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Day 1 of Mission Trip
6/27/2011
For mission trip photos please go to our Flickr account which are also linked on the main church website page (at the bottom)
Day One of our Mission Retreat (and part of our arrival) -- Lily and Shelby
Last night, we arrived at approximately 5:20pm. Upon arriving, we were sent to our dorms which are in the Africa building. (We learned that the camp used to train missionaries that would go off to help in other countries, such as Africa, Latin America, Asia, etc.) We were happy to find that each room had a ceiling fan, which helped A LOT with the heat, though the weather here doesn’t seem to be as bad as it is lower down in North Plainfield à Mwa ha ha ha!!! We got here just in time for dinner yesterday and were able to eat together, and then meet some of the directors who organized the programs that we would be taking part in. Rick met us in our dorm’s lobby to give us a tick orientation and give us some history about the camp as well as the camp’s reasons for doing what they do. Afterwards, we all went to bed, but we couldn’t go to sleep right away because we were too busy having conversations through the walls.
The next morning, we all woke up and took showers. Then, we went to breakfast together. We had eggs, croissant egg sandwich, oatmeal, fruit, muffins, and tons of other good stuff. After breakfast, we went to morning worship. In the beginning of the worship we did ten minutes silence before the Psalm forty two. After the service we met Fernando, our contractor and his assistance, Jason. There we saw the format of the new building. After learning about what demolition had to be done, we got to work. The work was hard. So we split into two teams; boys working with the garage and the girls working on the vineyard.
The arches in the vineyard needed to be taken down, so our team, consisting of Jasmine, Lily, Shelby and Shannan, with help from John, Jason, and Chris, cleared away all of the old, rotting vines so that the also rotting pillars and supports could be taken down. There were a lot of bugs, so it was a job that required much caution so as not to disturb any big spiders or anything, but we managed to get out job done before we even took a break for lunch! (Beating the boys by a long shot).
Jake, Michael, Rob, and Benji worked on clearing out the garage/workshop/whatever it was and filled up a good amount of the dumpster that was brought in for all of the junk to go in to. Strangely enough, they found two sleighs, some windows, old automated piano scrolls, (the ones with the cuts in ‘em so that the piano’s keys can play), fireplace materials, a couple big fish tanks, (WHICH I REALLY WANT!!!! –Shelby), a refrigerator, and a lot of other random things. It was kind of weird to be digging around through trash and junk, but thank goodness we had respirators, because at times, the dust was just awful, and Fernando said that there could be lead in the paint chips so it was a good thing that they had all of the materials that we would need. We were also the first ones to use the materials provided, (i.e. hard hats, respirators, etc.) so we don’t have to worry about them being misused or anything before we received them.
Overall, it was a very busy day, and it feels like we did a week’s work of demolition in a time frame of about seven hours, and we’re all tired and starving since no one felt like eating a big lunch today, but we’re looking forward to boating tomorrow in order to escape the heat of the day, and who knows. Maybe we’ll be done ahead of time and get a break à Haha. Not likely. See ya. ^^