Potter's Clay Information

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pc teams

The Sports teams (baseball, basketball, volleyball, and soccer) round up teenage youth for a healthy dose of good-natured competition. Combining varsity athletes with students who play for the fun of it, they find a way to communicate the love of God with teens and young adults who might otherwise be neglected. Westmont students play agains the local church leagues, as well as teams from the community, and even the naval and military bases!

The Prayer and Worship takes on a more mobile role; they have the opportunity to become familiar with the city of Ensenada and experience the many teams that make up Potter's Clay. The Prayer and worship team travels to the Medical / Dental sites to sports game locations and local prisions throughout the city, acting as the voice and face of Potter's Clay. Throughout the week they are in many ways the backbone of Potter's Clay asthey continually seek God through prayer.

The Kitchen team prepares and serves meals at Rancho Agua Viva (our base camp) for participants of Potter's Clay

The Haircutting team provides services for adults and children who can not afford to go to a barber or hairdresser.
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The Medical and Dental team takes supplies and non-prescription medications for distribution to various villages . They arange and set up day-long clinics with local dentst and doctors along with American Physicians who vollenteer their time to serve durring the week of Potter's Clay. The Mexican people recieve check-ups, shots, teeth fillings and other medical attention. News of the clinic spreads by word of mouth as Potter's Clay teams visit individual homes door to door.

VBS (Vacation Bible School) teams extend their service through Bible teaching, stories, music, games, crafts and dramas. Each team spends the week at a single church, and the friendships built between students, children, and church leaders in Ensendada often last from year to year. One goal of VBS is to be a ministry that works to enable the church in Ensenada by working with church leaders in order to most effectively minister to the children, rather than simply administering a American-style VBS program. Often considered to be "the heart of Potter's Clay" by Mexican pastors and Westmont Core Teams, VBS focuses on building and maintaining our relationships with the churches of Ensenada.

Construction teams work together with the church of Ensenada to build homes for Mexican families, churches, and other needed facilities. Each year six to eight projects are completed. Some projects are for members of churches in Ensenada, and others are built through a Mexican family social service organization called DIF.

One year in San Antonio, leaders learned of an orphanage in town. They visited the director, who shared his dream of constructing an additional building on his property so that he could take in more abandoned children. So that year, students went to work asking Santa Barbara businesses to donate materials for the project. They gathered everything from concrete to drywall, lumber to spackle, and electrical to plumbing materials. Students worked diligently on the new facility during their trips to Mexico, and, with light fixtures and stoves in place two years later, the orphanage and Potter's Clay celebrated with a fiesta none of them will forget.

what makes potter's clay distinct

With so many unfinished projects started by Americans in Mexico, Potter's Clay determined they would see the job through beginning to end. The Mexican people notice that Westmont students differ from other American groups who come to "help" them. They don't just show up for a week, never to be heard from again. Instead, first-time and former Potter's Clay volunteers travel to Ensenada multiple times during the school year. These trips provide the opportunity for new students to see what Potter's Clay is all about. "Veterans" of the program maintain relationships by reuniting with friends, and the group plans projects for the week-long spring trip. Called "Juntos," the Spanish word meaning "together," a weekend mission trip keeps students in touch with the real needs and concerns of their friends across the border.

As a consequence, the Mexican people view Potter's Clay participants as people of action, not just rhetoric. And the students come away realizing they gain far more than they give. Many first-timers make the trip determined to share "things" with the Mexican people (clothes, tools, medicine), but learn from their hosts what it means to share the gift of themselves.

Even in the midst of adversity, Potter's Clay has stayed in its course. During its first year, 200 students made plans to participate. But a week before their scheduled trip, flash floods hit Ensenada. Team leaders went ahead to assess the damage. On their return, they recommended cancelling the trip, but student director Dave Dolan said, "Let's go ahead and do it anyway." When leaders offered students the chance to back out due to the flooding, 50 more signed up to go!

Disaster struck again in 1989. The morning of March 27, five students set out from base camp to reconstruct a dilapidated house in a nearby village. On the way, an oncoming car suddenly jumped the road divider and landed on top of theirs. Students from the cars behind rushed to rescue their friends, with ambulance teams soon to follow.

More than 140 people gave blood at the local hospital, which proved critical in saving one student's life. But three of the injured young people died within 48 hours of the accident. The other two had long recoveries ahead.

Despite the sense of tragedy and overwhelming loss, teams continued their work in the villages throughout the rest of the week. At the urging of Potter's Clay co-founder Gordon Aeschliman '78, who made a special trip to Mexico to address the them in their daily outdoor chapel service, each student gathered three rocks.

With one, they built a memorial at the campsite to the three who had died. The second they carried back to Westmont to build a second memorial, which stands in a quiet wooded area central to the campus. Potter's Clay participants from 1989 keep their third rock with them in their car, purse, pocket, or dresser as a reminder of God's presence even in the midst of sorrow.

Potter's Clay is just one of the programs overseen by the student-initiated, student-run Christian Concerns organization, which directs all student ministries: on-campus, off-campus, and worldwide. Co-directors of Christian Concerns choose their successors to ensure continuity and proper leadership. The steady growth and longevity of Potter's Clay, on-campus vespers, and summer short-term missions, among other ministries, witness to the quality of student leadership at Westmont.

Former president David Winter comments about the program, "I am so proud of our students. I don't think there's another college in the country where close to half of the student body gives up the spring break to serve people from another country. And we on the staff deserve no credit for it! It was started wholly by students, and they continue to operate it without leadership by our staff. To me this is the genius of Westmont: a rigorous academic environment that also encourages its students to learn and care about people in need, wherever they may be."

potter's clay takes a working break

About 25 percent of Westmont College students head to Mexico for spring break, but not to party. Setting up base-camp in Rancho Agua Viva's soccer field outside Ensenada, they visit 25 surrounding villages in music, sports, Vacation Bible School, construction, medical/dental, and evangelism teams. The completely student-run program, called Potter's Clay, works with local Mexican pastors to build housing, promote health, and support Bible teaching among children and adults.

Begun in 1978, today Potter's Clay involves some 250 students plus about 50 faculty, staff and professionals. The students do their own fund-raising, receiving cash donations totalling around $80,000 per year. Community businesses contribute to their effort through gifts in kind of medicine, and the Core Team supports the local Ensenada economy by purchasing building materials, medicine and Bibles through mexcian businesses. Individuals lend camping equipment and vehicles to the participants for the week of their trip.

Participants of Potter's Clay set a goal not just to spend a week in Mexico and then go home. They want to leave something behind, so that the benefit of their work remains after they go. And the students come away from their week of service realizing that they have been grandly served by the Mexican people as well.