Parting was such sweet sorrow

This morning we said our goodbyes, loaded up, and headed out a few minutes after 8. We will miss our new friends but are ready to see our families. The border crossing went without incident (even I got through w/ no problems). Many traffic delays led to us not getting to Hershey park until 6 but we still had a great time. A brief rain shower thinned out the crowd and left our group to get in tons of riding. The hotel had a problem w/ our rooms so it took a while to get settled. We will load the vehicles again at 8 and set sail toward Knoxville. If timing works the way it did on the way up here, we should arrive some time around 6 or 7. Will is sick so please pray for him. It will be a long ride tomorrow if he doesn't get to feeling better. Thanks to all those who followed the blog and a final apology to parents who didn't see pictures of their children. I attempted last night to add pictures and the internet kept cutting out and I simply didn't have the patience to stay up until it worked right. Peace to you all.

almost loaded and ready to head south

not much to tell about today. we went to the market this afternoon after sleeping in. then we went to the royal canadian mounted police sunset ceremony. it was AWESOME! the vehicles are loaded with everything except our bedding and our overnight bags. it will be sad leaving our new friends. it will be sad to not be together in a couple of days (yes i know that i'm weird for enjoying being w/ this many kids for so long). but we will be glad to be in a place where our cell phones can be used normally and where we can be back with our family and friends. thanks to everyone for following the blog this week. the notes from home have been great. i am going to sit here and do a few pictures so that all parents can finally see their babies. i apologize again for not getting more up. time seems to fly when you have no sleep. i will post one last time from pennsylvania tomorrow and then i will keep the blog going with updates about our missions involvement at the church. peace to you all. it's been a fun week eh?

it is finished

our work has been completed. we had great worship experiences today but we missed all of you being a part of it. one of the community leaders was at the friday service as well as this morning. he told jeff that he would be talking to the pastor more about christianity. what a blessing to know we have had a small impact. we have been told that the mayor of ottawa has asked about our group because he has heard about what we were doing both in the community and in the church. the service this morning began with baptism and ended with the congregation giving us gifts. we enjoyed a cookout with the congregation and we are now about to go swimming. we are all tired but i think everyone feels good about all the work we have done. Praise the Lord for all of our experiences. tomorrow we will relax and enjoy more of the city and tuesday we will load up and begin our journey home. we look forward to seeing you and sharing more stories. i apologize for not having posted more pictures but i seem to keep being too tired to take more time in the evenings. i will do my best to put some more up tonight. grace and peace to you all.

another day

thanks to everyone for their comments. we enjoy every night reading them as a group. gary rochelle, you have set the bar high. we look forward to the next installment. this morning started very early for some as we began working at a yard sale at 7:00. Others got up a little later and got back to work. Lots of the projects were finished up today. Some of the group spent a while walking around the neighborhood handing out information about the church. tomorrow we will be worshiping with these congregations. the boys and the 3 girls who sing will be attending a worship service at the anglican church at 9 a.m. the rest will join us for worship at eastview baptist at 11:00. as you pray for us please remember us as we lead worship a final time. we have been blessed to have a couple of the youth from here hang out with us today as well as one of the youth leaders. we visited the parliament building today and also another great landmark of the town, the mall. everyone is tired. everyone could use a lot more sleep than we're getting ready to have. but everyone is keeping a good attitude and working hard. God has blessed us. We hope God is blessing this church. And we hope that God has been blessing you this week. goodnight all.

evening has come

worship has just finished and the team is downstairs having a birthday party for jessica and devan. worship tonight was awesome for me. we heard three of our own share their testimonies. karen, julie and erin all talked about how they have experienced God in their own way. the dramas were excellent and all pointed toward each person needing to follow Christ. it is so great to worship with this group of youth. we got the refrigerator today and had a little down time as i mentioned earlier. we have another church member who is fixing us shrimp and pasta tomorrow night. wish you were here with us to experience what God is doing. peace to you all.

afternoon blog

Howdy folks. Today has been a little slower. Some jobs have been finished. We have practiced for the worship service and are simply taking some time to relax. Before long we will go shower and get ready for worship. One of the church members has bought us pizza for dinner. After worship we will have a birthday party for devan and jessica. wish you all could be here. everyone seems to be feeling ok today. more pictures and blogging later.

