Sardis Youth Summer Trips & Conferences

Day two is in the books!  We began our day over at James Boyce Park shoveling mulch around several trees.  We had several teams doing different things: scooping mulch into wheelbarrows, wheelbarrow moving crew, and a raking crew when the mulch arrived to them.  Everyone worked very hard and we busted out a dump truck full of mulch in only two hours.  The park rangers kept telling our middle school students that they were doing a much better job of moving the mulch than high school or college students.  Our group did a great job and I was very proud of them! After a brief lunch, we went to Walmart to purchase items for the USO (United Service Organization).  We were purchasing items to send to our troops and we made a great game of it with three criteria: 1. Closest to but not over $50, 2. Number of individual items, and 3. Number of unique items.  The ladies crushed the guys in the last two categories but the guys came in 7 cents under $50 while the ...

This morning, we began the Middle School Charlotte Mission Adventure with 13 youth.  We began by jumping into the stream our Youth Ministry has adopted and pledged to clean.  We gather up people's trash that had been thrown, blown, or washed down into the stream, helping to clean up God' creation. After stream cleaning, we cleaned ourselves a little bit and then headed to Crisis Assistance to work in the Free Store sorting clothes.  The Free Store is available to any Mecklenburg County resident once a month and they are allowed to pick out up to 30 free items of clothing.  Our youth helped to sort the clothes from things that are damaged or out of season into bins for men, women, and children.  These clothes will then be hung in the store for those in need. We played several games of laser tag and William dominated all three, placing number 1 in all of them.  Apparently, it is his world and the rest of us are just living in it when it comes to laser tag...

So those keeping score at home noticed that there was no blog post after Friday's work.  That is because the bestest leader ever, Adrian (me), forgot the power cord to the computer at home and the computer ran out of power, meaning no blog post.  Way to go, awesome leader! Anyway, Friday, we finished our work at David's house.  A couple of us worked in his bedroom to prepare and hang drywall on the ceiling and then we began mudding it.  Since the new drywall and the existing ceiling were of different thickness, we were trying to blend the two together.  Unfortunately, the mud we (mostly Barbara) were using was not fast drying, we could only do one coat to it. The rest of the gang finished painting the ceiling and making sure the exterior was complete.  The house looked very different from the way we found it and David was very appreciative. That afternoon, we beat the heat by watching "Toy Story 4" and then heading to the beach.  After a long, fu...

Thursday is here!  One more day of work on Mr. David's house and then we begin our trip home.  Today, we completely finished painting the exterior of the house.  We also did some impromptu tree trimming, mostly to prevent it from scratching the top of the church bus.  Again.  Mr. David was very appreciative of the tree trim that we were able to provide for him. We also painted the interior of his house, focusing on the kitchen (all the walls and the ceiling) and the ceiling in the living room where we patched it.  We hung the drywall on the ceiling of the bathroom and main bedroom.  We are far ahead of the schedule that the site supervisors had laid out for us so tomorrow should be a lighter day of work for us.  We will mud the ceiling, paint it, paint some walls, and finish our work around the house.  We have made a huge difference in the life of Mr. David and his house that he grew up in! After working, we headed to the beach again and ...

We were back at Mr. David's house this morning at 8:00 a.m. working hard.  We completely painted the exterior of his house, including all of the trim.  The house went from a bright pink to a nice sky blue in the matter of hours, with several youth and adults working to make sure it was done right.  While some people worked outside painting, Barbara and I (Adrian) patched a missing piece from the ceiling living room.  During the hurricane three years ago, there was massive leaking through the roof, forcing water to sit on top of the textured ceiling.  A very large chunk broke free and we had to build it up with joint compound before applying sand textured final product.  Barbara turned out to be a true pro at this job, having a smooth ceiling after building up with the compound before perfecting the technique to blend the new ceiling in with the old. Tomorrow, some of us will move inside to work on putting drywall as a ceiling in two different rooms (the b...

Song lyrics float through my head on a regular basis, which is quite ironic since I can't seem to carry a tune.  Well, today, the rain came down pretty hard at our worksite.  The title of this blog post kept playing in my head today as the rains came washing down on top of us.  Thankfully, the storm waited until almost 1:30 to begin falling, but we had to pack up early to avoid the thunderstorm. At the house, we continued to prepare the outside of the house for painting tomorrow, finished all of the soffit work, and finished the metal trim about the soffit.  We got pretty good at our jobs but we know we will be seeking some new ones tomorrow as we have mostly finished what we were working on.  We hope to begin painting the house tomorrow as well as begin some of the drywall work. After working hard this morning and briefly into the afternoon, we headed back to the church, where the youth put their heads down, "for just a minute," that turned into a several h...

Today we met Mr David, on whose house we began working.  The morning was bearable and strange enough it was cooler outside than inside our sleeping space as the AC was out all night.  (Spoiler alert: they fixed the AC today and we came home to a nice, cool place!)  We began by preparing the outside of the house for paint by scrapping away the loose paint.  What we thought was going to be a quick job turned into a several hour, several person job.  Everywhere the paint was peeling off the cinder blocks, we scrapped.  Unfortunately, that caused more and more and more paint to come off. After several hours in the Florida heat scrapping away, we were nowhere near finished.  We took a break for lunch and then got right back to it.  At around 2:00 p.m., we had to call it a day because we were all baked pretty good.  The good news is that we believe the house is pretty much ready to paint tomorrow, so we should be able to change it from a bright p...

After meeting at the church early in the morning (for a high school student during summer) (we met at 8:00 a.m.), we gathered on the church bus and headed out to Daytona.  Nine of us loaded up and will be met by two more in Florida. Our drive was very uneventful, which is the way we like it.  Because of this, we arrived an hour and a half earlier than anticipated, which is always a wonderful blessing.  What was not a blessing, though, was to find out that the AC in the church we are staying at went out earlier in the day.  It's hot in Florida.  It's hotter when there is no AC.  There is no air moving in the rooms and it has gotten pretty toasty for us.  Sweat therapy is good, right?  So far, no one is complaining about it and we have been told the AC repair guy will be out tomorrow morning, giving us hope of a nice cool room after a long, hot day of working. During the ride down, there was plenty of sleeping, listening to music, watching video...

It is almost time to being our summer trips and conferences through the Youth Ministry of Sardis Presbyterian Church.  We begin our adventures with a mission trip to Daytona, Florida to help rebuild houses damaged by storms. Our next adventure will be the three-day, two-night Charlotte Mission Adventure with middle school students, serving at six different locations.  Between serving dinner at Hospitality House, cleaning up a stream and a park, working at Crisis Assistance, and much more, these middle school students will learn that they can make a difference in the world and here in town. After a week of Vacation Bible School, the Middle School Montreat Conference is next up in July.  This will be our first year attending this conference at Maryville College in Maryville, TN.  This conference is run by the same people who run the Montreat Youth Conference our high school students attend and will be a wonderful way for our younger students to explore their faith....