Travis Sanders

Salutations. I'm Travis Sanders. I am crazy blessed. I have a wife who loves me for exactly who I am, and an adorable daughter, Violet Mae. We get to work together everyday to give families new homes.

Here's how I ended up at Casas por Cristo. I came to really know Jesus shortly after graduating High School. It was in that season of trying to figure life out that I set off on the path that would eventually lead me here. After a lot of study, discussion, and many people pouring into my life, I was lead to a very simple faith. I realized that everything pointed to this truth: I am nothing without Christ, and the best way I can love God is to love His people. So at that time I began attempting to live everyday by those two principles.

It was those principles that led to my first Casas trip. God allowing me to use my gifts to bless a family in such a huge way that week instantly hooked me. I continued to come back every chance I got. Eventually, this led to an internship, apprenticeship, and finally joining staff in 2007. After five wonderful years, in 2011 Roberta and I moved back to Illinois due to Casas' drastic decline in teams. After three years away, we feel so incredibly blessed to have been given the opportunity to return to Casas. Having just had our first child, Violet, I cannot imagine a better way to show her what it means to love than for her to grow up seeing families receive homes. We look forward to serving with you, and remember it's all about love.

Roberta Sanders

I grew up as a preacher’s kid in Mt. Carmel, Illinois. I became a Christ follower at the age of nine. I understood early on that following Christ meant being a missionary and that being a missionary meant loving God and loving people. My dad used to drop me off at middle school every day and say, “Bert, go be a missionary to those people.” That was one of those lessons that stuck with me over the years. I don’t think everyone is supposed to move to a foreign country to be a vocational missionary. But I do think that God has good works for each of his followers to carry out on his behalf. I had always dreamed of doing foreign mission work as a career someday.

When I was fourteen I went on my first mission trip. I joined my parents and a group of high schoolers from my church to build a home for a family in Juárez, México with Casas por Cristo (CpC). That was back when we didn’t use any power tools. We poured the whole concrete slab by hand by making volcanoes. It was definitely the hottest, dirtiest, and most exhausting week of my life. But at the end of it, I witnessed a family’s physical life changed forever and their spiritual lives impacted in a powerful way, and I was hooked. So I signed up to take high school Spanish. And I went back on a CpC mission trip every year after that.

I also got to go on a mission trip to Taiwan and a couple trips to Panamá throughout high school and college. I felt deep down that if God wanted me to be a missionary he would send me to tropical, beautiful Spanish speaking place like Panamá. However, God had other plans for me. In 2004, I was on my 6th CpC mission trip, building another house in Juárez, when our leader, Dan Dolson, suggested that I spend the summer interning for CpC, leading builds for volunteer teams. I told him there was no way I could ever do that. I spoke some Spanish, but that was the extent of my skills. I was directionally impaired, and I didn’t think I could navigate the streets of Juárez, where they evidently don’t believe in street signs. I didn’t know anything about building or construction. I was the little girl that painted trim and climbed on the roof to help hammer the little nails. I had no business telling other people what to do in order to construct a home. So, I passed on the chance to intern in 2005. But my husband, then boyfriend, decided to give it a shot. He came back at the end of 12 weeks of learning and leading builds a changed person, and I was jealous of who he was becoming and what he had experienced. So, the next summer, I put my fears and excuses aside to give it a try.

My internship with CpC was the hardest summer of my life. There were several weeks where I didn’t think I was going to survive the heat or the mental and physical exhaustion, let alone finish the house. But at the end of each week, God came through and made sure that the family received the home they were promised. I got to see God work through me to share his love and hope with Mexican families and with American team members. Lives were changed because I was willing to say yes to what God was urging me to do. I learned what Corinthians 12:9 means: “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” It wasn’t by my own power that each home got built. It was only by God’s grace that we were able to finish each project.

Two days after I finished my internship, I went back to Mt. Carmel and married Travis. I finished up my last semester at St. Louis Christian College that fall. And in January 2007, Travis accepted a full time position with Casas por Cristo. He served full time for five years, and I got to join staff for the last year of our time there. It was the best five years of my life. There’s something that feels so right about carrying out the work that Christ commissioned his followers to do, to taking his love to people, having compassion on them, and meeting their needs. We had fallen in love with being a part of what God was doing in the world.

Then in 2011, after four years of battling falling team numbers due to the violence in Juárez, CpC asked its staff members to consider voluntary layoffs. Travis and I were not sure we wanted to be missionaries for the rest of our lives. We had just sold our house and had not signed any paperwork on a new one. We didn’t have any children, and compared to the other staff members, we felt we were in the best position to leave. So, we packed up and moved back to Southern Illinois to be close to our families. I went back to school to get a Master’s in Teaching from Oakland City University. I spent two years teaching Spanish at North High School in Evansville. Travis went to work for the power plant as an electrician. We bought a beautiful old home for Travis to remodel. And we got pregnant. By outward appearances we had everything going for us, and we should have been happy. But it felt like something was missing. We just couldn’t be satisfied with living “normal” lives.

So when CpC contacted us about returning to the mission field, we jumped at the chance. Travis went into overdrive trying to finish all the updates on our home. We started trying to raise support again. I put in my letter of resignation at the school. And we felt alive and excited about our futures for the first time in three years. We feel so humbled that we get to be a part of what God is doing through CpC again. We don’t know if it was God’s plan all along to take us back to the Midwest for a while so we could realize our true calling in life. But we learned a lot about ourselves during our time there. I can’t predict the future, but at this point I think we will do mission work for the rest of our lives. It just feels right, like God specifically designed us for this work.