July 1, 2016

Today was a rather simpler day when it came to the groups: one group of thirteen people piled into two cars and drove to Hy and Libba's house together.  From that point, certain team members literally fell out of the car and into a certain head pastor's unexpected arms and lost a shoe in the process. So yeah, totally casual arrival there. Once safely into the beautifully vintage McEnery home, two groups formed: the fence painting crew and the girls Bible study/beading group. The painting crew (Mark, Brooks, Connor, Kent, Elijah, and Jen) wasted no time hustling outside with their paint buckets and brushes in hand. Together, they completed painting about 40% of the property line fencing in the scorching sun.

Meanwhile, inside, Karen, Ashley, Surina, and Destini prepared for a bead making-necklace making afternoon with some of the city girls that Libba drove in. Destini and Karen, heads of the bead making department, led the girls in creating their own paper beads with toothpicks and paper strips until there were enough to form their own unique necklaces. We had about 10-12 young girls show up along with 2 little boys as well! Miss Libba came back with Wendy's sandwiches and fries for all of the kids as well as, which was an extremely generous gesture, for the mission team members. Bob and Wendy worked up and down the house's main hall hanging and re-adjusting framed paintings for Hy and Libba through it all.

We wrapped up around 3pm or so since we had, at that point, thought we had a missions appointment at an outreach center in downtown NOLA. However, there was a dates mix-up and our outreach center time was scheduled for a day later in the trip. So that left one missions team sitting together in the main room tossing around ideas of how to fill their night with something fun. It started as going to see a movie, then paint-balling, then the mall, then finally deciding on laser tag. Trachelle accompanied us on the little adventure which turned out as an especially fun team bonding time after a long day of hard work. Laser tag was soon followed by cosmic bumper cars in which shouts of "Get Wes!" and "Trachelle, I'm coming for you!" and our own Pastor Wes's battlecry of, "SHARK WEEK!!!" as his car rammed into another unfortunate's with a fiendish gleam of childlike joy on his face. All in all, it was a very "give and take" sort of day where more prayers were answered and God worked through hearts of mission members as well as those impacted by our work and hearts.

As always, thanks so much for the continued prayer support! We can't thank you all enough!