Norfolk Day #2 - 7.20.18

This morning, the Norfolk team woke up after a great night's sleep here at Spring Branch and ate breakfast. After breakfast, we headed down the road to Union Mission Ministries. Union Mission is a Christian based homeless shelter that serves the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area. We dropped off the donations that our team had brought for Union, and then got to work in their warehouse. We split into teams in different sections of their main warehouse sorting area and spent the morning sorting, organizing, and packing food boxes that Union will hand out to families in need in the neighboring community. When we had finished with our assigned food packing duties, we went to a meeting room and got to talk with a staff member about what homelessness looks like in the Hampton Roads area and how the donations we brought and the food donations that we had just organized are going to help the over 300 men and women that spend the night in the shelter each night. We left Union and headed to a park nearby to have some lunch as well as some team bonding time where the kids (and leaders!) enjoyed the park! Our lunch spot was conveniently located near our afternoon site, Consulate Health Care. Consulate is an elderly healthcare facility with many residents who have either outlived their family or are not visited very often. Albeit a somewhat sad reality, they absolutely love when they get to have visitors and were elated to spend their afternoon with our team talking about their lives and asking about ours. We socialized with some of the residents and also settled in for what has become our annual Consulate bingo battle and as usual, our team could not hang with these seasoned veterans. We left Consulate in great spirits and headed to the beach for an hour or two of fun in the sun. We left the beach and came back to Spring Branch where we ate dinner and then gathered together for Porch Time. The team shared fun stories from the day during "Remember That Time" and we also had great participation during "I Saw Jesus!" It was exciting and encouraging to see so many members of our team share where they had seen Jesus at work in the places and people we encountered today. After singing a few worship songs, Nick gave the second talk of the trip which focused on our encounters with God or "Mountain Top Experiences" and how we should revel in them while on these trips and seek to create ways to remember and carry them with us as we head back into our everyday lives. After porch time, we split into small groups to discuss this further and then began to wind down for bed time. We had a great day and are excited to finish well tomorrow as we clean up here at Spring Branch and head to Park Place Child Life Center to spend our remaining time on the trip with the kids there before heading home. Your prayers are appreciated and we are excited to continue to see God at work here in Norfolk!