New Life Goodbye
What a way to wrap up the week(s)
We had a bittersweet goodbye with Ken, from New Life Christian. We joked, praised and prayed, but soon had to be off for our last work day.
We left our accommodations and home for the last couple weeks, and hit the road for Pascagoula.
Our long goodbye prevented us from having breakfast before we left, so each of the five cars stopped by and picked up something for breakfast along the way. One car went to Hardees. We went just because we’d never been before, totally expecting it to be Carl’s Jr. with a different name. We were wrong. But now Peter really likes the Cinnamon Raisin Biscuits there.
Work Site
Once we hit the work site, we met a partner family, Tish and her family (brother “J”, Aunt Annie, Mom Gloria and Cousin Leslie) and a few more volunteers.
Emily and Phillip, both in the Air Force’s meteorology division, were taking a class locally and wanted to contribute some volunteer hours to Habitat. They worked hard, and were a real joy to work, talk and joke with, while painting the siding in the blazing sun. We learned a bit about meteorology
Matt had recently moved to the area, and wanted to do something with his extra time. He was assigned to work with the self-named “A-Team” on drywall. Found out during the day that he was looking for a new church, so we’re probably going to see him trying out Mosaic when we attend there Sunday at 9am.
It was a good hard day, and the other peopled changed the atmosphere a little bit. Made it a little more of a community effort, but the guys really were going full throttle to get as much as possible. Tommy didn’t even realize that he was putting in the last piece of siding as the last act for our entire group.
The work was excellent, as the drywall crew did all the key components of the green house, while they did all the ceiling work on the blue house.
“J”
Of note, was “J,” brother of partner family, a young man who had just graduated from college, he was a skilled, hard working man. Humble in speech, dutiful on the job. When a phone call came in, he would politely tell the party he was working and would have to call them back later. He treated his volunteer hours with the same respect as a job.
There were other things, including a dueling guitars with Brad and Rich.
We closed out the day with prayers for the houses, the neighborhood and of course, Brad and Denise. Denise read from the Bible for us that brought us to watery eyes, as we share a common goal and common God.
Philippians 1
Thanksgiving and Prayer
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
and then Philippians 2:
Imitating Christ’s Humility
1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
Of many things we come here for, and we also take with us, it is our brother/sisterhood with Brad, Denise, and the many others we came to meet.
We debriefed at Antioch house, a tradition we missed with the CoEd team.
The debriefing is a time or reflection, praise and even confession of offense or failure.
Each person spoke about what they learned, enjoyed, where they grew. Leader Craig asked that we keep things “personal,” in the sense that if you had something to say about someone, to first talk about yourself. In this environment, that was a good encouragement, as it’s often easier to praise others, but taking the time to see and admit where God grew you.
Since some of the guys are typically more reserved, their honesty and candor was appreciated. Some even spoke about preconceptions about the South, and how impressed we all were with the Southern Hospitality.
Whoops.. gotta go, we’re arriving at Mosaic for our last service, our service to God.
more pics and video later!