Friday, July 21, 2017

2017 Mission Trip to Charleston, WV - Day 6

RAIN, WIND, AND THE FINAL DAY

Before getting our activities for today, here are some notes from how we finished out our day yesterday...after I posted the blog for the day. The church that we are staying at is in the heart of Charleston. Yesterday, the merchants in the city were hosting an art walk. Pretty much, all of the stores stayed open late and the local artists were out showing their handicrafts.


Official Downtown Charleston Art Walk


Here is one of the musical venues with a little West Virginia picking going on.

We ended up at the local art museum, Exploratorium, and convention center where the Charleston version of Comicon is going on this weekend. One of the volunteers with the event took a picture of a group of us having some great discussions about Orthodoxy.


Orthodox theological discussions in progress.

Today, we continued the work on the mobile home, with predictions of rain for the day. We accomplished as much as we could, be then the storms started rolling in.


Roofing team back at it and trying to get the roof ready for the coming storm.


Decking team pressing on.


We also got the siding team started up today.





And then came the rain.


So, what is the best thing to do when it starts to rain of the site...have lunch?

So, today we start coming to that melancholy day of the trip. The team members have worked through many difficult and challenging events. They have built new and lasting relationships. And...tomorrow we all start to head home. As we did our daily debriefing today, it was obvious that this group of people, many strangers to each other, have become close friends. Tomorrow will be a bittersweet day. Alyssa, our IOCC team leader, will be flying back to Seattle. Brittany, the school teacher from Alaska, will be driving back to Oregon to spend a little more time with her family before she goes back to Alaska. Dylan and Peter will be driving back to New York, and back to work. The Dayton crew will be headed back to Ohio to get our normal lives back into the swing. We will be leaving be some very rewarding work, some of it completed, some of it for the next team to complete. The most important part will be that none of us will be going home the same. We will have changed because of the work that we have been able to accomplish and the new family that we have found. This is why we choose to do this work.

This will the last blog post for a couple of days. I head back to my regular job and continue with the wonderful life that my Lord has blessed me. I will write one more post and give some after the trip thoughts. Thanks to all for being on this journey with us...maybe you can join us some day to come and see what this is all about.

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