Hands and Feet with a Purpose

7 churches.  97 participants.  8 crews.  12 houses.  100+ degrees.  1 God. Today we all finished our houses and had some time to do a few miscellaneous jobs too. No injuries requiring medical attention and everyone did great.  It's amazing what can happen with God in control! Our goal is to be back at the church tomorrow around 5pm. Tonight we had a celebration of all our accomplishments this week and recognized group leaders, squad leaders, and construction captains. One of the couples whose house we worked on joined us for worship and our church devotions.  It was great to spend more time interacting with them and they participated in some great discussion with us! The message tonight was all about Being Example and how we do that.   Part one is knowing the source.  Where do we go for answers?  What is our guide?  Scripture.  In 7:38 sums it up well, it is the living water.  Justin used the analogy of when you find a gre...

Today was H.O.T.  Nearly every crew drank all of their water from the coolers and received multiple Popsicles to keep hydrated and cool(er).  Almost all crews have their first house nearly completed, most started another house today and then will finish both tomorrow.  8 crews will successfully complete 12 roofs in 1 week, many of which required large amounts of re-sheeting.  Our youth have really stepped up and worked hard this week, they've nailed, they've sweated, they've stank, they've shared, and they've loved.  Most importantly they have served.  Tomorrow is our final wrap up day to complete everything we started this week and we'll end with a big celebration tomorrow night.   One of the houses has a young boy named Avian who is 13 years old.  He is not in the best household situation with his parents, it's not the type of house you want to see a young boy raised in.  It is not a great household and it appears he doesn't have much posit...

In our 1/2 day of work today we all finished the back of our roofs and are close to finishing the front. All of us should be done tomorrow morning or early afternoon and then we will be ready to start on another house.  The forecast tomorrow is sunny (not cloudy...) with a high of 100 degrees with temperatures rising quickly from the early morning.  Lots of water will be drank tomorrow! This evening we went to a park to hang out and read some letters from our beloved Homefront Warriors.  Then we went to get some dinner at firehouse subs.  When we pulled in it began to rain...shocker, rain on our evening off, 3 years running!  We waited it out for a little bit, called the Speedpark, and decided that it wasn't going to happen....again.  So it was off to Dave and Busters to play lots of games.  Afterwards we went to the Cookout to get milkshakes, they have 40 flavors, and they were delicious!!  Then it was back to the church to hang out a little and ...

 It was another beautiful day in Charlotte, well, sort of...it was a beautiful day if you call 92 degrees with high humidity beautiful ;)  But like always our kids were troopers and made the best of it, neither the het nor humidity can stop them from being the hands and feet of Christ.  At all of our sites today we got the back of the roof shingled, tore off the front, and put the underlay down on the front.  Tomorrow we will begin shingling the front and hopefully putting on our finishing touches tomorrow or early Thursday.  We have 8 crews this week and 12 roofs, so far it would appear the kids are up to the chanllenge!  Tomorrow is only a half a day of work and in the afternoon each church can plan their own activities.  We plan to go to Wal-Mart or Lowes and buy a gift for each of our homeowners, go to a park to read letters from our Homefront Warriors (thank you!), eat dinner at Firehouse subs, get ice cream and weather permitting go to the Speedp...

6am breakfast...that's right...6 AM breakfast.  We left the church around 7:15am and drove approximately 30 minutes to our sites.  This year all of our sites are close to each other and within a couple minutes walking distance.  All crews got shingles removed from the back of the house, wood replaced, underlay down, and shingles started.  Typically we are not this far on day one - the kids are kicking it this year!  All of our youth worked well today and seemed tired tonight.  Tomorrow we wake up and do it all over again... Tonight during worship Justin spoke about the story of Miriam (Moses' brother) from Exodus 2:1-10.  At this time the Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians. When having children the midwives were told to let Hebrew girls live, but if they delivered a boy they were told to kill it.  The midwives didn't listen - they told Pharoah that the Hebrew women are vigorous and give birth before they arrive.  Then came the decree to ...

We have arrived! Yesterday we enjoyed some DELICIOUS pizza and fireworks from downtown Wythville Virginia.  The kids (and big kid Mark) went swimming to burn off some energy too!  Sunday morning we talked about working together as one body and focused on scripture from 1 Corinthians 12:12-22.  We each wrote affirmations for each other on a paper to show the many different attributes in our group.  Working together doesn't require everyone to have the same skills, way of doing things, or the same mindset.  Not being able to do something that someone else is able to do doesn't mean you aren't as good as them.  Diversity with unity is possible, in fact - it's how the church was designed.    The turning point in the scripture is v. 18 - "But God..." after that phrase everything changes.  If we don't work together we are like a body with a broken arm or leg or head injury. We found out that we will all be doing roofing this year. The total number ...