Wednesday, August 14

Last night, Ray, Fred and Jane met with Stephen Ministers of Christ Lutheran Church.  Several cards from SAKLC members and the prayer shawls were given to be shared with congregation members in need.

In the morning, our teams are split in to two again.  Ray, Steve and Pastor Mark return to work on the flood home while everyone else leaves early to go to the Christ Lutheran Church.

Every morning when we arrive, we sign in to the volunteer book

and then Bill Graves of Mission Builders leads us in prayer.  The ELCA Mission Builders, as mentioned earlier, are leading the project at Christ Lutheran and Bill directs us everyday in what our work projects will be for the day. 
Five members of the team are working on building shelving for a storage room.  Rick and Noah are teaming on hanging drywall and building a ceiling in a hallway.  So this is where we all start today.

Our devotions as provided by Becky of Mission Builders focuses on the word "blessing" today.  Our hymn of the day is "We Are Called."  After the morning break, the Mission Builders gather for a picture. These are amazing, hard-working people who come from all over the country to build or in this case re-build churches.  They live in their own trailers from June - October.
On the ELCA website it says, "....while their hands provide housing for ministries, their hearts and voices share their faith and build up the body of Christ."  We are so thankful to be working alongside these people at Christ Lutheran Church.


Trailers where they live

Couples from the left:  Bob & Chris Risbery from Georgia

Mission Builders Team

Bob & Fern Neff from Texas
Bill & Becky Graves from Indiana
Steve & Carole Schenk from Maryland
Les & Jeanne Sitz from Texas

  

Pastor Maxfield in the sanctuary

The shelf builders

Miles a member for 30+ years

Pastor David Maxfield comes by today and we are able to speak with him about the excitement building for the growth of this church.  Nearly 40% of the church members were affected by the flood waters.  Many are still in the rebuilding phase themselves.  Having some parts of the church usable again will be a great relief because he knows God has a plan for this church within this growing community.   Another member, Miles, tells us how thankful he is for our volunteering to help them rebuilding their church.  By quitting time, the storage closet shelves are almost done on one wall.  A project that we hope to complete before we leave on Friday.  It is hard to believe we have already been working for three days.  Dinner tonight will be at Hope Village and there is some entertainment planned after our meal.  This will be our last night at Hope Village because Christ Lutheran Church will be having a pizza dinner tomorrow night.