Heaven Sent

Well we returned from our trip this weekend. It went pretty good. As good as can be expected from kids with short attention spans. :)

We headed south on Thursday afternoon loaded down in Marlin and Paula's van. The kids did great on the long 5 hour drive. When we arrived we got settled into our rooms. We were staying at an old school building. So the Pecks had a whole classroom to ourselves. And to our surprise we got the tricycle room! Wheee! The school used to house a head start preschool program which left behind some stuff.

Friday we descended upon a retired pastor's house, which the youth had been working on all week. Our job was to finish scrapping the old paint off and put 2 coats of paint on it. The kids worked for about an hour or so before the heat was too much and the novelty of painting wore off. Arielle and crew to the rescue. They took charge all the kids - 9, I think, while the parents kept on working.

After lunch we switched gears and went to the food packaging office. We assembled food packets that are distributed to disaster victims, orphanages, and poor across the world. Each kid had a job either measuring out food, weighing or sorting bags. We kept at it and packaged up 20 boxes of food. Way to go guys!

On to the next adventure - downtown ministry. We set up at a downtown park and began handing out hot dog dinners and making friends. We were able to feed quite a few people and encourage them as well.

On the way home I noticed the Kailyn was hot with fever so that began a bit of a "detour" for us. She ran a fever for a few hours that night and then slept really late. The next morning was painting again so Javin headed off with the crew and I stayed home with Kailyn. After her afternoon nap she seemed to be better.


In the afternoon we helped with a kid's outreach. A local church brought in a van load of kids and we played games and held a mini carnival for them. At the end we did a little program with them and fed them. Javin and I got to teach the kids dance. It all went good.

That evening we were scheduled to have group time at the school but that got rearranged as little Ben had an accident on the merry-go-round and broke his leg. He went to the hospital and had surgery to have it set that night. (They just got home today and are doing as good as can be expected.)

Sunday morning we packed everything up and headed in to town for church, then hit the road for the return trip. I must say, the trip was trying at times. Keeping track of both kids and dealing with their meltdowns and excitement was challenging. But overall they did okay and had a good experience.