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Our home church has just finished their second week here at Windermere and it has been a wonderful reminder of family and church community from Texas. Their week was composed of construction-work in the mornings, with a short beach trip after lunch, and VBS in the evenings, with devotions before lights out.
There is a noticeable level of maturity with these high schoolers, even though many of them are still young, they worked very well together and served one another the whole week long. We had two team members from last week’s Frisco team stay over for an extra week: Ms. Barbara and Jenny Parks. They provided a sense of continuity between both teams and it was great to spend the extra time with them both.
We are praying that Jenny will become our next missionary from our church, and Ms. Barbara served as the school nurse for all 14 days, and we definitely (or unfortunately… depending on your perspective) needed her help. These two ladies were such a big help over the last two weeks, and it feels a little lonelier now that they’re gone.
Let me tell you, this youth team can WORK. They painted and replaced shutters, they hand mixed almost 40 bags of cement (without a mixer… hand-mixing… think about that!), and they painted our rooftops. We even had the two boys paint the entire boys dorm roof top in 1 morning, with 3 coats of paint! Two of the girls Liz and Sarah worked on the shed and in 1 day set all the hurricane clips on the rafters (even though one of them smashed her finger with a hammer… see I told you we needed Ms. Barbara). I was so thankful for all the work this team accomplished in only working their mornings this past week.
After some local beaches and R&R it was off to VBS where we partnered with a local church to host their first ever Vacation Bible School. Some of the local church ladies brought out snacks and punch and helped with the event, and all the FBC youth did a great job. As is always the case, the Frisco youth came away from their VBS week with their hearts tied onto many of these little Bahamian children. Many brought Bibles for the children and they would write little notes to them and present them with their Bibles, it was a special time of ministry.
We had a wonderful week of serving our Lord together. I was very thankful for their ministry to me during their visit. One night they all gathered around me and laid hands on me and prayed for me and our ministry here on Eleuthera. Then at the end of the week they all took up a freewill offering to give to Emily and I, and made me swear not to spend it on the school or fuel. What a blessing they have been!
I also want to give special thanks to all the adults on the team, they have been a huge encouragement. To the Kims and Steven for all the meaningful conversation and friendship, and especially to Chris Hurt. He and I served on staff at FBC before we were sent over to Eleuthera, and I’ve been wanting him to come and see the ministry here for years. It was a huge blessing to have him come and spend a week serving together again.