Photo of the Week: 15 Years of Missions

Candamena Canyon in Mexico, where our team trekked in April 2005. (Photo by Gary Fallesen)

Memory Lane: On roads less traveled

On April 12, 2005, then-Board member Cheryl Esper and her family hit the road from Long Lake, NY to start a 2,400-mile drive to El Paso, TX, where they would meet six other members of the Mission: Mexico 2005 team. We were headed for the Sierra Madre Mountains in the remote northern Mexico state of Chihuahua. It was Climbing For Christ’s inaugural Evangelic Expedition.

I was on my first mission trip. It started, fittingly I thought, with me digging ditches to put in septic lines at a cross-cultural college ranch used to train future missionaries and managed by Climbing For Christ member Tim Trezise.

From Mexico, we had members climb Alaska’s Mount McKinley on Mission: Denali 2005 in May-June and then the trip dubbed Mission: Dominican Republic 2005 from June 24-July 2 introduced us to the work God had for us next door in the mountains of Haiti. That work continues today through the New Generation, a group of young Haitians and Dominicans led by Gilbert Lindor, the young man God used us to rescue from death and currently we are supporting him through medical school in the DR.

Much has happened in the past 15 years. Climbing For Christ has made 108 trips to 17 countries. We traveled down Memory Lane in The Climbing Way (Volume 49, April 2020), “Celebrating 15 Years of Missions,” and we’re going to look back at other C4C stories in the weeks ahead.

CLICK HERE to read “First Impressions,” a story about Mission: Nigeria 2011.