More pictures

A fun filled visit to the Inuit community. The kidshad fun playing games, beating and dancing with the cultural drums, and modeling the traditional dress.

inuit community and work update

greetings folks. our trip is basically halfway over. today we've had a few recover from their headaches that had bugged them. a few have sore throats from the possible allergens. we went this morning to the inuit community and learned a lot. we heard from a lady who lived in an igloo. we saw some of our folks try to play the inuit drums. we spent some time listening throat singing which was quite amazing. some of the group went to help the community center again while others worked more on the projects at church. today was the first day with the group on the scaffolding having harnesses. they enjoyed having an extra annoyance up there. a lot of the projects seem to be coming together and we can see the end in sight. the refrigerator went out today so since we had budgeted well and weren't spending as much as we thought we have purchased a new refrigerator for the church. the pastor keeps telling me how amazed he is at the groups willingness to be helpful. tomorrow we will be working with a new community campaign and working on more of the projects. it's been a long day of blessings. today is jessica's 16th birthday. we went out to eat at the byward market place tonight. fil had a lady about sit in his lap. a great time was had by all. sad day that michael jackson died. we saw shirts in the market with his death date on it! dang! we will be singing thriller tomorrow night at the worship in remembrance of him. just kidding! goodnight all. i will try to put up some pictures. the kids are enjoying getting messages from home so keep posting comments.

great days

folks, the trip has been amazing so far. we really appreciate the opportunity to come here. the church people have been so gracious and even though we get frustrated at times, everyone is getting along and doing well. parents, your children are cooking, cleaning, and being generally good. we miss you guys and will be excited to see you but sad to have the trip end. i hope to keep up with the blogs now that the internet is fixed. i passed on all of your messages to the kids so feel free to keep them coming.

worship service

tonight's service was great. i haven't mentioned before but the church does not have air conditioning. the sanctuary was very warm but we had a great time. the band did well and the music was great. great participation from the congregation. only a handful from eastview but all that were here were blessed. drama went well, slideshow worked, and video worked like it was supposed to. it's great to hear voices of the congregaton raise to the rafters praising god. 2 more services to go! we ended with i saw the light tonight and it was a blast. sorry for the rambling thoughts but i'm trying to get as much info on as possible before heading to bed. tomorrow starts earlier than usual. we are going to an inuit community to learn about them.

work projects

third time trying this post. yesterday we sent fil to home depot to get some things with his counterpart from here. they spent 3 hours gone so we decided to start a new project. we assembled 5 levels of scaffolding that goes up about 30 feet. jessica, jasmine, andrew, leslie, will and chad all helped to assemble the stack. chad is afraid of heights but phyllis, he survived and did great. we have done a good bit of painting windows, working on flooring, and started a new flower bed in front. we have begun to paint the front door and have lots of other projects in the works. we will post pictures hopefully tonight. some sunburns, some cuts and scrapes but all are safe. more work to come tomorrow.

National House of Prayer

Yesterday was a great great great day! We started out our day by going to the National House of Prayer. The ministry there is to pray for the country and for the governmental leaders. We got a brief introduction to their ministry and then went to their prayer room for a time of worship and prayer. We sang some worship songs with their leaders and some visitors who were in the room. The three ladies had been there for an hour praying for us. One of the ladies was jumping up and down during our songs. She was probably around 70 years old. She was so excited about God. After hearing lots of stories about how prayers have been answered we headed out, leaving Jeff, Cheyenne, Kate, David, and Will to do some work. They painted the handrails and some flower pots. They started to talk about how they would really like a coke and Fran, the director's wife, walked out with cokes for them. Prayers work and it was great to see people that spend their life praying for their nation. Maybe we should pray more often for our leaders, whether we like them or not.

