We made it!

We survived the red-eye flight from Portland to JFK.  It was a bumpy, but non-eventful flight.  The kids were really excited when they saw the Empire State Building.  In the picture you can see it below the wingtip.  I do want to mention that, oddly enough, there were other people on the plane headed to New York, and several of those families asked us what we were going to New York to do.  We told them about our Sandy relief mission and the people were so thankful and grateful that these kids were giving up a week of their summer break to help the people of Long Island.  One of the ladies had tears in her eyes as she described the loss that her mom experienced during Sandy.  It was very humbling to hear how great the need is and how welcome our help is.

We were greeted outside the airport by the Forward Edge guys, Bob and Jeff, in their big white vans.

This is where the boys will be staying.  

Okay, this is more like it.  We needed to do a little redecorating to make it feel more like man barracks ;-)  We had to put the bunk-beds together which was a little bit of an experiment in trust.  Believe it or not it only took 2 hours to look this "lived in".

After we were all setup in our rooms we got to meet pastor Giovanni from our host church, and a Teen Challenge student who was working at the church.  This was really a highlight for me.  I could listen to Giovanni share and share about how God has and is working on the hearts and lives of people in Long Island.  God through the http://teenchallengeusa.com/ program.  It is a powerful program that is delivering hope and healing to people from all kinds of addictions and problems.  The creator of the program wrote a book documenting his first 5 years in New York developing the program.  It sounds powerful and I will be watching it.  The Teen Challenge student, Dan, briefly shared his life story with us.  Let me just say that if Jesus reached Dan, then no one is beyond His reach.  By the way, Dan was not a teen at all.  I believe he is in his 40's.  Teen Challenge is named for it's origin, which was for teens, now people of all ages benefit from this program.b

Now for something unexpected.  Usually mission trips are like this;  You pray, you arrive, you work, you pray some more, you work, somewhere in there you eat, then you do a fun excursion as you leave.  Due to our travel schedule we are starting our mission trip with a fun excursion, then we work and serve.  So our hosts took us to the beach.  Yes, that's right we are in New York and we went to the beach, the nice warm sandy beach.  See for yourselves.

 Panorama!

 Here comes a big wave.

 Run for your lives!

 Liam was really tired.  Can you tell?

 Steve and Jonathan at the beach.

 Rob and Christian.

 Most of the crew.  Four of us were riding the waves, see they are right behind us.  We had a really great time.  Thank you Bob, Jeff, and Chris!

Our dinner chefs for the evening were Halston, Luke, and Jonathan.  Really good burgers and hotdogs and beans, beans, glorious beans.

 Even a broken thumb and a cast couldn't keep Jonathan out of the warm Atlantic ocean.

Halston's head, now where did the rest of him go?

We finished the day with a worship time led by Andrew, Calli, and Nathan.  Thank you for leading us!

Then all the kids wanted to go on a reconiscence mission to the gas station down the street.  Many cans of Arizona sweetened ice tea and Pringles were reconiscenced :-)

The boys finished the evening by playing a game of basketball, while the girls played an intense game of cards.