Utah missions team builds beds, home for family in Mexico

A six-person construction missions team from First Baptist Church Pleasant Grove, Utah, shares through pictures their experiences on the team's ninth annual trip 27 miles south of Yuma, Arizona, to build a home for a needy family.
Clyde Parker, an evangelical pastor in Oregon, started building houses for the needy in Mexicali 40 years ago. He’s been doing the same in San Luis, 27 miles south of Yuma, Arizona, for 38 years. Parker leads the morning devotions.
(Submitted photo)

Utah missions team builds beds, home for family in Mexico

 A six-person construction missions team from First Baptist Church Pleasant Grove, Utah, shared Sunday (April 7) about their experiences on the team’s ninth annual trip 27 miles south of Yuma, Arizona, to build a home for a needy family. The 20 x 24-foot house cost $8,000 in materials. This year’s team built two sets of bunkbeds for four boys from scrap lumber, and pooled their money to buy mattresses and bed linens. See photos from trip below.

Angel, her three sons and her disabled sister called this their home (left). The one-room shack  was made of upended pallets covered in cardboard, with newspaper stuffed in walls for insulation. The roof was pieces of corrugated tin. When it stormed, the wind would raise the tin and the rain would blow in. When asked what he wanted in a home, the youngest, Ekir, said he wanted a comfortable bed, and to not get rained on in the night. The boys slept together on a box springs on the floor. Angel and her sister slept together on the mattress that had springs poking through. (Submitted photo)

 

A week before the Utah team arrived, another group poured the slab (shown at right). The shack is in the background. (Submitted photo)

 

Each wall was constructed flat, after which the team raised it. (Submitted photo)

 

Ekir watches as electric wiring is added before the drywall covers the studwork. (Submitted photo)

 

The order of things: Framing, exterior siding, arrange roof trusses, cover roof, insulation, electrical, drywall, taping and mudding, painting. Everyone stays busy. (Submitted photo)

 

Angel watches as her boys (one is the son of a deceased sister) trim windows. (Submitted photo)

 

Emmanuel, nicknamed “Perico” (“Parakeet” in English) paints walls, as do his brothers and cousin. (Submitted photo)

 

Shawn Butterfield, a member at First Baptist Pleasant Grove, worked all day on the house, and that night built two sets of bunkbeds for the boys. He finished them the next night, after working all day, and took them inside. Notice Ekir hugging him from behind. (Submitted photo)

 

Half of the 20 x 24-foot house was for living; the two bedrooms took the other half of the space. Shawn Butterfield also built the family a new one-seater outhouse out back. (Submitted photo)

 

Angel, Emmanuel, Justin and Ekir stand with Esther in front of their new home. (Submitted photo)

 

“I thought I was going to Mexico to build a house,” Shawn Butterfield said at church the Sunday after the team’s return. “Now that I’m back, I know it was about building relationships: with the team, with the family we were helping, and with God through our morning devotions.” (Submitted photo)

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