Spring Break 2006 Work Day 2

We continued our efforts on Tuesday by starting off with breakfast and a devotional by Dan Valentine about how real servants act. After that everyone moved to their work sites to continue the work started the previous day.



Our tremendous teen crew sets off to work

Robert continues to have a difficult time letting us tear damaged parts of his house out. He appears to be trying to hold on to the little bit that he still has and the team is being understanding but firm with Robert that he has to let go so the house can be repaired. One funny incident occurred when Robert indicated that he wanted to leave something in place for the contractors to look at. Mike Beasley responded that "we are the contractors, we're just free." It appeared to work as Robert allowed us to continue to gut his house.

Elaine's House

Robert's House (note his FEMA trailer to the left side of the house)

FPC team members gutting the inside of a house

Some members of our team had mixed feeling about why we were continuing to work on Peace Presbyterian since we had learned that their Session had voted to dissolve the church but while they were working on it, a pastor that had lost his church in the storm visited and indicated that he had a congregation of 300 and this church building would be perfect. Where this goes is in God's hands but we were reminded that nothing done on God's behalf is ever wasted. We were asked to remove the beautiful 100 year old stained glass windows in the front of Peace and store them but we respectfully declined not wanting to hazard the possibility of breaking them.

Peace Presbyterian's Stained Glass Windows

Back at FPCNO, Tami Martin devoted her efforts to cleaning handbells that had been tarnished by the flooding and Will and Michelle Goodman, with Salli Beasley's help, put their professional expertise in landscaping and plants to good use, transforming a garden in the yard of FPCNO into an area that has gained compliments of many of the nursery school parents and even a couple from the pre-schoolers themselves! There is much excitement on the part of the nursery school about the upcoming Easter egg hunt in their new garden.

The kids love the new garden we put into FPCNO's church yard

At the end of the day, we all cleaned up, ate at Piccadilly's and came back to reflect on the day's event. Debbie Peterson lead the reflection by talking about how, as Christ's servants, we needed extend an "Arm of Love" and literally passed around an arm (no, it wasn't real, it was off a dummy). The holder of the arm would share his or her reflection of how we saw an arm of love extended to someone today.

We also met as a team Tuesday night and decided that we would finish up at Peace Presbyterian, at Elaine's house and in the new garden in FPCNO's yard on Wednesday and devote most of our team on Thursday to working on FPCNO's sanctuary to insure that it would be ready for a worship service on Easter Sunday less than two weeks away. With our last two days planned out, we all headed for a much desired night of rest...