November Prayer Letter

Last month we took a trip back to the midwest. We had a lot of fun spending time with family and friends. We also had the opportunity to visit a couple of churches, a Bible college, as well as a couple of pastors, to share our ministry. Our goals for this trip were to recruit some teams to come to Rosarito next year, as well as to grow our financial support. God is good! It looks like there are at least two teams interested in coming next year, as well as several individuals/families for our “Individual’s Week” build in June. This build is set for the week of June 26th. If you are interested in coming alone, or with a friend or family member, for this home build, please contact us for more information. Going into this trip our financial support was right at about 55%. Between new and existing acquaintances, as well as friends and family, we believe God is going to do amazing things in order to grow our financial support. We moved to Mexico in May and officially began our ministry. Our feeling is that He did not put us here to begin something and then leave a year later. We are confident that He will be faithful to supply all of our needs.

God has already taken care of all the funds for this trip. Through the sale of our dining room table, as well as a couple of other things, we had about 85% of the money needed before we left. We did not feel that we should deplete funds from our account, as we are counting on that to make up the difference needed every month. Then, while we were in Wisconsin, our trailer sold as well and that paid for the rest of our trip.

For those of you that do not receive our blog updates, we would like to share a few pictures. In August, we were blessed by the college/young adult team that came down from our sending church, Faith Community. Besides being from our sending church, this is also the class that we co-led for four years before leaving for Mexico. They built a home for the Duran family, a family of six (soon to be seven). Our second house build for the 2010 season came and went without a hitch. And so quickly, too!! That is because the house was built and mostly completed in two days (thanks to nail guns and a lot of pre-preparation). Our family, along with the family receiving the home, were able to finish up the house the next day by painting and trimming the interior. It was an awesome experience, and we were blessed to get to know the family that received the home.

If you haven’t heard much about either of these builds or what has been going on here in Mexico, please sign up to receive our email updates. We apologize for not getting a letter out to update everyone last month. However, we do update our blog at least twice a month, and with a lot more pictures, as well as videos. Just go to www.rstruska.blogspot.com and click at the link at the top of the page to subscribe.

Please pray for us as we will be meeting with a pastor in Ensenada soon about Spanish Immersion. We would really like to make this a priority for our whole family before our ministry keeps us more busy than we already are.

Labor Day Build

As we were writing our next prayer letter, we realized that a blog entry was never completed and published from our Labor Day weekend build! 

We had a church from Fremont, California come and build for a family of four.  This family had no home of their own and was living with family members.  The amazing thing about this build was how quickly it went up.  We normally like to take 4-5 days to build a home.  This allows for the team to get to know the family, invite them to church, and so much more.  This team only had the weekend, but what an amazing impact they had!  They were a huge blessing to us and the Cruz Bauza family as well.  Ron spent a lot of time prepping for this build so that it would go up quickly.  He precut all the studs and plates, bundling each wall separate.  This way, all the team had to do was unwrap a bundle and nail the wall together - no measuring and cutting.  With the help of nail guns, walls were going up about every 10 minutes. 

End of Day #1

End of Day #2 - Outside Completed

The house was completed in two days, minus the interior paint and trim.  Our family spent the following day painting and trimming the inside of the house with the family.  They even invited us over for dinner the next day after they moved in.  What a blessing!

Our Bilingual Church

Calvary Chapel Rosarito/Capilla Calvario Rosarito

This is the name of the bilingual church that we attend here in Mexico.  We are so blessed to be able to attend this church.  We loved that the gospel is presented every Sunday, at three morning services, and at every Wednesday night service as well.  It is amazing to see the number of hearts given to Christ on a regular basis.  There were 17 public professions of faith through baptism last month alone. 

We also attended two other beach baptisms this summer, where many others were baptized - including our son, William, in June.  (Which was, by the way, the only beach baptism I've every attended without my camera! :(  Luckily a friend took some photos for us.)

Ron and I have both volunteered for tech ministry.  Ron, of course, is running the sound board, and I am helping out with video.  I was also very excited to join the worship team last month at Calvary.  I've always loved to sing in worship, but that seems to be amplified even more when singing in Spanish.  (All songs are sung in both English and Spanish.)  I still have a lot to learn in terms of speaking Spanish, but with practice and memorization, I find the singing a lot easier than the speaking.  The children love to attend children's church every week, and they enjoy their Sunday school classes as well.  They both have amazing teachers.  Their classes are mostly or all in Spanish, but they have both been blessed with teachers that speak English.  There are at least three or more kids in each of their classes that speak English as well.  They both have missionary kids in their classes, as well as some of the children from YUGO's Grace Children's Home, where all the children are taught English as a second language.

I was very encouraged when I read our pastor's blog a couple days ago.  I read their September update, but realized I hadn't checked out their August update yet.  Wow, am I glad that I did!  I learned a lot about the intern program at the church that I wasn't aware of.  We have had the priveledge of getting to know one of the interns, Sergio, pretty well.  We met him last year and he has shared his testimony with us.  But in this recent update, there were more details about the background of a few of the other interns at Calvary.  God is really using this internship program in amazing ways.  It is a two year program, which includes attending the Bible college at the church.  If you have a few minutes, please click and read the August update from Pastor Mike.

Upcoming Visit to the Midwest

Wow, how time flies when you are busy!!  There is so much going on and we are overdue on giving an update.  It seemed a bit easier during summer outreach weeks to give updates, as time is broken up into specific ministry weeks.  Now things tend to run together a bit.  We have been keeping very busy getting things ready for our next year of ministry.  We have put together a promotional video for the construction ministry here at ROC (the Rosarito Outeach Center).  We also have a new brochure getting printed, as well as business cards, prayer cards, and more.  In addition, we are getting all the construction ministry (and Baskets of Love) information together to be added to the YUGO Ministries website.  We are very excited about how God is moving and using this ministry!

