Yesterday was such a wonderful last day!! We hit the road a little bit earlier for our work site because our normal morning worship happens at night on the last day. So we began digging and painting around 9am this morning at Mr. Hughes's house. Over the past couple days the work gradually got more difficult as we hit more and more rocks the deeper we dug. There were even a couple boulders that ended up being impenetrable with our pick axes and so we had to leave them for a jackhammer to come break them up. After working hard in the morning and afternoon we finished our last day of digging and painting at 4pm. Our students showed true determination and hard work this entire week as they put all of their energy into each swing of the pick ax and each dig with a shovel.
Our supervisor, Rich, who is an expert in septic systems, said this was the hardest septic system he has ever had to dig and as a result there was a little work that we were unable to complete that a team of engineers without borders will comlete tomorrow. The great news is that Mr. Hughes will not lose his house! Even though we were unable to complete the entire project our students were extremely excited and joyful by the fact that we got to participate in essentially saving a man's life!
Another neighbor of Mr. Hughes drove by and stopped in amazement of what God was doing through our team. She was a good friend of Mr. Hughes and could not thank us enough for the work we were doing. Our students literally showed God and served an entire community of people down here in North Carolina!
After finishing our work project, our team headed back to home base for an evening of exciting and God-filled worship. First we had a fun and dance-filled worship time with Recreation Experiences followed by a moving talk by the Executive Director, Dave Torbett. Then our team headed to our final evening porch time for the week where Luke challenged the student's definition of love. He showed them that the true definition of love is found in 1 Corinthians 13 and the greatest picture of that love is found in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Finally, we split into our final time of small group where we had our best small group of the week. We saw a group of middle school students come together in love, unity, and fellowship in a way that we have not seen in awhile. God truly was tugging at the hearts of our students and they responded by honestly sharing and opening up to one another.
It truly has been a blessed week and although we will miss being here we are excited to come share our experience with everyone back in Williamsburg! The estimated time of departure from our home base down here is 9am and our estimated time of arrival back at the Chapel is 5pm. Remember to check the hotline at 757-810-4021 for updated times of arrival back to the Chapel. Thank you so much for all of your prayers and we will see you tonight!!
