What a trip! Traveling ten hours on Saturday,
July 8th to reach St. Louis was easy except for
our drivers - Doug, Dave, and Aaron. They
deserve a medal for driving 1,770 miles to and
from Missouri.
Our first official stop was the Gateway Arch
and we headed to the top. It was every-thing
Dwight and Marilyn Sherman told us it would
be - five people enter a little pod and slowly go
to the top and the return trip going down is very
fast. But it’s worth it because the view at the
top is breathtaking.
We spent our first night at Meramac Caverns
and toured the caves on Sunday morn-ing. The
caverns were cool in two ways -the underground
temperature and the amazing discoveries of
God’s beautiful handiwork with many mineral
formations. Thousands of stalactites and
stalagmites fill the large rooms of the caves.
After leaving the caves we headed for Poplar
Bluff to begin our weeklong mission trip
assignment. We reached the school in time for
the first joint worship service with other youth
groups who had traveled from 17 states and 26
different churches. A total of 306 volunteer
youth and adults joined together to worship God.
Following worship ALL volunteers were divided
into 55 work crews of 5 or 6 people (one or two
adult leaders with four teens). Assignments were
distributed and crews studied their job duties
for the week.
Early Monday morning after breakfast and a
short worship service the crews gathered their
supplies and picnic lunches and headed off to
their work sites. At the work sites they met
their residents and began their jobs. This
continues each day with a lunch break and a
devotion inviting the residents to join them.
Most crews had painting assignments either
inside or outside. Several of our crews had
construction jobs -building wheelchair ramps
or decks. Other crews did home repairs and
replaced windows. Fifty-one homes were
worked on and 51 were completed. To God be
the glory!
At the end of the work day crews return to the
school around 3:00 pm where 300 campers head
for the line-up at the showers. After a refreshing
cold shower everyone heads off to their
classroom to rest on their air mattress or to the
cafeteria to look for their youth groups and new
friends. A delicious hot meal was served at 5:30 pm every day. After dinner various
activities were available for the campers basketball,
dodge-ball, and the many other games
that are favorites of all youth groups including
the card game “spoons.”
Every night we attended a contemporary worship
geared toward our active and excited teenagers.
A slide show of the days work sites would flash
on the big screen, followed by some awesome
worship songs.
Finally, it is so amazing how God works in the
hearts of His people (our church family) to send
a group from WV to Missouri to help those who
need home repairs only to discover as we give
of ourselves we also receive -we have become
more compassionate, more appreciative of the
many extras that we have, and have drawn closer
to each other and God. Thank you for this life-
changing experience, because without your
generosity it would never happen
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