1st project

The youth pastor with the other church that we were kind of grouped with for the weekend had made some contacts and we had several jobs set up.  We broke up in groups and started our morning after a great breakfast.  John and I ended up at an old Baptist Church working with some older gentlemen...when I say older, I mean 70 and up!  This particular church had not been harmed by the tornadoes but they had helped numerous people, housed people,housed workers, etc.  Apparently the number helped, housed, and ministered to was in the thousands...like over 25,000!  Their church building had been left without attention for quite sometime.  It needed scraping, painting, window work, cleaning, etc.  This was a hard job.  The paint on this old church had been there for a long time but the kids and three adults went to work scraping and sanding.  It was meticulous and monotonous work.  We painted and some of us had to stand on 12 ft ladders to reach.  We stayed there for about 5 hours.  The older men were so sweet and told us all kind of stories about people that had been hurt, homes destroyed, and belongings gone.  They wanted to feed us, so the pastor went home and grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and brought them back with chips, cookies, and fruit...the teens were super excited!  They were very forgiving of our poor painting skills.  What a nice group of men!