Nineteen RCS students, five staff, and a handful of parents loaded vehicles and caravanned south of the border for a three day trip with Hands of Mercy ministry. The trip was the final exam on an exploratory class that encompassed two quarters of work and dozens more students.

The students pre-built the two loft homes on Friday mornings earlier year. They measured and hammered and sawed and sewed until the pieces were ready to be placed on a trailer bound for an area just south of Ensenada, Mexico.

The RCS crew arrived at the Hands of Mercy camp on Friday evening. With sleeping bags and flashlights, they experienced living in the same size and style loft house that they would build for families the following day. It took them between six and seven hours to put the houses together in the hot sun. They worked hard, laughed hard, and got really dirty. In the end, they entered into the lives of two families forever representing their school, their parents, themselves, and Christ’s love and grace for all of us.

The group was led by Hands of Mercy experts Jim and Chris Nydam, Rita Shaw, Dan De Witt, and Billy Nielson. While in Mexico, the larger group broke up into two smaller groups and built two separate houses for two families in Mexico. One family consisted of a mother and father and nine children and the other was a small, younger family: a seventeen-year-old mother, a nineteen-year-old father and a one-year-old daughter. These families not only receive a brand new home from Hands of Mercy but they also receive gifts such as sleeping bags, blankets made by younger students at RCS, brand new clothing, and brand new toys. Through this opportunity, our students were able to practice loving others in Christ’s name while gaining an appreciation for and an awareness of how blessed they truly are.

Click for a more complete pictorial story of RCS connecting and serving. (coming soon)