The Thursday Day

It’s always a bit rough getting back started after a day off. We probably stayed up a bit too late last night because we weren’t quite as tired, and it was a quiet morning around the breakfast table. But we got up, had our morning devotions and left for the worksite in silence because the devotion was about meeting God in the silence.

We were painting today and our group totally rocked it! We worked hard all day (fortunately it was overcast most of the day) and got the vast majority of the house painted. There is some trip and touch ups left. As we were cleaning up it started pouring rain, so we’ll see how much of our paint job has to be redone tomorrow.

We came back had an awesome dinner…Jamie tried watermelon for the first time…and loved it! We then had a time of worship, and Chad talked about Nicodemus which prompted a great discussion on why we feel like Nicodemus sometimes and will only come to Jesus “at night” when no one else will see us. We talked about why it’s hard to live as a Christian even around friends who also are Christians.

Then more dodgeball and now bed time. One more day! Keep praying for us and for Ms. Dora!

The Day Off

This will have to be brief, I’m having issues with my phone.

Yesterday day we pushed through and finished priming the house. We worked hard and then had a great discussion during family group time, kinda springboarding off of the energy of the day. We talked about why we even bother serving, and why it’s difficult sometimes to receive because of our pride. Very deep thinkers!

Today was our day off, we went to blizzard beach, which was amazing. We got there as it opened and got to do a lot of the rides before it got too crowded. Dinner at millenia and back to the church, where a killer game of uno ensued. Back to work tomorrow, keep praying for us and our resident, Dora!

Bring on the pain…t!

Ok so we didn’t actually paint today, but we did take a ton of old paint off the house. We would start scraping a section and a piece the size of a cinder block would peel off. So we scraped and peeled paint, and then began priming. It’s slow work, particularly around trim and up high and we only have a couple of ladders to work with. It’s also very hot…go figure…Florida in the summer…who knew. By the way, our students did great! They are hard workers anxious don’t think I heard complaining all day, even with the heat!

Our resident, Dora, is the sweetest lady and she asks for our prayers. The family is Christian, and they even joined us for prayer this morning; I thought it was awesome to pray with them. We also met several family members, 2 daughters and 2 grandkids. I hear Dora has 12 children! And you thought your family was big and/or crazy!

After our worksite, we came back to the church to take showers…yeah so there’s about 70 people and 3 showers for each sex…it took…a while. But it was cool talking with folks as we stood in line together.

Dinner was awesome: pasta. I think Jace and Em each had 4 pieces of Texas toast. Then we had worship, message, family time and then we hurled dodgeballs at each other for about an hour. And there you have the end of work day 1!

Grace and peace to you.

The arrival

So here we are at IMPACT! We began with an exhausting drive allllllll the way down to…wait for it…college park. We were actually early, so we wandered around college park a bit and got yogurt.

When we came back to the church we moved all of our stuff in and met all the staff, kristen and katie are our job site leaders, they seem pretty cool. Then it was time for some worship, and chad (the founder) spoke about our theme, “collide”, which is all about how our world collides with God’s.

There are 5 groups here: groups from Pennsylvania, Kentucky, north Carolina, Perry Fl and us. There are about 70 people here this week, it’s their busiest week this summer.

Crazy thing, one of the group leaders from the nc group is a girl I went to the Wesley foundation at UF with…small world!

If you know Lanie Weber, she got back tonight after being in Germany for 2 weeks!

Everyone is doing well, and it should be an awesome week with.this group. Tomorrow is our first day of work, pray for us!

High IMPACT, Hi IMPACT

T-minus 4 days and counting…are you ready for an amazing week?