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Marty and his wife Marilyn served at Windermere for 6 years as dorm parents and since returning to the states they have led countless trips back to the school and have been investing thousands of dollars in seeing the school grow and flourish. Their church, Union Park Baptist, has been a major contributor over the years and this year has been no different.
I had essentially one task that I desired to see finished this week, which was installing the 2×8 rafters on the shed and prepping the sheeting. But the Union Park team came with so much more in mind. They literally were working on a half dozen different jobs all at once and without any youth or VBS it was a week focused on work and working hard for the Lord.
Last year they experimented in renovating the school’s lighting system from the long fluorescence ballasts to individual low wattage fluoresces. However, this is no small task! It took a team of 3 men working the ladder and electrical components and a team of 4 ladies working to rewire each unit for the entire week to refurbish 3 classrooms.
They also redid our office area and now we have lights. I know it doesn’t sound very existing, but for those of us who have been teaching here without any visible response from the light switch, it is extremely satisfying to have the room flooded with light at the flick of a switch… welcome to the modern world!
But this team didn’t stop with the light switches. They also cataloged and cleaned our library (another task continuing over from last year). They painted the entire hallway of the boys dorm. They renovated the boys bathroom and shower (a HUGE blessing). They had 2 IT specialists stripping down the old computer lab and then resurrecting some old machines and prepping some new ones. And on top of all this there are a least a dozen other little things that all got accomplished.
It must be said that Union Park’s team doesn’t mess around, they come ready to work and not only give of themselves and their time, but also to give financially to the building of our summer projects. They almost doubled the amount requested for construction and continually purchased items out of their own pockets. What a huge blessing during this financially challenging time.
To top it all of (pun intended) they pushed themselves the extra mile and all but completed the very end of all the plywood sheeting on top of the shed… an entire step beyond where I had planned for this week! God has been so good to us to give us a church like Union Park. I made many new friends and I hope to see them again on a trip in the future (it was a lot of fun to talk “nerd” with the computer guys… good times!).
Everyone on the team was very loving and serving. We really had a lot of fun together and it was amazing to see how God gave us the exact right people for the exact right jobs. Even when the power went out in the girls dorm and we had people to fix it and no one got impatient or upset. The cooperation and collective love for each other helped this week become the most profitable for jobs completed so far.
Their week is a great example of what can get done when everyone pulls in a unified direction and serves one another. I can hardly wait for next year!