And yes, we are heading to Wisconsin and Illinois for a visit.  It's coming up fast, too!  We will be flying out of California on the evening of September 22nd and returning home on October 12th.  There are many things we are preparing for this trip as well.  Some of them are included above in the first paragraph, but we also have presentations and slideshows to put together, etc.  Once we decided that this trip would be very beneficial for our ministry here, we timed it so that we would be able to attend the wedding of some good friends in Wisconsin.  That said, there are three main reasons for our trip:

1 - To update and share what God is doing through the construction ministry in Mexico with family, friends and churches.
2 - To recruit teams from the U.S. to reach out in Mexico through building homes, various construction projects and other evangelistic opportunities.
3 - To spend time visiting family and friends, as this is our only planned trip back to the midwest for the next year.

The fall is the ideal time to begin planning your mission trip to Mexico.  If you or someone you know are interested in planning a trip for any of the following: men's group, youth group, adult Sunday school or Bible study class, college group, sports team, a group of families, etc., please contact us.  We would love to get together, give you some information and answer any questions you may have.  There will also be an "Individual's Week" at ROC next summer.  If you would like to come to Mexico and build a home, but you do not have a church or group making a trip this year, consider coming on your own.  Bring a friend, spouse, or other family member with you if you'd like. 

August I

This was such an incredible week!!  Not only were there eight teams here at the ranch - but one of them was from our home church!  The Sold Out (college/young adult ministry) from Faith Community Church in Fort Atkinson, WI came to Rosarito to build a home.  As much as we would like to go on about them right now, we;re going to put that off for a moment and give you an overview of the week.
We had teams from California, Wisconsin, Ohio, Massachusetts, Illinois and Maryland here last week!  That includes the girls' soccer team from Master's College in Santa Clarita, CA.  They've been coming every year for the past few years, doing construction projects.  This year they worked on backfilling the retaining wall for the future dorm building on the ranch.  Galilee Korean Church from Glenview, IL had a team that ministered at Pastor Martin's church.  They also had a construction team that did some roof repair in the community.  Needless to say, it was a big construction week.  Five other teams went out into different communities and ministered through children's, sports and women's ministries.  It was an amazing week!

The teams ended up taking pictures of themselves and turning them into Kristy to make the slideshow, since she was building with our team all week.  It turned out to be a bit of a challenge, but it worked out alright.  However, it will not be the preferred method in the future.  Here is the outreach highlight video from last week:

August I - Sold Out Team from FCC

Now, back to the FCC team.  We were so blessed by our team coming to minister with us in Mexico!!  A team from FCC came in 2008 to build a house as well.  The difference between these two builds was that Ron was not fully in charge of the '08 build, so he wasn't able to choose his materials for the house.  This time he was able to make upgrades, do a little price shopping, etc.  It's very exciting to be able to begin getting everything put together. 

Besides getting blueprints put together for the model house that we would like to build here, we had one other major focus.  That was to figure out how to help a team that is building a home have an evangelistic focus toward the family, as well as their friends and neighbors.  Well, let's just say this team didn't need any help in that department!  They brought gospel bracelets to give to the children - and there were lots of children!  On two separate days they used an interpreter to explain what the colors on the bracelets meant.  Every day they were out there playing, talking, interacting, painting, and playing soccer with the children.  There were also a few adults that we had the opportunity to build relationships with.  Two of them were raised mostly in the States, so they spoke english very well.  Jose was a man that stopped by because he was curious about how we were going to build the roof.  He lived down the road and is planning to build a small guest house for his parents to live in, but had never built a roof before.  We invited him to observe/help out all week so that he could ask questions and learn a few things.  So he did that for part of the week when he wasn't working.  This opened up lots of time for conversations about what we believe and why we were here.  On the last day a few of us had the opportunity to meet a man named Gerry, who also grew up in the US.  We had a long conversation about various things, including Satan, nightmares, Jesus being the only way to get to Heaven, and more.  It's so cool to see how God places people around the job sites that you can bless and witness to. 

They worked so well as a team when they were here.  There was a little bit of concern as to how the guys that had more experience with building were going to work with those, especially the girls, that had little or no experience.  So on Day 1, Ron put about six girls on framing and they framed the first three walls by lunch time.  Most of the guys painted trim and siding during that time.  We may never know if this was a necessary move, but the whole team was very encouraging to one another all week long.  Unfortunately, we had one person get sick in the middle of the week.  On the last day in Mexico, all but three of the team and our family were sick.  Most of them got sick overnight at the hotel in San Diego.  We were kind of thankful, though, that this didn't happen earlier in the week or we may not have been able to finish the house.

 

July IV - "Mexican to Mexican" Week & Mexicali Build

As some of you may remember, last year we kicked off a new type of outreach here on the ranch.  Youth from all around Rosarito & Tijuana came together, formed teams and ministered to their peers.  They held children's, sports & women's ministries in local churches.  This year, we also had some friends from Mexicali join us, including some that were able to minister this past spring during the Mexicali outreaches. 

  

 

We spent the first three days of this week in Mexicali, building a home out of the styrofoam blocks that we told you about earlier.  It was quite an experience!  We learned a lot about these new materials and what it would take to put together teams to build with them.  Funds are being raised to build these homes in Mexicali, so please let us know if you have any interest in helping families get safe houses to live in.