beulah missionary church and jasper umc

it's crazy to think week three is already over, and we have one more week until have the summer is over! everything has definitely gone by so fast.
i wish i was able to update this more, but i'm sure you can understand how busy everything gets. and never having internet at the lodge doesn't quite help. haha
anyways, this week's team was incredible. we had definitely a different dynamic, with more adults than youth, and one of our teams being just adults. this definitely allotted for some changes in our programming, but it worked out in the end! and it was kind of refreshing to hang out with older people all week. in college, you're always surrounded by people your own age, and at home you only hang out with people your own age, so every once and a while it's so nice to hang out with those older than you to change the atmosphere a bit.

this week, we worked on ms. allie's house, the one we will be at all summer long. she has the sweetest family, and is such a strong woman, and it was amazing getting to tell her we were starting on her house this week.
i think i wrote about it before, but ms. allie had been looking for help for over seven years, and arm was the first agency to finally help her out. a lot of her damage was from hurricane katrina, and it is just now getting taken care of.
this summer we will be working on her porches, roof, bathroom, and bedroom.
originally, all we had planned for this week was her back porch and starting on her bathroom.
this group seriously went above and beyond, and finished her back porch, demoed and redid her front porch, completely finished her bathroom, fixed the insulation underneath the house, and even painted the exterior. they had so much service to give to her, and it was amazing to see.

also, one thing to know about ms. allie, is that she has been living off of a generator since december. the electric company charged her almost triple for her bill one month, and she called to tell them about the wrong numbers, but they told her there was nothing they can do and that was what she owed them. so, she wasn't able to pay it, and they shut her power off. then, the next month, she got another bill from the electric company for a payment on the month she didn't even have power. so, she called again, but they told her that was still her outstanding payment to them, plus the added month's worth of power she didn't even have.
basically, she had to pay an enormous bill to get her power turned back on, that wasn't even the power she used, on top of another fee to turn it back on, to ever get her power back.
beulah, after already going above and beyond with their work, contacted their church and district and came up with the money to turn on ms. allie's power.
when the church told her that, she just began to cry. i wish there was a way to describe the moment, but it was definitely one of those step back kind of things. i even started crying and it wasn't even my power getting turned back on.
but the look on her face, and how first she looked up to the sky, and thanked God for bringing this group to her.
it was a moment i will never forget, and the moment that will keep me going through this summer and many stresses seem to pile up everyday.
this is what it's all about. this is what we are meant to do on this earth. love and serve others; give to others what we have and what they need. go above and beyond in everything we do. and have moments like this, all the time.
like i said before, this group just went above and beyond. and on the last day, i was talking to ms. allie and she was telling me how she was on the phone with one of her sons telling him all about what our group was doing. she told me that he said 'i hope that one day i will be blessed enough to meet the people that made my mother so happy'
and that was just such an awesome thing to here, and i hope beulah knows what a huge impact they made on ms. allie and her family, and that they should not take their work as something small.
their work was the start of bigger things. the start of love and hope in this family, and love in hope in the community.

also, one thing i forgot to mention was her family. she has three grandkids and one daughter who usually stay with her at her house.
these kids were so much help this week, always willing to do whatever jobs needed to be done, and so much fun to hang out with.
they are such great kids, with good manners, smiles, hugs, everything. and i know they can go far in life, and i will always keep them in my prayers.
john was telling me how he was talking to one of the kids, kevin, as they rode to the hardware store together. kevin is just 11 years old. john was just talking to him about what he likes to do, and what he wants to do when he's older. he was talking about how he likes baseball, but there's not really places to play around their town. and how when he gets older, he wants to do what we do, what arm does. and i was just thinking how amazing it would be for kevin to be the one we served, and then to one day serve others. God's power is limitless, and i know kevin is meant to exceed the limits he may have been born into.

finally, one more thing about ms. allie, is that she makes these incredible handcrafted ships. she uses matchsticks, each one which she lights individually to make a pattern, and creates the bottom of the ship. and then uses cloth to make the sails. her art is absolutely beautiful, and takes so much skill and time, and we are all working on finding a way to advertise for her ships so she can sell them like she hopes to.

overall, this work we was incredible, and will be one i need to remember to remind myself what it is i'm doing here in alabama and the purpose of my time here.

