The Norfolk team started our trip this afternoon by having a great drive down to VA Beach! It was great to watch as the team immediately
began to bond on our car ride down I-64. There was no complaining about
the traffic, but instead the extra time in the cars was used to have great conversations and sing! As a result, spirits were high
as we made it to our housing site, Spring Branch Community Church, and
settled into our home for the next two nights. Spring Branch is led by
Travis Simone's father Pastor Michael Simone, and we have had a
wonderful partnership with them for many years. One of our favorite
things about the church is their youth room where they have game consoles, a pool
table, a Foosball table and a great space for our team to hang out. The whole
team was super excited to see all the fun things Spring Branch has to
offer!
After dinner and some free time playing games we began what was for most
of the team their first ever "Porch Time." Porch Time comes from the old days on
Nicaragua trip where the teams would spend the evening on an actual
porch and talk about where they had seen God at work during the day and
we use the same title for all of the nightly meetings on every Student
Ministry mission trip. Tonight, Nick spoke on the idea of "being sent." We looked at Jacob, the biblical character we studied in our meetings before the trip and how before all of the things that we learned about with him and Esau, he too had been sent somewhere by God. We also looked in Luke 10 where Jesus sends out the 72 and how they took nothing with them so they could avoid being distracted and take all of the opportunities to serve and learn about God that were set before them. After the talk, we split up and had our first small group time where we continued discussing the idea of being sent and where we could look for opportunities in our time down here. After small groups, the Norfolk Team
headed to bed excited to see how God was going to show up tomorrow!
*If you aren't already on it, you can sign up for the text list by texting "norfolkparent" to 41411. This is how we will communicate our eta for the way home and give short updates throughout the trip.
