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Messiah’s Sr. Youth are currently on a mission trip to Florida!  Below are excerpts from the MLC Youth Blog site

Day Two. The Work Begins

By Bridie Ryan 

July 16, 2017

    We started off the day bright and early at 7:30 with breakfast and morning devotion. The verse read to us was John 21:2-14. It was the story of Jesus revealing himself to the disciples by the sea of Tiberias. After a long day of fishing, they caught nothing and were about to give up. When they got back to shore Jesus showed himself and told the disciples to go back out to sea and throw out their net. They followed his command and caught 153 large fish and the net was not torn. It was the 3rd time Jesus revealed himself to the disciples after he raised from the dead. 

After discussion about the verse and about the day ahead we closed with a prayer for our safety and loaded up on the buses to head to our mission sight in Starke, Florida. We worked at a lady’s house doing several different things. 

We had William, Christina, and Shane working in the shed hanging drywall, Brendan, Zach, and I worked on building the deck. Danie, Dylan, Andrew, and Anna painted the trim outside of the house. Everyone had something to do. We worked from 10:30 to 3 with a half hour lunch break in the middle. We stopped often for water breaks to make sure we were hydrated but other than that we were working hard. 

We ended up packing up all our supplies and getting in the van right as it started pouring rain. We drove over to sonic for some half-off slushies on our way home because who doesn’t love slushies after a long day of work. After dinner we had free time and then worship. We talked about our theme for the summer which is “scaffolding”. 

Scaffolding is a temporary structure on the outside of a building used by workers when they’re building, repairing, or cleaning a building. This relates to God because God is strong and steady and we can lead on him whenever we need it. He surrounds us while he works on us. Then we talked about how Jesus is our “wonderful counselor”. Jesus always knows what we’re going through and the right course of action for us to take. He always supports us by his counseling, guidance, and love. 

We ended the night in small group  with the question “where did you see God today”. My answer for that was giving everyone a job on the mission sight so that everyone was working and nobody was just standing around. We accomplished a lot today and I’m really proud of everyone in our youth group.

Bridie Ryan

View pictures from Day Two

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Day one. Jacksonville bound

By Dylan Irvin:

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early, which seemed like the worst morning I have had since school ended. So I forced myself to wake up, shower, and head out of the house with the luggage I packed the day prior. When we got to the church and unloaded our belongings, and ten minutes later the group was playing Tetris loading the back of Sara’s van to the roof.

We departed from Messiah around 7:30 A.M in a van that smelled…different. We were on the road for a few hours stopping once before we picked up lunch from Chick-fil-a and Wendy’s. We eventually arrived at our lodge with a van full of cramped teenagers ready to get out. We found our rooms unloaded and headed to orientation and chapel.

We played icebreakers and went over the rules of the camp, after we sang and praised God. When we left chapel we headed to our rooms to get ready for bed and plan for our mission work the next day.