We are flexible

Hello Parents, Friends, and Supporters.
Do you remember on day 1 of this blog before we left for New York?  We were trained to SURF on this mission.  The F stands for Flexibility and today we lived it.

Team 1 was all ready to paint the ceilings of the home that they worked at yesterday.  And when that was finished they were ready to rebuild the floor which was damaged by being underwater during Hurricane Sandy.  The plan was set, the team was assembled, and in route.  But... the supplies weren't available.  Now no one said this, but I think it crossed their minds, "um the beach is only 3 blocks in that direction maybe we could just go and..."  But thankfully there was more work for us to do instead ;-)  So Team 1 had to drive across town to a church which also suffered flood damage.  But this church needed help from us for a different kind of reason, they wanted to make a heavy donation to the Evangel Revival Church, which hosts Rebuild New York, and they needed our hands to do that.  The church making the donation only had 12 inches of flooding in  their sanctuary, so their floors were destroyed, but their pews and especially the pew cushions were not damaged.

They were donating their pews to Evangel Revival church which had 4 feet of flooding and lost everything in the building.  Team 1 really appreciated that the church making the donation could have sold their pews for thousands of dollars, but instead were helping out Evangel Revival church.  They weren't looking out for #1, they were looking out for who to help, who had it worse off than they did.  During our group devotion time after dinner all of the kids on Team 1 shared how seeing that impacted them.  [Note to self:  Hmmm, maybe the me and the kids are learning something from the people we came to help....just a thought ;-) ]

Once Team 1  loading, moving, and unloading the pews for Evangel Revival church, they were asked to help clean up the outside of the church by weed-eating and picking up all of the glass that was broken in the lawn.  Evangel Revival church is beginning to look like a different place.

I asked Team 1 what they enjoyed the most about today and they said to things; (1) seeing the giving heart of the church that donated the pews
(2) the bonding and laughing that occurred in the van while they drove all over Long Island.  In fact they were still laughing for 20 minutes after they got out of the van.  It is good to see the kids laughing together after along day of hard work.

Team 2
We had high hopes of accomplishing a lot today.  We planned to do som much work that we gained two members from team 1, Luke and Liam.  Yesterday we insulated all of Regina's basement.  So we should be able sheetrock a lot of it today.  But remember today's theme, Flexibility.

The day started off very nicely.  After we arrived Regina, the single mother that we are helping, came downstairs with 3 electric fans in her arms.  She knew that we were hot in her basement and she wanted to help us stay comfortable.  Regina also brought us a Long Beach community activity guide, because she wanted us to have some fun while were here.

I will just tell you that things didn't go as planned.  We did put up some sheetrock though.  And everyone got to shoot the nail gun and the staple gun, and run the cross-cut saw.  Everyone also got to screw in drywall.

So here are some pictures from our busy day.

At evening group devotion time, I showed the following video, Beth Moore's Hairbrush story.  It drives home the point that we may plan how we want to serve Jesus, but he has a better plan for us.  Enjoy it is pretty funny.
Beth Moore's Hairbrush story