Mission Trip Day 2

This is the most important part of the day, lunch.  Not really, but is sure is a nice part.  The encouragement team is doing a great job treating a bunch of hot sweaty, paint covered women like queens.  

Everyone is working hard, we have accomplished a lot in two days.  Despite none of the four vacuum cleaners in the house is working.  Despite that it took four hours to dry the sheets in the dryer, and we had to fill the washing machine with buckets of water by hand.

We have had the assistance of a young man, sent to help us carry heavy things.  They are spoiling us.  His name is Rich.  He has been in the program for only 6 weeks.  He lives in the mission in the dorm with 50 other guys.  He is working through addiction and learning to let God direct his life.  He comes from a background of moving around the country and living in many places.  He had an awesome attitude and Wonder Woman and I could have talked with him all day, he was so wise.  He told us that he loves learning to get his life right.  He loves working and giving back for the things that are being given to him right now.  And he is learning that it is best to be still and just know God.  He said that he is learning that his sin is no better or worse than anyone else's sin.  Even though we humans look at some sins as worse than others, to God, sin is sin.  He found that humbling.  He also learned that he is no worse than anyone else and that was a boost to his self esteem.  Smart young man.

14 women working in close quarters for two full days....we are really doing pretty well....still lots of laughing.  We had a touch a go moment this afternoon.  We have a lot of furniture to get in the bedroom we are working on.  And, it seems the privacy in the shared bedrooms is of utmost importance.  So we stopped work at 4 o'clock to decide how to arrange the furniture in the room. There were lots of opinions and we moved heavy furniture around several times and nothing was working.  Wonder woman stuffed her head in a bookshelf until she could adjust her attitude.  I stood in a corner sucking my thumb.  We finally had to kick people put of the room.   Finally one of the residents came in and said to forget about the privacy thing...that if someone needs that much privacy, he should move out and get his own apartment.  Ok, that did it and we set the room according to how it fit best instead of how it made private areas.  Only took us an hour.

All in all, it was a good day and we left tired but with a feeling of accomplishment.  New carpet and furniture tomorrow!

Normal Girl