Crystal - Today was the end of the work at our sites. It was a bittersweet experience--bitter because we would miss those we have been working with, and sweet because we have completed our work successfully. At the end of the day, we went inside to speak to Frankie and her family and they expressed their gratitude so greatly that it was emotional for us. Her niece jokingly tried to get us to hideaway in her chicken coop and when she realized we couldn’t she actually started crying because we were leaving them. It was special to think that we had that much of an impact on their lives in that short of an amount of time. We all will really miss them as well because of the fact that we’ve been spending a bunch of our time with them lately. Their ambition to help us dig and help us with whatever we needed was awesome especially since they were so considerate for their age. People were always saying how they got more out of this experience than those whom they helped, and to begin with I didn’t think they’d be entirely right given the circumstance the people we helped were in. Now that I’ve experienced this for myself I realize how wrong I was and how right they were. I have definitely learned some very important lessons throughout my time in Appalachia and one of them is this: when you reach out to serve one another; a lot of the time you end up serving yourself. You learn new things about yourself that you never knew, you meet new people who will impact your life in interesting ways, and you learn how to share God’s love with the ones who need it most and yourself as well.
Trish
Wow it’s our last day here.
It is early evening and fun festivities are beginning so I will close
out my journal from the events of today and an item from last night that I
forgot about.
Well, the item I forgot about was the chair basketball we
played last night. We were all kind of
confused how this was going to work, even after we thought we had strategies
down. However it went off quite
well. It is just basketball, with
everyone in a set position with an opposing player by them (so a set of two seats,
one for each team). Then you play
ball. The trick is, you can’t leave your
seat and each team also has a runner for their team (which happened to be JT
for our team) should the ball leave the “seated” area the runners go after it
and toss it back into play. Turns out,
yours truly not only scored for my team but also the first one of the game –
woohoo. I made JT proud.
As the evening progressed into our Spiritual Life program
and closing worship, the tears were already starting to flow last night. I even had a hard time sleeping but had a
difficult couple of days with a few different things.
We woke this morning for our last day of work at our site
and we were a little nervous. There were
many last minute things that kind of came up and we were not even sure if this
project would be completed on time.
Turns out….NEVER DOUBT GOD….his timing is perfect and everything
went well. Both electrical and plumbing
inspections passed. Tanks and trenches
were filled in completely, seed for grass was spread we finished earlier than
planned. At this point we realized it
was time to say goodbye to the homeowners and her niece and nephew who really
became a big part of our group. PJ selected
me to give them the little goody bags we put together for them. They got one of the ASE bags and water
bottles along with a few “sweet” goodies.
Everyone on the site signed the bags for Dom and Tori so they would
remember all our names. The homeowners got the ASE coffee mugs and hopefully we
will be able to get them a picture of the whole group of us including Dom and
Tori. Please keep these two children in
your prayers, Tori took this very hard when we left and was crying pretty
hard. I pray our impact was a good one
and the Lord blesses her and her brother.
All the youth I worked with on this site worked hard. We all had our days but mostly great
ones. We had used team names for certain
tasks and different groups of kids and it as a great motivator to get things
done. When the inspectors met with PJ he
was told by them that they were impressed that we did all this digging and burying
by hand. This was a huge job and we were
able to get it done with a few snags along the way. What I discovered is that this is a team
effort for everyone on the site. It
helps them build character and to know what it feels like to accomplish
something. For the adults, I think we
learned a lot of the same thing but being older and trying to guide them as
youth in an important task could be difficult at times but we needed to learn
to have patience with them. Most importantly,
anything is possible with God. I
honestly questioned if this was something we would be able to get done in seven
days and we did.
We left the site both heavy and light hearted. Light hearted because the work was
complete. Heavy hearted because we are
going to miss that family.
We returned to the church to unload, clean, and put away all
the tools the sites had at their sites. I
took the most of my time cleaning out the inside of the van from the dirt and
mud and smell from the past week. And
then it was pack time and dinner. We
held a very informal evening service with communion; a final service just with
the ASE members which felt very special.
Now the festivities of the all-nighter are under way. I dragged my sleeping stuff into the
community room as I guess movies and such will be playing. If I really need to get some sleep and I can’t
get it in here, I’ll just head back down to my room but I’d like to be a part
of this for a little while. I can’t believe
we leave in about eight hours. So with
that. Thank you to all the staff that
organize and bring kids and adults and pastors from all over to help those in
need. This even will forever be in my
heart along with all these wonderful, faithful youth.
God Bless!
Solomon - Today was different than the other days of the week. It was a little sad as it was the last day we would see the kids at the site but it is also exciting to be done with the work. Tonight should prove exciting as well since this is the lock-in.
JT- Today has been a great day! we had to finish our place that we all worked at! i got to the site and it was raining so we had to wait for a break which we did get it! i jumped out of the van and then got straight to work! i finished up the framing and then we were pretty much done! then our group adults took all of us to Dairy Queen for a treat! thank god for ice cream. and then we had our worship time tonight, and then we have our all niter tonight! but i am gonna get back to my movie now so good night! ;)
