was a VERY busy day! We went from construction to VBS to doing a carwash to spending the evening debriefing with Troy, and then a few brave but slightly weary souls even went swing dancing. I’m dropping the start to finish shed pictures in today’s post just because it was the first day where things started looking more like a shed, and less like a horizontal cardboard box on the ground. God provided good weather all week, for which we were very thankful, because putting up a shed like that in the wind would’ve at the very least destroyed parts of the shed during construction. At some points, it was just freestanding sheet metal held up by a single screw, but after we got into the construction, it was much more stable. 60 degrees and mostly sunny is also perfect for working in!

Lunch in the middle of this extremely busy day, was at Sunset Cliffs. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves, ’twas a VERY beautiful location for taking pictures! After running around on the cliffs, well past the sign that said “keep back, sheer unstable cliffs,” but still a good distance from the edge, we all hopped back in the vans and headed for our VBS sites. The kids came back!

During VBS today I watched around 10 kids accept Christ into their lives. Whether they fully understood what they were saying is debatable, but that’s between them and God. If I meet even one of those kids in heaven some day, the whole trip will have been worth it!

Saying goodbye to Troy was difficult, we probably did it like 3 times in the course of the evening, after debriefing with them at ‘the clubhouse’ and just talking with them. Its amazing how much our two groups bonded within 3 days.

I haven’t yet finished my trip log, but here’s a quick summary of what I was up to in San Diego! Our team of 14 worked with the World Impact ministry to put together a VBS for some sweet kids, built a carport, a shed, and put in a garden.. We pretty much wore ourselves out, but we saw God working through us in amazing ways!  Check out the San Diego page for more!

San Diego Team 2009

Shed-in-a-box

The shed continued but “was a pain in the bum to construct,” sand and tile flooring were installed, but still no verticalness appeared. Thankfully the guys from Troy helped us to get everything prepped and solidified before we started constructing the actual shed, the hope is that it will be there for many years to come because we built it solidly.

VBS was amazing today, we had about double the attendance, but only 3 or 4 of the original 7 kids showed up again.  There were a couple of older teens that showed up too and though they didn’t show much interest in the activities (because they were designed for ages 5-10) we were able to minister to them as well.  I was totally awestruck because they came back on Wed and Thurs too!

Team from Troy College

One of the things that was unique to this misisons trip, as opposed to passed years, was that we got to work directly with another team from another college.  Troy University sent a team of about 14-15 people to work with us during our week in CA.  Originally there was concern about how two groups from different parts of the U.S. would work together, but God showed up and we had no trouble getting to know them, and I REALLY felt thankful that we had them there.  One of the projects we started on Monday was leveling ground to build a shed, which wasn’t a problem in itself, but I had never built a structure of any kind, and the other team members working with me on the shed had a similar level of non-experience.  Ty, from the troy team, had built a similar shed before, so we put together this aluminum thing from a rediculous number of parts, and in the end had a decent looking shed built out of it.  We wound up shoveling a LOT of dirt around, because sheds like level ground, and because gardens like fresh layers of dirt.  I’ll put in a slideshow of the shed from start to finish at the end of this post.

VBS Site

We left at about 12:30 for lunch and had excellent food for lunch with both teams.  After which we set up for VBS in the driveway.  Unlike any other VBS I’ve ever done, this one was very impromptu.  There wasn’t a whole huge organization or sign-in, it was literally a kids club, gathered in the driveway, for about two hours in the middle of the afternoon.  We had only about 7 or 8 kids show up Monday, which meant that the team outnumbered them about 2:1.  This was somewhat disappointing, but worked out just fine.  We decided to split the teams up and wound up doing 4 different sites between Troy and us, reaching probably over 50 kids total.

Monday night after working all day we did a little sight-seeing on the pier at Ocean Beach, where Nathan, CJ, and I took a ~little~ too long walking down the pier… like twice as much time as we were allowed.  oh well, I got a shot or two back at the shoreline, and had a great time anyway (My apologies to anyone on the team who was annoyed at us, we didn’t mean to be out that long..).

Thus was Monday, and there was much joy and happiness because it was a good day…

Nathan, Me, CJ

Group Bonding!

Our group met together for one evening immediately before the trip to do some “group bonding” which included some intense gaming such as bowling and laser tag!  We really enjoyed getting to know each other on the surface level, and continued to grow closer throughout the trip.

Ok, that’s it for the background information, Sunday we got together at about noon, after much packing and smashing of items into suitcases, a few of us even had to repack due to weight restrictions on the airline.  Lunch was sandwiches and chips, with food aplenty to keep us happy until our flight touched down in San Diego.  We navigated the airport and made our plane without difficulty, in fact, overall the traveling part was highly uneventful.  On the plane ride I chatted with a couple team members and really got to know them better.

Somebody got bored

Flights were on time, the weather was pretty clear, and life was happy on the plane, though the flight felt about an hour longer than it should’ve been.  I’m convinced that the excitement of the trip caused time to slow down while we were in the air.  For not doing anything all day, we were pretty tired after our flight, but wound up going to KFC anyway after briefly meeting a few of the World Impact Staff that we would be working with.

We finished off the night on Coronado Island with a bit of sight seeing, the picture on top of this page came from that adventure, and the all important grocery shopping.  Lori Christenson, one of our leaders, put together our meals for us all week long.  It’s truely amazing how much food two mission teams can destroy in very short order, but Lori faithully cooked it up for us each day, Thanks Lori!!

We attended a Harbor Church on Sunday which was a very neat experience for me.  I’d been to multicultural churches before, but this one was unique in that worship was combined and done in both Spanish and English.  The words to the songs were printed in both languages, naturally there were a few songs sung in either language, and a few bi-linugal pieces as well.  After church there was a bit of door-to-door advertising for our VBS which was to start on Monday.

Volleyball in the park

The evening was spent with Troy eating pizza and playing volleyball on Coronado Island.  Some people played, while I sort of played along.. My vollyball skillz0rs are not so |337.  We shared rootbeer floats later on with the Troy crew as well.  W00, good friends already!

I got some SCHWEET night shots of San Diego from the island, and overall had a really good evening, although it was tiring because we’d done 3 hours of “time travel” in the course of moving from CST to PDT.