The Lord has blessed us with wonderful weather for the first half of our week in the mountains of North Carolina, and our team continues to work hard and build relationships.
Last night's "porch time," our daily debrief and Bible study time, went extremely well. Students eagerly worshipped, identified places where they saw Jesus throughout the day, and listened attentively to the evening message. After a final prayer, each grade and gender separated for some small group time. After small groups, students and leaders spent some time relaxing at our housing site, building relationships with each other, and meeting new friends from different teams across the region.
This morning, as we do every morning, we started off the day with breakfast, a high energy worship session (while "Porch Time" is something that we do as just a Chapel team, the morning program is put on by ReCreation Experiences and includes all groups that are here for the week), and a brief talk about servanthood and what it means to wash each others' feet. After the program, the teams loaded up the buses and headed back to our work site for another day of digging.
Yesterday, many students had expressed interest in meeting some of the families we are serving this week, and today we got the opportunity to meet several of the women and one of the men who live in the three houses we're working on. Many students got to chat with the ladies, ask questions about life up here in the NC mountains, and build relationships with them.
We also began work on the third and final house today. We are currently working on approximately 12 trenches, and our supervisors say that we're ahead of schedule. After all the hard work, we're excited about a "day off" tomorrow. During our day off we will be serving at a local retirement home, and then exploring some of the beautiful scenery that this region has to offer.
We just finished dinner and have a little bit of free time now before our second "Porch Time" begins. Students are currently using this time to shower, rest, journal, and enjoy each other's company. Tomorrow's post will likely come a little later in the evening (closer to 10pm), after our adventures in the Asheville area.
Please continue to pray for safety, that we would be rejuvenated during our day off and able to come back to the work site with strength and determination to finish. You can also pray for relationships to deepen: relationships between students and their friends, relationships between kids and their leaders, relationships between our team and the people we are serving, and (most importantly) the students' relationships with Jesus!