Apology

Greetings folks! The internet has finally been fixed!!!!!!!!! Sorry for the lack of info. I will spend a good bit of time tonight online telling stories and posting some pictures. We are safe and we have had a great time. We need to have our group debriefing time and then I will get back on in order to post more. Love you guys and miss you.

Safe in Ottawa

We are tired. We are safe. We got here about 5:45 and the church had fixed us dinner. We didn't have to go out to eat like we thought we were going to have to. The girls got unloaded and the guys eventually got our stuff across the road to the anglican church. We ended up showering in the wrong spot but didn't know until we were partially done. OOPS. We know where we're gonna shower tomorrow so all is well. The Pastor and the church have been very welcoming. No one seems to be ill. Tomorrow will be long given that we won't get much sleep. Pray that we will find ways to spruce up the church so that the community will be drawn to it. Pray for the team that we will be ok with the things that don't work out perfectly. We will begin practice for the worship services tomorrow. We will work at the National House of Prayer tomorrow morning and basically at the church tomorrow afternoon. If you have messages for your children post them and I will pass them along. I have to get off so the guys can head across the road to our sleeping location. Thank you to all those that helped us to get here. I hope we will represent those that sent us well. Goodnight folks.

In Safe for the night

Howdy folks. Thanks to everyone for such a great service this morning and for everyone who wished us well as we left. We have arrived at the Hotel Carlisle for the evening in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The ride was fairly uneventful. Our big bus had a slight air conditioner problem in that it was condensing all over our luggage but we solved that problem by taking the caps off of the drain lines. The van has been running warm and the crew in it has been rolling with the windows down so they have been a little warmer than those of us in the bus. We plan to leave out of the hotel between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning. We got one extra room for the night so that Karen and Fil wouldn't have to celebrate their anniversary in different rooms. Those in the bus were graced by Courtney and Jessica singing and then dancing up and down the aisle. I will do my best to post as soon as we get to the church in Ottawa. Everyone is safe and seemingly happy. Peace from Pa.

Eastview Baptist Church's Website

Just thought you might be interested to see the church website from Eastview and their comments about our trip. Also I received an email from Pastor Santos tonight and they told me that they would be praying for our team at the time of our departure. Thanks for everyone being there tonight and for helping to make this trip a reality.

http://www.eastviewbaptistchurch.net/english.html

Preparing and Praying

With only 238 hours left until we load the vehicles and leave from Ball Camp Baptist Church there is still a lot going on. There will be 35 participants on this trip (as long as the last one can finish jumping through passport hoops). 27 of those going on the trip are youth, 2 are college students, and 6 are adults. Several of the leadership teams have already begun to meet. The music team and drama team have set up the worship services for the trip. The ministry support team met to discuss the meals and other jobs that they have. The renovation team leader has begun to look at what projects will be done first. Next week we will begin the process of packing and attempting to remember everything that needs to go. Saturday night, June 20, we will pack the vehicles and eat together. Finally, Sunday morning we will commission our team during worship and leave immediately after worship. We hope to arrive in Ottawa, Canada, around 4:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon. These are the preparations that are ongoing.

Several weeks ago we began a prayer emphasis. Along with the congregations at Eastview Baptist Church and St. Margaret's Anglican Church of Ottawa, Canada, we have been praying for this trip. Here are the ways that you can partner with us and pray for the trip, both before we go and while we are gone.
- Pray for the logistics of the trip. Pray that of the arrangements that ahve been made will work out and athat those still being made will come together.
- Prayer for those who will be left behind. Pray for the families that will be missing their loved ones and pray that Ball Camp Baptist Church will be dilgent in supporting the team in prayer.
- Pray for the community (Vanier) and churches (Eastview Baptist Church and St. Margaret's Anglican Church) where the team will be serving. Also pray for the pastors of those congregations (Pastor Santos and Canon Fairlie).
- Pray for the individual team members. Pray that they will have a servant attitude and that each individual will be blessed for giving of themselves.
- Pray for the safety of the team throughout the trip.

As we prepare and as we pray, may God bless the efforts and continue to prepare the way for us.