A group of 20 Riverdale Baptist Church members who travelled to Mexico to build a house for a needy family returned last Sunday, feeling weary but very rewarded.

'It was a huge success,' said Gwendolen Gower, one of the Whitehorse residents who spent a week just outside of the city of Ensenada. 'We hoped to have the house completed in four and a half days, and it was done in four. By the Thursday afternoon, we were giving the keys over to the family.'

The trip was planned in collaboration with Youth Unlimited Gospel Outreach (YUGO), a non-profit mission which began in 1965. YUGO Ministries is involved with a variety of projects, including housing projects like the one the Whitehorse group worked on.

It's similar to a Habitat for Humanity housing project, where the organization provides all the supplies and directions, and the volunteers do all the construction.

The local group raised more than $30,000 for the trip, which would help pay for their trips down there, building supplies, and additional purchases for the Lopez family they were assisting. They were worried they wouldn't have enough money to buy furniture for the house once it was done, but due to low prices, they were able to purchase bunkbeds and mattresses, a couch, kitchen table and chairs, a dresser, and some other furniture.

They were also able to supply the six Lopez children with basic school supplies and some clothing, in addition to a food basket for the family they were helping, and 10 other food baskets which they delivered throughout the neighbourhood.

'We had originally planned to participate in some of the YUGO Ministry outreach programs, because we thought we'd have too many people working on the house, but we didn't in the end because it was nice to have those extra hands helping out,' Gower said. 'It gave us time to play with the children.'

The youngest Lopez child who lived at the house was 12-years-old, but Gower said there were also several grandchildren who were always around who ranged between the ages of six and 10. The Whitehorse group affectionally called the widowed mother of the family their 'little Mexican mama,' because she only stood four and a half feet tall.

'But she had a huge heart and huge joy,' Gower said.

Peter Harms, a teacher at Hidden Valley Elementary, said he was pretty shocked to see the family's living conditions upon arriving at their mountainside home, about a 40-kilometre drive outside Ensenada.

'When we drove up there for the first time, we got out to the edge of the cliff where we were looking around and I said to my wife, Where'd they put their house?' And it was right down below us. I mean, the hill was steep enough you couldn't even get a wheelbarrow down it,' Harms said.

'Picture a guy going to the Whitehorse landfill and finding two posts, a couple beams for the roof, a couple ratty tarps, some broken pieces of plywood, and then you've got a good idea of what their house was like.'

Harms said the Lopez family had a worn-out mattress on a bumpy dirt floor, a fridge used as a storage unit since there was no electricity, and a campstove with a twenty-pound propane bottle. There were no windows, and the only light came through the front door.

'The standard of living down there definitely shocked me,' said Joshua Wiebe, who works as a carpenter for RJ Contracting. 'Pretty much all the houses up there on the mountainside were built out of scraps of whatever they could find.'

Wiebe, who has done carpentry work for almost eight years, said it was a completely different experience from anything else he's worked on before.

'It was my first time down there, and what stood out for me was just how different it felt to build a house in that sort of situation,' Wiebe said. 'During the dedication ceremony at the end, when it was my turn to talk, I said it was more meaningful than anything else I've built in my life.'

Wiebe had more construction experience than the other youth on the trip, and helped give directions and advice during the building project. When they arrived, the cement foundation was already in place, but that was the only work that had been done.

'They basically gave us a bunch of lumber and said, Go for it,'' Gower stated. 'It was a lot of grunt work, especially considering the heat and humidity. We were all pretty physically tired. We must've had a lot of adrenaline, because we were working at an almost superhuman pace.

'Everyone kept learning new skills everyday. You'd wind up shingling a roof for three hours, and it's something you'd never done before. You had to be willing to learn whatever skills needed learning.'

The house they built was a basic three-room structure, with two bedrooms and a main living area consisting of a kitchen and living room. The Whitehorse residents did all the work including preparing materials, cutting lumber, framing, and some basic electrical work.

When the project was completed, a dedication ceremony was held where the keys were passed around to each member of the Whitehorse group, who had a chance to say something to the Lopez family.

'We got to bless a family in a more tangible way (than the 2004 trip),' Gower said. 'Almost nothing compared to the look on the mom's face when we gave her the keys to her new home. She just kept passing the keys through her fingers over and over.'

In 2004, members of the Riverdale Baptist Church travelled to an orphanage in Tijuana, which they helped renovate.

After a day of rest and relaxation, when the Whitehorse residents had a chance to eat at authentic Mexican restaurants, check out the marketplaces in Ensenada, and hit up the beach, they returned to the Tijuana orphanage for a few hours to visit.

'It was incredible to see the huge smiles on their faces when we showed up,' Gower said. 'They were just brimming with laughter and joy, much more than the children here, and they have so much less down there.

'We were only there for a couple hours and as wonderful as it was, it was really hard to leave after only that long. We were just connecting again with the kids, who were so hungry with love. It was pretty painful for us to leave, I can't imagine what it was like for the kids.'

Harms wife JoAnne took part in the 2004 orphanage trip, although he did not. He was amazed by what he saw during last week's voyage.

'I've done the whole rich man' Mexico trip before, where you stay at a five-star resort in Puerto Vallarta, but this matched it. This beat it, actually,' Harms said.

'You get out of Ensenada, which has the hotel row and the resorts too, and then you're driving on the paved highway which turns into a gravel road, and then you're driving on just a dirt road. You get up on top of this sandy hill and you've travelled worlds, although it's only been miles.

'The cool thing is all these kids have come back and their eyes have been opened. I don't think they'll ever complain about a meal again. They've been hit over the head with poverty.'

Wiebe is already looking to return to Mexico. Upon returning to Whitehorse, he went on the YUGO website and requested information on a three-month internship, which would begin in mid-February.

'They called back Wednesday and the application process has started, although it's definitely going to take a while,' he said. 'It'd be really amazing. A week was definitely enough to perk up my taste buds for that sort of thing. I'd definitely like to return and give more of my time back.'