Hello families!
Today was our last Service day. Though the kids were tired and exhausted, they pushed through and continued to show up with a true spirit of Godly service for others. We did change things up today and went to two different locations, all as one group.
First Location: Samaritan’s Feet - this organization takes used donated shoes and discarded factory shoes, and packs them up into boxes to ship to people of all ages—both nationally and internationally—who desperately need them. Here, we created an assembly line of taking plastic slides from a pallet and snipping off extra plastic fabric—discarding any that were unusable in the process—and pairing left and right together of the same size, where they get packed in a box and prepared to be shipped. At the end of our labor, we packed 67 boxes—with 25 pairs in a box, we packed 1,675 pairs of shoes!
We then got all the kids a drink at QuikTrip as a thank you for all their hard work (there will also be a nice treat tomorrow as well—stay tuned!), before heading back to the church to enjoy lunch. We then stayed there to service the church…
Second Location: Providence Baptist Church (our lodging location). Here, we split into 5 groups, each group located at a different building of the church, completing a task that served the church’s needs—this was a great way to end our last Service day and our way of saying “thank you” to the church. At the end of our labor, we cleaned windows and windowsills, took bags of trash out, cleaned the outside trail perimeter, dusted blinds and furniture, buffed the floor of the gym, organized the gym’s ballroom, and cleaned/sanitized booster seats and high chairs—all at several locations on the campus! Plus, some kids who finished early on tasks were able to attend a church club meeting for special needs people, who had so much fun hanging out with our kids!
The kids then had an hour of rest before heading over to the church’s cafeteria to have dinner with the church’s youth program. After dinner, we were blessed to be invited to an activity held every year with the little kids: cart racing. Each kid makes their own toy cart to race on a track, and the community loves to get involved to cheer them on. So, we had some arts-and-crafts time to make encouraging signs for the kids, before heading to the gym where the race was on! Our kids were amazing at cheering them on and being joyful for their victories, and the church members told us they were so grateful and blessed to have us be a part of their community for this week—your kids are truly serving and making an impact!
We then headed back to our lodging to have devotions (Ephesians 4) and an acoustic worship session, debriefed tomorrow’s recreation day plan, before hitting the showers, having some free time, and going to sleep. It’s going to be a fun day tomorrow—stay tuned!
Today was our last Service day. Though the kids were tired and exhausted, they pushed through and continued to show up with a true spirit of Godly service for others. We did change things up today and went to two different locations, all as one group.
First Location: Samaritan’s Feet - this organization takes used donated shoes and discarded factory shoes, and packs them up into boxes to ship to people of all ages—both nationally and internationally—who desperately need them. Here, we created an assembly line of taking plastic slides from a pallet and snipping off extra plastic fabric—discarding any that were unusable in the process—and pairing left and right together of the same size, where they get packed in a box and prepared to be shipped. At the end of our labor, we packed 67 boxes—with 25 pairs in a box, we packed 1,675 pairs of shoes!
We then got all the kids a drink at QuikTrip as a thank you for all their hard work (there will also be a nice treat tomorrow as well—stay tuned!), before heading back to the church to enjoy lunch. We then stayed there to service the church…
Second Location: Providence Baptist Church (our lodging location). Here, we split into 5 groups, each group located at a different building of the church, completing a task that served the church’s needs—this was a great way to end our last Service day and our way of saying “thank you” to the church. At the end of our labor, we cleaned windows and windowsills, took bags of trash out, cleaned the outside trail perimeter, dusted blinds and furniture, buffed the floor of the gym, organized the gym’s ballroom, and cleaned/sanitized booster seats and high chairs—all at several locations on the campus! Plus, some kids who finished early on tasks were able to attend a church club meeting for special needs people, who had so much fun hanging out with our kids!
The kids then had an hour of rest before heading over to the church’s cafeteria to have dinner with the church’s youth program. After dinner, we were blessed to be invited to an activity held every year with the little kids: cart racing. Each kid makes their own toy cart to race on a track, and the community loves to get involved to cheer them on. So, we had some arts-and-crafts time to make encouraging signs for the kids, before heading to the gym where the race was on! Our kids were amazing at cheering them on and being joyful for their victories, and the church members told us they were so grateful and blessed to have us be a part of their community for this week—your kids are truly serving and making an impact!
We then headed back to our lodging to have devotions (Ephesians 4) and an acoustic worship session, debriefed tomorrow’s recreation day plan, before hitting the showers, having some free time, and going to sleep. It’s going to be a fun day tomorrow—stay tuned!