Hope to see you tomorrow night at Impact and ReFuel!

Please don’t hate me, but I have gone crazy without you and needed to entertain myself. So, one day we played office baseball as a staff (even Betsy) and today we played spank the tiger. We only played twice because I know the LSU Tiger is a delicate flower and he needs to be handled gently.

Enjoy the video.

Love,

Jacob

For a lot more pictures from the week, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/micahcating. You probably won’t recognize many of the people in the photos, as our Tallowood group is divided up among several crews. All of our students are making new friends from all around the country!

Stay tuned – More to come!

Our group, the Saw Teeth, pretty much painted the entire time. We got most of the house painted and were just waiting on the paint for the trim (which didn’t show up until late morning Tuesday).

Most of us collapsed when we arrived back at camp and took naps until dinner at 6:00. I actually squeezed in another power nap after dinner AND before worship. During worship we praised the Lord and sang our hearts out. We talked about how to be a follower of Christ or a disciple instead of a Christian. All in all we had a very productive and life-changing day.

-Brittany I.

We are in Shreveport, Louisiana staying at Camp Bethany. There are seven Tallowood students and three adults. While we’re here, we’ll be working on several different job sites painting, building, roofing and working on other construction projects.

Before church this morning, we split up into our work crews. We are each on a crew with one or two other people from Tallowood, plus youth and leaders from churches from all over the Southeast.

After church, we drove to our work sites and met with the people we’ll be serving this week. We also had the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood and tell other people what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

Pray that this week will be an amazing experience for our students, exposing them new ways to serve others in the name of Christ. Pray that each of us will have an opportunity to share Christ with someone at our work sites. Pray that we will not be discouraged by the heat, but instead be encouraged by the amount of lives we will be able to touch!

More to come soon! You’ll hopefully be hearing from the students as the week progresses, and we’ll post as many pictures as possible!!

One of our groups got to go downtown and serve breakfast at Waystation, a ministry of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church, that reaches out to the homeless of Houston. It was quite an experience. On Monday (the first day of HP&L), we took donations from all of the HP&L participants so that we could buy socks to donate to Waystation. Apparently socks are a big need for the homeless. Anyway, we were able to buy more than 200 pairs of socks on Monday and we dropped them off on Wednesday morning as we arrived to serve. By the time we left two hours later, all but three or four pairs of socks had been given away. During our time at Waystation, our students got to prepare plasticware and napkins, serve grits and sweets, pour grapejuice, collect trays, scoop and deliver peanut butter and jelly to the serving table, distribute goods at the needs closet, and do anything else we could to help. It really was an eye opening experience as we saw a small part of Houston’s estimated 10,000 homeless people get to receive a hot meal and enjoy a place to rest. It was powerful!

After working at Waystation, some of our students went to serve at Medical Bridges to sort and box medical supplies that are sent overseas. It was another great day of counting, separating, and organizing. Another group of our students got the privilege to help at MAM (Memorial Assistance Ministries). Here, our students, made care packages, hung and organized clothes, managed the jewelry counter, sorted hangers, and even ripped newspapers in half (these would later be used to pack breakables).

pretty much every job we were given was completed by the time we left on Wednesday. It is awesome that we were able to help this great church that is having such a huge impact on their community. All the blisters, splinters, and itchiness were worth it!

After three days of hard work, we all met back at the Xchange to hang out, rest, and share our stories. It was a great week where God gave us many opportunities to help those in our community. Now, as we head back to normal life, we are reminded that God doesn’t call us to only serve others while we are on a mission trip. Instead He calls us to follow Christ’s example and live a life of service to others.

Philippians 2: 3-8
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death-
even death on a cross!

Click here for a full album of pictures from HP&L Day 3!