experience, we stopped by one of the many taco stands on the way out of Ensenada to get some tacos and tortas to take back to the ranch with us.

David joked with us as we waited for the bus at the beginning of our adventure that we would be living Mexico instead of just seeing Mexico. That turned out to be a good summary for the day. I really feel like a got a whole different view of Mexico than I've had in the past. You see one thing when you just only to the touristy beaches and streets that are so angled towards catching tourist's attention that you pass with more signs in English than you do in Spanish, but you get an entirely different picture when you walk, ride the bus, and drive through the real Mexican streets, eat at the real Mexican restaurants, and meet the real Mexican people. Today I got to experience more of the real Mexican culture at one time than I have at any of my previous trips through town. Today, I got to live Mexico."

Tortilla Chip Day!

Today is National Tortilla Chip Day!  We can one-up that with the street tacos from our local taco stand. 

Snoopy Rock

I know parts of the country are have crazy weather, but we are enjoying SUNNY DAYS!  Disc golf and hiking weather.  We have a ridiculous disc golf course that takes you over hills and through ravines...I only made 9 holes! 






This is the view from the back side of Snoopy Rock with RSM down in the valley.

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Day 5 at Rancho Sordo Mudo

Drew Lund's Mexican Adventures: Day 5 at Rancho Sordo Mudo:
February 14, 2014

"I've only been at Rancho Sordomudo for about five days now, and I have to say, these kids are really growing on me already.

The students here make it pretty hard not to love them. They spend nine months out of the year living here on the ranch and for them this is home. Then, when some tall white kid shows up over halfway through the school year and the other staff tell the students "he's staying," they just immediately accepted me into their lives. They didn't wait and watch me to see if they liked me, they just welcomed me.

Every day after dinner most of the staff goes outside with the students to the playground for an hour or so. Usually I just stand on the basketball court and kick soccer balls around the whole time like a lot of the kids, but last night I left the court early to go stand on the side and watch. Before I could sit down on a bench nearby, a group of kids started asking me questions. Lots and lots of questions.

It started off nice and simple with questions like "how old are you?" and "where are you from?" and those sorts of basic conversation-starters (a couple other staff members, Lucas and Noemi, were translating the words I didn't know). Then they asked me strangely specific things like "do you have a best friend?" One student even asked me "what do you like?" No category, like sports or something, just "what do you like?" Then they transitioned into trying to teach me new signs I didn't know, which consisted of three or four students all pointing at something nearby and then signing it for me. And while I appreciated their enthusiasm to help me learn, it was fairly difficult to actually understand anything that was going on because all of them were frantically signing at the same time. It's hard enough to pay attention to multiple people talking to me in a language I'm actually competent in, never mind it all being in a language I've only been exposed to for five days. The whole time this was happening the kids were just laughing and smiling, and their high spirits rubbed definitely off on me and the other staff involved in the conversation.

One of the questions I was asked (before the conversation turned into a teaching frenzy) was "are you coming back next year?" In response I just laughed a little and reminded them I haven't even been here less than a week so it's a little soon to tell. But I couldn't help but think about that while the conversation continued. I can already understand why all of the staff of RSM, past and present, are so committed to these students. They  really have a way of getting into your heart. While it is true that it's too soon for me to know where God will want me next year, I have to be honest, I can't imagine leaving these kids after just four months."

Purpose Statement

nuff said.

Praising God because He has provided the opportunity, the facility and the people of His choosing, in order to carry out this amazing purpose!

San Diego Airport

We are picking up our 2014 Intern, Drew, from the San Diego airport.  We are so happy that the new program is finally under way because we have lots of cool projects planned.  Check back from time to time and see what's up!