YouthWorks Goin Up.. On A Tuesday

Another successful day of work projects and kid's club! More painting took place, as well as some tree branch cutting, which Brad Kramer totally owned. It was also Lori McNatt's birthday today! She spent the day in the sun with her work group painting, like a champ. 

After showers and tacos, we all hopped in the vans again and headed out for the fish market, T-shirt shopping, and a tour of the Bayou La Batre. At the fish market, we ate shrimp, fruit, and chatted with the owner, Rick. The T-shirt shop we visited offered custom-made shirts and hats, and we finished the evening off by watching the beautiful sunset on the Bayou. Then we headed back to the community center for club, family group time and birthday cake.

Day Two was very successful, and we're excited to switch kid's club and work project groups tomorrow morning! 

Monday... and serving!

Today, we started working in the community with both a kids club and a work projects. We joined our new friends from Wesley church in Canton, IL for painting, brush clean up, making new friends in the community and for kids club. 

Starting out with Devos..

Kid's club, for those who are unaware, is where many children from the community are invited to come for games and crafts and to learn about Jesus. Today we had over 30 kids which seemed like quite a bit more with some of them challenging everyone. There were some incidents, one of which involved vomit, but the amazing Audra Duffy stepped up to the plate to clean it up. Work sites today included painting the outside of a produce/fish market, plucking chickens, and lots of brush burning, which Rick thoroughly enjoyed. All in all, our morning and afternoon activities were successful.  

Kids club and work projects...

Afterwards, we hopped in the vans and drove down to Dauphin Island for a couple hours of beach time. The sand was hot and the water was warm, but it felt good to wash off all the dirt and paint from a hard days work. Back at the community center, much needed showers were followed by dinner; Jambalaya, green beans and corn muffins. 

and then the Beach...

We all feel very blessed to be a part of this amazing opportunity to help out this Alabama community. We're looking forward to the week ahead with open hearts and open minds!

At our Youth Works site!

We have arrived!  With temperatures at times of 104 degrees while traveling we have gotten to the Bayou!  Church this morning at Grace Lutheran was a great message on John the Baptist and Herod.  The Pastor did a great job of bringing Grace to a difficult story about Herodias.  The church provided great accomodations but did not have showers...  With lots of active athletic youth who have not showered in over 36 hours things are ripe...

We have met the staff and the other church that is with us at the site.  We have learned about the community and are excited to be the hands and feet of God in this community!  The stage is set for us to share our love for Christ.  Please keep us in your prayers that our God will lead and guide us as we make new relationships and strenthen existing ones.

In his service...

Made it to Tallahassee!

We are the guests of Grace Lutheran church and have consumed pizza and salad after which we went to see "Minions". 

Bed time is near and an early start for church and on to Bayou La Batre.  Prayers for the remainder of our journey! 

This summer, 49 youth and 9 adult mentors will travel to Bayou La Batre, AL to serve the local community.  In conjunction with an organization called YouthWorks, we will host a Kid's Club during the week (similar to VBS) and paint some houses around the area.  Please keep our group in your prayers as we travel, serve, learn and grow in our relationships with one another and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Watch for daily updates and photos starting on Saturday!

tired and ready to go

     Well there you have it.  The week is pretty much officially over.  We had a very relaxing morning with sleeping in and not eating breakfast until after 9am today!!!!!  For those that don't realize that means there was an average sleep in time of about 2hrs.  All the cabins pitched in again and got our pancake and sausage breakfast ready to go and enjoyed in our make shift dining area.

 We spent the day at Carowinds going on as many roller coasters and water slides as we possibly could despite the overcast and sometimes rainy sky.  For some they turned into little kids again with roller coasters and others just enjoyed a relaxing day in a lazy river or by the side of the water in a chair.


We made it back from the park and each cabin put together our pasta and salad dinner and we enjoyed it so much.  We finished off the night with some more craft time and a quick devo and song.  Now just winding down until bed time looking forward to getting back home to our own showers, beds and more quiet time than we have been getting for the last week.

For those that were not able to be here this week but have been reading along and praying for us l hope that you get a chance to ask these kids what they did this week.  They were asked some tough questions by people they encountered this week and answered those questions with confidence.  The adult leaders are so proud of these kids and what they have done.

