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This past week has been our second mission team for the year, and our second “first-time” team. Our standard churches have all reserved their week for this coming summer, but we’re thankful to have these opportunities to involved these new organizations and churches in the work God is accomplishing through their service here at WHS.
However, this past team was no unknown group. They came from one of our very own teacher’s home churches. And another connection was their leader was one of my good friends from back in Seminary at Dallas, Nate Turner. Nate and I used to play intramural basketball together during our days on campus. What a joy to have that relationship rekindled as he led the group to Eleuthera.
The West Cobb church group was a primarily youth driven team, but they came ready to work. The main task for the week was pouring the new foundation for the cottage. This meant 3 days of prepping and 1 day of pouring. While the few boys on the team were helping with the construction, the girls traveled to the local schools for ministering to the young people in each settlement. They had skits and testimonies and just a word of encouragement for all the children. But then once they got back from one kind of ministry they jumped right in and started work on the next… more construction.
I regret to say that I had more of a difficult time with the foundation that I had originally planned. We had set our distances for the pour at 2” all around. However, when the truck came, instead of pea gravel in the mix he had 3/4” crushed rock. This level of density caused our forms to burst out from 2” to 8” – it was very difficult work and frustrating. The consequence of this was that we ran out of cement long before we were finished. The cement truck would have to come back. Yet, I had only planned one day for the cement pour. The next day was Friday – the team’s free day.
These high schoolers were not going to let the completion of the project be deterred by their free day. Along wit Nate, they all elected to stay and help me pour the remainder of the foundation on the next day. When the truck arrived, he had pea gravel in this batch and instead of wrestling with the mix for 5 hours like the day before, we were literally finished in 20 minutes!
Although I’m also not super pleased with the quality of the pour (we had to meld the two pours together and our levels aren’t perfect), I am happy that the floor is in and ready to go. West Cobb church was such an encouragement to us. We also received an unexpected blessing. One of their leaders is now following the Lord to apply and come to serve here at WHS! Please keep Sarah in your prayers as she is presently going through the process of support raising and paperwork for teaching in September.