Mission Journey

So I forget if I have mentioned this or not on here but Blake and I both serve with junior high students at our church. We have done it for the last 2 years and started because we wanted to serve together. I thought that junior high kids would be a good place to start because we have the time (no kids, etc.) and we are closeish to their age.

I started with 6th grade girls and he started with 7th grade boys. Now my girls are going into 8th grade and his boys are going to be freshman. We have really enjoyed our time with our kids and have learned A LOT. We have learned about ourselves, working with teenagers, and most of all, our Lord. The plan is to continue with these kids until they graduate high school. It has been really amazing getting to know these awesome kids and continuing to build relationships with them and watching them grow and mature.

Wow, that was a long intro! I doubt you would expect anything less from me! :) So last year I was able to go on a mission trip with my girls and other girls and boys their age to downtown Houston. It was a really neat experience, both helping the students learn and also learning myself. So this summer, I made sure I had time to go on a mission trip and encouraged Blake to take off work to come also. It was a sacrifice since Blake only gets 2 weeks vacation but I am glad he came and in the end, he was too. We were hoping to be able to work with one of the age groups we normally work with but we were needed with the 6th graders (going to 7th next year). We accepted the challenge and it actually worked out better for the both of us. The 6th graders go out for the day and come home at night while the 7th and 8th grade trips stay overnight. I am currently working on grad school so it was nice to be able to come home and work from home instead of a bunk bed like last year. :)

So for the last 5 days we have been going down to the 3rd Ward in Houston and working with an organization called Generation One.

They are an amazing organization that works in the 3rd Ward building relationships and helping the next generation realize their true potential. I could go on and on but you can check out their website linked above if you want to know more.

So we would meet at the church at 8:00, eat breakfast, make our lunch, clean up, and have our devotional time.

Making sandwiches

Eating breakfast

Devo time

Around 9:15 we would load the van, and yes, I was the driver of the 12 passenger van. :)

My copilot :)

The van!

We would get to Generation One around 10sh, tell them we were there and then head to our site.

Our fearless leader Stephen checking on stuff before we go to the site. I like that you can see me in the mirror. :) I'm so artistic!

The kids like to say that I was a "nervous driver". I did try very carefully and did hit the curb a couple times but I promise I wasn't that bad! This is me being a "nervous driver" :)

I promise the kids are acting!

So we would work from 10-12 eat from 12-1 and then work from 1-3. The first day we worked on painting a house. There had been other groups there before us so we were working on finishing up their work. We also spent the morning of day 2 there and then moved to Ernest's house the afternoon of Day 2. Ernest was a very nice man in his 60s? We worked on scraping paint off his house and then repainted the entire outside of his house. It was a pretty tall house and unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of before. There were 9 kids and 6 adults and we spent about 14 hours on his house.

And this is where I need to end this post! I will hopefully be able to post the rest of the pictures tomorrow!