Hey everyone,

Last night Tessa posted a blog about her group and Molly's group, so for those of you with students in my group (Austin, Jenna, Haley, Kayla: but she was with Tessa's group yesterday because of her foot, Andrew, and Laurel) I wanted to update you on what we did yesterday too!

Everyday each team has two different ministry times... one morning ministry time and one afternoon ministry time.  Yesterday morning we worked on Granny Coopers house (the pastor of our host church's mother) and it was very difficult, but rewarding.  All of us spent time scraping paint off of the house and it's tough work, but we felt like we were serving not only her, but the Lord.  After 3 hours of that, we had lunch and then headed out for our afternoon ministry. 

The afternoon ministry was my team heading over to a local thrift store/food pantry/education center.  They really just needed us to serve in any area they asked.  So we ended up starting off unloading trucks and filling up some of their coolers with food that was being delivered.  After that, we headed down to the basement (which the supervisor said hadn't been touched in the 3 years they had occupied that location) and we organized and cleaned.  There were boxes to be moved, trash to be taken out, and cases to be organized.  Sometimes whenever you do this kind of work it seems like it can be insignificant, but we were quickly surprised when Barbara (our supervisor) explained that what she couldn't get done in 3 years, we took care of within in 1 hour!  She was overwhelmed and was grateful that we could serve her as well as their community. 

This has been an amazing week so far and God has done many things through our students and church.  We were blessed and excited at the opportunity and we're excited to see how God will use us today! 

Thank you for your prayers and we'll try to send out more updates later this evening.

Pastor Sam