Thank you for all the prayers and support that leading up to and during this week.  All prayers were answered this week and then some.  One last request would be for safe travels and good attitudes as we travel home tomorrow.  We'll be leaving at 730am and have a lot of miles to cover.  lt has been another fun week of writing to you all and l hope you have enjoyed reading as much as we have enjoyed writing.  l pray that we'll all be ready to go home and be the light upon the hill for those around us.

QOTD

"l was really looking forward to stuffing some sausage into tubing, Dang it"



POTD


All week long we had tons of fun
Going going going non stop
Getting to know new people
Ready to do Gods work
Everyone working together for one purpose
Sitting and listening to those around
Into a new beginning
Very impressive things were done
Earthly things we found were not as important
The staff took such care with every single person
How thankful we are for the experience
Random people became new friends
It can't be real that the week is over already
Little by little we realized it would happen
Lots of new bonds were made
Everyone is ready to take what they did back home with them
Ready to be the light upon the hill

l can't believe that it's over........but is it really????

So we haven't talked since wednesday night and we have a lot to share with you.  Starting on thursday morning with the morning run it was discovered that the weather was amazing again, thanks for the prayers for that to happen.  The work groups went out to most of the same places from wednesday except for 'Invasion' who went to an elementary school to help out with the summer work of moving furniture.  At the adult meeting in the evening there were so many stories of how great the kids did at work groups, vbs, and everywhere else we went to.  

Many funny stories were shared and we could have kept talking about how the kids really pulled it together and finished projects that didn't look like they could have been finished.  Thursday evening for dinner the community and church members were invited for a cookout and we all enjoyed hamburgers, hotdogs, pasta salad and chips along with the special treat of soda.  We also enjoyed a great game of ultimate frisbee for the second time of the week, which a couple of our adult leaders really really enjoyed. We ended frisbee and said our goodbyes to the people we had met throughout the week and that realization that this was the last night started sinking in as we headed into our evening club time. Club time was a little more emotional than usual with everyone starting to look toward the future and what would happen after we left Taylorsville.  We were realizing that our special time together was over and we would be leaving and going back to "real life" and that is usually a hard thing for so many kids and adults.  But I pray that instead of this being the end of our fun time together we can realize that our time is not over and instead our time is just beginning.  This is about to be the beginning of us going back to our lives and have our chance to share with everyone else who wasn't with us what kind of experience we had and why we went on the trip and our chance to share Christ with them.

After club time we were able to do a little stargazing outside and since these FL kids don't get to see that very often it was a nice treat.  Everyone got some much needed rest, maybe not enough, and we were up and ready to start our day at 6:30am on friday.

l guess that brings us to today.  Waking up at 6:30am and first thing was to pack our stuff into all of our vans and just hope that you packed everything you brought and find out later if you did.  The youthworks staff got us all together for a huge cleaning party, which was a hoot, and all the kids and adults cleaned our entire site in no time at all.  Then it was time to really say goodbye to the other church group and our incredibly amazing youthworks staff.  Some may wonder how it could be so hard to say goodbye after spending only 5 days with someone but when it is under these circumstances you can get to know someone very quickly.  Our youthworks staff took great care with all of our kids and knowing that they would take care of us made it easier as an adult for the week.  We give up a week of our year to be here and do this, but those staff members give up their whole summer to be doing this and that is an incredible sacrifice but l am so thankful for people like them so that we can have this sort of experience.
Anyways we took a very relaxing route to get to the Charlotte, SC area where we are staying for the next two nights.  We were able to stop at Starbucks AND Dunkin' Donuts and a little bagel cafe.  We arrived at Carowinds wilderness lodge camp ground area and got checked in a little early and spent the afternoon going out for lunch at various fast food venues and then relaxing/napping in our cabins.  Tonights dinner will consist of six different items and one item will be prepared by each cabin.  After dinner we'll have evening devotions and family group time and head off to bed to get ready for a fun day at Carowinds tomorrow.

Thank you for all the prayers and l can say that every single request was answered and we were very thankful for that.  l ask for continued prayers of safety and fun and to give the kids a chance to focus on what has happened in the past week and what going home will mean for them.


QOTD

"Rhonda we need to pull over cause our whole van is crying"


POTD

No one can ever guess what will happen out here
Only God knows what the plan is
The kids had their eyes opened in so many ways
Our Youthworks staff was absolutely amazing!!!!!!
Very much exhausted from the week, but still going
Every memory will be cherished
Ready, set, let's go spread the word