The emotional and physical roller coasters that we have all been on over the past few days has definitely made the days feel so much longer than they are! 1 mission trip day is the equivalent of 2 or 3 “normal” days. 🙂 We all have so many highs and low throughout the day, and we are all so grateful for the opportunties we have to share God’s love and experience God through this mission work.
Day 3 brought the 1st day of VBS and the 1st full “wood slicing” as I call it day. Just to clarify, there is no wood slicing; it has either been wood splitting or wood chopping, but most certainly not wood slicing ha! VBS was great – we even had one family come that we met at the Freedom race! We had 9 kids and they absolutely loved it! We did VBS outside and fortunately we had a few tents that kept us dry when the rain decided to come down a bit… Pastor Dan (local past) was in charge of games and continued with the games even after the rain started coming down. In true mom fashion, we quickly put an end to that (rain in cloudy 60 degree weather just doesn’t fly past a mommy). Pastor Dan rolled with it, and fortunately the rain only lasted 10 minutes or so and then the games could resume! Apple juice during snack time was a huge hit, as was the grilled cheese at lunch…confession, I was hoping to have a grilled cheese myself ha! But Chef Gwyn knows, and for our lunch we had hot ham and cheese sandwiches on Hawaiian rolls… AMAZING! Especially on a cold wet day. Okay, enough with the food.
The firewood ministry team was quite busy yesterday. Unfortunately, on the first house delivery, there was some conflict between 2 locals that have been essentially hosting us at the church each day. But in true St. Luke’s fashion, the team didn’t let it effect them and continued chopping and delivering fire wood to those in need. Jeremy was so pleased with the group’s ability to continue on. During one of the stops, Jeremy even chopped down a birch tree by himself…he was very pleased that he did not cause more mission work by landing the tree on the house! Ha!
Dinner was a potluck at Pastor Dan’s, and it was great fellowship with the Pastor’s family. Besides my husband and I (early 30s), there is only one other “youngerster” who is 22, and the Pastor’s kids loved how much she jumped on the trampoline with them!
During High/Lows in the evening, the theme that came out again was teamwork and laughter. Everyone on the firewood team kept reiterating well they all worked together and could get work done without even saying what each other needed. Once I heard everyone say this, including the awesome ladies who are on the team, I had to speak up and mention how much of God thing that was. I said that because my husband is quite handy and works on our 100 year old home often and also on our project houses, and after several years, we finally realized that the issue was that I never anticipate Matt’s needs…it just doesn’t come naturally to me. So I really truly am blown away at how God brought the perfect team together for this! And the same goes for the VBS team…there are experiments each day, and our 22 year old Macey just graduated with her Biology degree! So we have a real scientist to run Imagination Station which the kids just loved! Angie and I lead the songs which is quite entertaining, and Linda rocks the bible study!
A couple of phrases that came out during our pow-wow were:
1. “Lumberjacks don’t debrief” several of the firewood ministry team members wore plaid yesterday, so the “I am a lumberjack” song popped in everyone’s head. After Jeremy talked about how well the team moved on from the conflict between the locals, they all started cheering, “Lumberjacks don’t debrief” ha!
2. “I was still late but I was on time!” – Macey, our sweet 22 year old, made this comment yesterday morning when after she was late to breakfast the first day, she made sure to get to breakfast on time. But she forgot she was on a mission trip with “older people” so when we said 8am for breakfast, we really meant 6:30am. Ahahahah… It was classic
3. “Focus on the Is and not the Isn’t because if you focus on the Isn’t, you’ll miss the Is’s” – Gwyn’s words to remind us that every single person goes through difficult times, and in every situation, you can either focus on the positive or dwell on the negative – it’s your choice.
Still working on uploading pictures and videos,
Robyn and the Alaska Crew
VBS Pics
