The Norfolk team is now back home!
Our final day began with breakfast and clean-up at our housing site, Spring Branch Community Church. The team had such a wonderful experience staying at Spring Branch that it was sad to leave. However, the team was also very excited to go take kids from the Park Place Child Life Center in Norfolk to the beach, which was our final ministry site. Park Place is a lower income part of Norfolk in which 40% of the population only has a high school education and the median salary for the area is 25% lower than the average for the rest of Norfolk. Upon arrival at the Park Place Center we were introduced to all of the kids and the staff. Then everyone loaded up on their respective buses and we traveled over to Oceanview Beach Park for an afternoon of playing in the water. It was great to see our team pour love out to the kids of Park Place as we made new friends and bonds. We brought burgers and hot dogs to grill out for lunch underneath a beautiful canopy of live oak trees (live oak is a type of oak tree that is a little more low hanging). Our team prepared and served lunch to everyone and then continued to play and build relationships afterwards.
The Norfolk trip ended with our final porch time under a pavilion at the Mt. Trashmore Park. We closed our time with some more worship songs and a final talk by Luke in which he finished the story of Gideon that the team had begun in their pre-trip training meetings. He solidified the idea of "living weak" that had been our theme phrase all weekend. Then our time ended with each leader giving each of the kids in their small group a card with a paragraph about where Jesus had shown up in their weakness during the weekend. It was a powerful time of reflection and encouragement for everyone as they were about to head back to Williamsburg. Bracelets with the phrase "liveWEAK" were also given as a reminder of all that God had done during the weekend. The porch time ended with a final time in small groups to ensure that everyone had a chance to process everything that happened on the trip.
It truly has been a special weekend that will be remembered forever and we encourage everyone (including parents if you would like) to come out to the 11am service tomorrow at the Chapel for a short highlight video. Also, don't forget we have our SM Missions Night on August 5th from 6:30-8pm at the Chapel where we will have a longer highlight video and more stories from the trip!
God Bless,
The SM Staff Team
