Our first week of summer missions was an amazing success. The first group was seven girls from the surrounding North Carolina area. They came for three days to serve a few elderly people in the community and host our first VBS in the park. For each of the girls this was their first time on an EY2S trip. Even though it was only for three days, the girls bonded together at once and worked together beautifully. They prayed together, laughed together, and encouraged one another through hard things.
We went to two different worksites this week, but the first of them may be familiar to you. Last summer we worked at Ms. Linda's house every week to help clean up her yard and stop the flooding for the forest behind her house. This summer we are back, helping her put up a permanent fence for privacy and noise. During one of our retreats this past year, we put up a temporary fence to keep her neighbors chickens out of her yard. The girls showed up on Tuesday morning and carefully removed the temporary fence. It will be reused at the back of her property later this summer. They also began measuring for where the fence posts for the new fence will go in. Afterwards they went inside and fellowshipped with Ms Linda, who made us all a delicious lunch. On Tuesday we went to see Mr. James (who we visited once last summer) to help him with his yard work.
Our first VBS of the summer was on a open-air one in the local park. The girls planned and prepped on Tuesday, went knocking on doors to spread the word on Wednesday, and Thursday held VBS. It rained on and off throughout the week. We were a praying hard that the kids would still come, and God answered our prayers. He sent us two wonderful kids that the girls poured into. As soon as we started the rain came down, but we held the whole vbs under one of the park shelters and everyone had a great time.
It was truly an answer to prayer to have a mission trip with just students from the Fairmont area. Every year we are able to become more and more involved in this amazing community, and we can't wait to see what God does in the rest of our time here this summer and in the coming years.
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