and finally, here are the pictures for the week :)

before bathroom:

before front porch:

before back porch:

after back porch:

starting some front porch demo:

ms. allie's beautiful ships:

front porch after (we're adding on the roof part with another team):

bathroom after:

also, john said girl could paint his nails for $20 in his pie jar. little did he know, they only put in $12... haha

the group:

finally, we said if the group raised a certain amount of money they could pie us all. and of course, they did. haha

hazelgreen umc and greystone umc

week 2 has come to a very quick end!
this week was a little more stressful than the last, with many quirks here and there, but we definitely pulled through and made it work!
the two teams we had this week were disaster relief teams, so their projects were coordinated through another church who is in charge of disaster relief for areas in alabama hit by the tornados.
our construction team worked with one of the churches to reshingle a roof, and the other team was on their own during the day doing clean up and removal of damage from the storm.
for the roof project, our construction staff was a little blindsided with information, and didn't have a chance to meet the family we were working for before the team got there because we had such a short amount of time to prepare (the team and project was added thursday of last week)
so our first day was a little different than most, trying to figure out more specifics of the project while the team was already there.
but, nonetheless, we got working on the roof and started reshingling it all!
at first, hazelgreen (the church we were working with on the roof) was a bit shy, and didn't talk to our staff that much. haha. but as the week went on, they definitely opened up and were very funny and entertaining. we played all kinds of silly games on the roof to keep us entertained, and talked a lot about random things. they definitely taught me some games i'm going to take home!
we did go through a lot of struggles this week with "behind the scenes" things, that of course aren't important right now, but i think it was definitely a lesson to learn with our staff!
and although we weren't able to work with greystone during the day, they were an awesome group and so fun to hang out with at night!

at first, this week was nothing like the amazing team we had last week, because saraland set the bar so high! but it all definitely came around and worked itself out for the better :)

so now for some pictures!

here is our whole team:

hazelgreen on our finished roof:

construction team JAC:

and finally, the week ended with john getting pied in the face :)

saraland umc

so, we had our first group this week. and seriously, i don't think we could have asked for a better group. it was awesome! the group was great, they were such hard workers, and the staff had such a great time getting to know everyone. it was a perfect group to ask for for our first week.

saraland was made up of a group of nine, 7 youth and 2 adults. their youth pastor had only been with them for four days before the trip, but you couldn't even tell because they had already grown so close. and our other adult, charlie, was so much help on the work site and definitely taught us some cool things.

our project for this week was to build a front and back porch for a woman named ms. spates. her back steps had fallen, so she had no access to the back of her house, and her front steps were just rotting away. so, we set this team to complete both by the end of the week.

honestly, we were a little worried about the time frame and having just one group working on both porches, but they totally blew us away and finished on thursday. they worked so hard to get both of them done, and they look awesome! i am so proud to have finished our first project with such a motivated group!

here are the porches!:

i'm so proud of our team for them!
we were definitely still working out a few loose ends as construction coordinators, but this group definitely helped us get ready for the bigger groups to come.

aside from the work aspect, there were a lot of kids we interacted with at our site. they weren't like the kids we are all used to playing with, and it definitely taught me a lot about patience and how these kids just need someone to show them love and guide them in life. sometimes, the kids weren't so nice, and would say things that some of us were astounded to hear a little kid say. but we all had to realize in the end it wasn't really their fault. they were raised in a much different situation than a lot of us are, and we can't blame them for that. we can only hope and help them to better their futures.
but, aside from that, the kids at our site were so happy with the little that they did have. and given their circumstances, could have acted a lot worse.
i don't want it to sound like the kids were terrible at all. because our team did have a fun time playing and interacting with them. it just definitely showed all of us another side of things.

anyways,
since we finished early we were able to start demolition on ms. allie brown's house in order to prepare for teams to get started on all of her projects. i am so excited to be able to get things started with her, because she is just the sweetest woman and has the sweetest family, and she has been waiting seven years for someone to help her fix her house. i am honored to be able to work with her and give her the things she definitely deserves.

after we did that, we were able to go to day camp swim day, which was a lot of fun (even though we all got some sick sunburns. haha)

but, it was definitely a good last day for the group!

all week the programming went awesome as well! i think the group got a lot from our discussions about poverty and our experiences this week, and i have all the confidence in the world that this group will continue their service once they get back home.

i was joking around with the group telling them that they've been the best so far. but, honestly, i think the other groups already have a big competition :)

oh, technology.

sorry i haven't been posting a lot lately! our internet has been pretty horrible, but supposedly it's supposed to be fixed soon.

but! our first team is coming is sunday! so hopefully i can post about that soon!