I’m going to start this off by saying that even though surviving a hurricane was a very big part of this week, I’m not going to talk about it in this post. It’s been adequately covered in other posts, and I want to focus more on what we did for ministry than how we were ministered to.
On Monday we packed up and headed down to Excel College (the organization we were partnering with), full of excitement and a little nervous to be heading out to do ministry for the first time. And for a whole week!
The trip down was long, but it didn’t feel super long. In part, because we were laughing and talking throughout the trip. In part, because we were quiet and sleeping whenever we weren’t talking. As we drove down, we saw a huge rainbow, and the crazy thing was, this was the third rainbow we’d seen in the past week!
When we made it to the cabins we were going to be staying in, it was dinner time and too late to do any ministry, so we spent the rest of the day settling in and imagining how tomorrow might go.
We were divided into different teams for ministry tomorrow. Some people were going out into town to do ATL (Ask The Lord). Some were sanding and painting tables. Some were doing gardening and work around the college grounds. And a few were sent to help with the homeschooling program the college runs for kids who have older siblings attending the college.
I was in the gardening group, and while it was hard work, it was so rewarding! Except for when it started raining so hard that a house was flooded! We had to build an emergency dam!
That night, they invited us down to the college for food, games, and community! It was so fun! We were all exhausted, but it was still so enjoyable!
The next day, we were helping the Black Mountain Home for Children, Youth, and Families, a really cool organization centered around helping kids who don’t have a home they can go to. Again, we were split into groups, some people went to help in the garden, while my group went to organize random stuff (trash).
In my group, I was then split up again into a group of 5 to test the tents for a Fall Festival. We became pros at setting up and taking down tents. Then we rejoined the main group to help split wood and bring it to the dump.
The next day was spent at the same location, this time giving it a deep clean, helping pack up an office, organizing stuff to be sold in a thrift store, and organizing clothes by color and size!
Ministry the next day was canceled, because of heavy rain (and little did we know we’d soon be experiencing the effects of heavy rain firsthand).
And the rest of the story is told in my September 27th posts!
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