Sr. High Mission Trip Overview from Jillianne

We had an amazing time serving the people of eastern North Carolina on our Sr. high mission trip! We were able to work with UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) in the Pamlico County area of the outer banks! That's near New Bern, NC ... basically on the inner banks of the Outer Banks area! We spent most of our time on or near the Neuse River! Monday through Wednesday we were able to put in a new ceiling in the kitchen and bathroom for Mrs. Mary. Mary was a sweet, sweet woman in her 80s. She and her late husband built the home in the 1960s. Sadly when Hurricane Irene came through last summer, the waves were taller than the house in front of her's and afterwards she had about 19 inches on standing water in her house. Because Mrs. Mary lives on a fixed income; so she is unable to afford flood insurance. Obviously, her insurance company would not cover the damage. And, to further add salt to the wound, FEMA was unable to give her any money for repairs either. FEMA gave her money after another Hurricane in the early 2000s. They require that one they give you money you keep flood insurance. Since she was unable to afford it, she was out of luck as far as getting help from FEMA. Fortunately, we were able to give Mrs. Mary a new ceiling in her kitchen and bathroom. The last day of the trip we traveled around Pamlico county in an effort to help Bruce (our site coordinator) consolidate resources. We moved a couple of piles of OSB and other ply-wood. Then we went to Oriental, NC to move a large pile of shingles out of a handicapped man's yard to a dumpster back at UMCOR's warewhouse. It was a tough day and was very hot, but we were able to accomplish the task! This mission trip was not originally planned back in May when we advertised summer youth activities. It was the result of a conversation that occurred on the way home from the Sr. high beach trip to Garden City. In particular, Katie Sands deserves great credit for helping plan the details of the trip! Sadly, she got pink eye on the first day of the trip and had to go home. We missed her but were very thankful for her research and input in planning the trip! Our theme for the trip was to 'Step out of Your Comfort Zone.' Our evening programs focused on that theme. We talked about how when you are willing to step out of your comfort zone, you grow. Ways you can step out of that zone are by being a servant, knowing and using your spiritual gifts to serve God, being the light of Christ in the world and in our daily lives! We hope you will take a look at the pictures from our week! They can be found on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/sjeyc. Thanks for your prayers and support!

Sr. High Mission Trip Day # 4 (Thursday) - Ben de la Canal

Today Jillianne let us sleep in a bit ... we all woke at around 7:15a.m. Breakfast consisted of French toast casserole. We headed to the warehouse then to the farm. At the farm we collected plywood and brought it to the warehouse where we unloaded it into a pile. When that was done we headed to a giant 10,000 ft pile (it felt like) of shingles that we had to clean up and bring to the warehouse and place in the dumpster. It was brutal. The sun burned us, the wind did not exist, and the clouds seemed nonexistent. The bright sun shined down from high above and sent its sun soldiers to come and fire their heat rays at us resulting in our burns. We fought them off; after all we are soldiers of God's light. We called on God and he sent both clouds and breeze. Then we headed off to Topsail Beach watching the movie treasure planet (a famous future style treasure island with space ships that look like the ones from the book Larklight) on our way. Then when we reached Topsail, we settled into our rooms, and had some free time on the beach, then we had devotion and went to bed. Thank you for listening!

Sr. High Mission Trip Day # 3 (Wednesday) - Sabina de la Canal

After eating breakfast we went to our worksite at Mrs. Mary's house. We put up all the ceiling tiles and, even with having almost no tiles in the bathroom yesterday, we finished. We had even worked our way around the lights and put one of the lights back up. When we were done with that we swept and cleaned up. Before we finished Ms. Mary came over with drinks and ice cream for everyone. Then we had lunch and left. We know that Julia and Ian were working at a summer camp near by so before going back to the church we went to see them. We had to take two ferry rides to get there and after Ben de la Canal asked we were shown to the control room where the captain was. They even let Ben blow the horn. We finally got to the camp and had to wait awhile to see Julia because she was on a sailboat at sea. To pass the time we played ninja. When Julia got back she took us to archery where we did two rounds of shooting arrows. Then we got to see Ian. After giving them their cookies we went back to the church where we were staying. Our rule for the out of your comfort zone dinner was that we couldn’t serve ourselves. The solution; feed each other! Everyone had a different way of doing that. Some people were nice about it and some were not. For program we got candles and went outside. We talked about being the light of Christ to people and about how as a servant we shouldn’t hide our lights or spiritual gifts.

Senior High Mission Trip (Tuesday) - Sasha Hege

We woke up and had fabulous breakfast made by Cathy Harrison. After that we went to our work site to complete the ceiling tiles in the kitchen and started on the ones in the bathroom. We had to work around the lights and that was very hard. We had to cut a lot of tiles before we got it perfect. In the bathroom we had to start over many times and when we had at last gotten almost two rows done at the end we had to take it all down again because of one board. We found out Ms. Cathy had to go hospital because she had a kidney stone. On the way back to the church we stopped and Jillianne got us all ice cream. Before dinner we said a prayer while passing each other a ball of yarn and tying it to everyone. We passed it to everyone twice and then had to spend the rest of the day tangled up to each other. This was out 'out of your comfort zone' dinner for the night! We had to eat dinner and clean up like that. When we finally could untie everything we made ninja cookies that did not turn out looking like ninjas. We had program where we sang and had m&m’s again while talking about our day.

Sr. High Missin Trip Day # 1 (Monday) - by Sasha Hege

We went to Ms. Mary’s house for our mission trip. There we started to put up ceiling tiles. We learned how to put them in by Mr. Bruce (our site coordinator with UMCOR - United Methodist Committee on Relief). While we were putting up tile we learned that Katie Sands had pink eye and had to go home. When we got back we had dinner of spaghetti and we couldn’t use forks knifes or spoons. Jillianne had planned a different 'out of your comfort zone' task at each meal! People got creative and used cups and tongs but most people just used their hands. After dinner we had program where we sang a song and then Jillianne came around with a bag of m&m’s. It was our group's way of de-briefing the work day! For every m&m we had to say different topics about the day. For example, if you had a brown you had to praise another youth, yellow was something you learned, and red was to talk about a moment that frustrated you, and so on. We learned that when Jillianne says to only take a few, she means it. Several of us took large handfuls! :) Our topic for the night was Spiritual Gifts! We took a survey about what our spiritual gifts are. We also did a gift exchange with gifts we had bought earlier in the day at the dollar store.