NC Day #1 Update - 7.3.17

We had a great first day here in North Carolina! It began as all our mornings will from here on out, with an early wake-up call, breakfast, and morning worship. Worship is put on by the ReCreation staff and is a bit more up-tempo than we see at the Chapel, but the team embraced the difference and sang/danced the whole time! When worship ended we heard a brief message from Dave Torbit, the director here at ReCreation, who spoke on "In the eye of the storm", their theme for the summer. Dave spoke on having Jesus be our anchor in the storms of life and that when the anchor is strong, no matter how bad the storm rocks the boat, the boat remains. We then set out for our work site, which is about 40 minutes from the ReCreation building. We are working at a home where the family has fallen on some hard times and a few work projects are needed to allow them to remain in their home. We are putting on a new roof, repainting, and digging a new septic line for them. While this sounds like a lot of work, our team was enthusiastic and accepted the challenge head on. They tore into the three projects from the get-go and we finished the day at a great place to set us up for success to finish them all on schedule. After a great day of work, we headed back to ReCreation to clean up and have some dinner. The team got some down time after dinner and then we gathered together for Porch Time. Porch Time is a Chapel Mission Trip staple that consists of a few key elements. We start off with "Remember That Time" where students have the opportunity to share funny stories from the day that not everyone was likely a part of. This is followed by "I Saw Jesus" where the team shares stories of where they saw Jesus at work through the team and throughout the day. We were then led in a time of worship by Houston and ended porch time with our first talk of the week. Nick spoke from Luke 10 and tied the story of the 72 being sent out by Jesus, the story of Paul being sent in Acts 9,  and connected it with our team being sent here to Weaverville, NC. We studied Paul in our pre-trip meetings and throughout the week we will revisit Paul's encounter with God as we work through our own. We discussed how in Luke 10, it does not say what happened when they were sent, just that they returned with joy and that as we work through this week, regardless of how well it goes "according to plan" God is behind it and God is with us! After Porch Time we split up into small groups to further discuss this idea and then began to wind down the night as we headed to bed to rest up for another great day! Thank you all for your continued prayers and we are so excited to continue to see and feel Jesus at work!