This blog is started for the mission team of 16 from New Cumberland First Church of God who will be serving in Philippi, West Virginia from May 25-28. May this blog be used to record down our thoughts, prayers and preparations for our trip, to glorify God.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Invitation
Our team has been invited to share a presentation of our trip to the Senior Life Campers on Monday, August 20. How exciting! We will share our experiences like we did in church...show the video...read Cassie's blog that summarizes the trip...and, answer any questions they have.... Bring any other ideas you have. (We only need to fill 1/2 hour to 45 min.) Hope you all can make it! We need to be there by 7 PM. We will meet at the Zahora house for dinner and carpool from there.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
"That’s the Way I Like It" - by Cassie Falk
Our team had our last meeting for the 2012 mission trip to Philippi, WV,
on Monday, May 21. At the meeting, we discussed all the nitty-gritty,
last-minute details necessary for the trip and reviewed our packing list, which
included everything from flash-lights and bed sheets to long-suffering and
servant’s hearts. As important as these details were, Sue reminded us of one of
the most important aspects of a mission trip, and one that turned out to be our
team motto: “it’s just the way I like it”.
We had set our departure time for Friday, May 25, at 7:00
AM. Even for a college student like me, who is perfectly content rolling out of
bed at 10:30, this early arrival and departure was just the way I liked it.
Baylee and Alicia loaded everyone’s luggage into the back of the church bus
before we joined hands and prayed for safety during the drive and for God to
give us the patience, love, and whatever else we might need during our weekend
of service. The bus ride was rather uneventful. Pastor Charlie was determined
to spot a bear in the mountains, but unfortunately, the only bears we saw were
black silhouette versions on road signs warning us that we might run into a
bear. We were also lucky enough to not run into any traffic on the roads, but I
think some of us may have preferred traffic to the tiny roadways we encountered
in the West Virginia
mountains. To help you understand our situation, I drive a very small red ’99
Volkswagen Jetta, and I would have been leery driving my car on those roads,
let alone a bus. It’s not only that the roads were small, which would have been
uncomfortable enough, but there was a two- or three-foot drop-off on either
side. But we had prayed for safety for the trip, and God was faithful to
provide. The Lord was also faithful to provide us with the correct
pronunciation of Philippi, which turns out to
be “fill-a-pea”, not “fill-a-pie”. And thanks to Pastor Charlie, we were all
enlightened with the correct pronunciation of Smokey Ray’s, the restaurant
where we ate lunch, which, surprisingly, turns out to be pronounced exactly as
it is spelled.
Friday afternoon we were lucky enough to get some work done
after unloading the bus and meeting (or re-acquainting ourselves with) Bonnie
and Dave, the couple who takes care of the Chestnut Ridge Community Center
where we had come to work. Several of us
stayed at the community center to paint bedrooms or even brave the roof, on which
lived several nests of wasps. Personally, I went with a group (Sarah, Baylee,
Alicia, Pam, Carol, and myself) to Jeff and Lisa’s farm to do extremely
demanding work like labor on our hands and knees “stapling” enormous black
tarp-like sheets into the soil where the mum fields would be and cuddling
puppies. After a long afternoon of work, we re-grouped at 6:30 for a wonderful
dinner of scalloped potatoes with ham, salad, and pineapple upside-down cake
cooked by Bonnie before collapsing into our beds, exhausted from the drive and
puppy-cuddling…I mean, hard work.
Breakfast was served on Saturday at 7:30. Bonnie and Pam
worked together to make French toast for the team. Ed blessed us all with a
morning devotional on loving others. Then we split up to the locations where we
had worked the previous afternoon. Out at the farm, we finished laying out the
tarps on the mum fields and then started assembling the irrigation system for
the fields. It was tedious work, just the type of work we like to do! By the end
of the work day, those of us on the farm had blisters all over our hands and
had also consumed an unlawful amount of freezer pops. All-in-all, a very
productive day! We spent the evening at Bonnie and Dave’s beautiful house in
the mountains, an old hunting cabin, perfectly peaceful and surrounded by a
beautiful mountain view
on all sides. We had a small fire started, and Sarah wowed us all with her
marshmallow-roasting finesse.
Sunday was our day of rest and fun, but God was definitely
at work in our hearts. We were blessed to attend church at the People’s Chapel
down the road from the Community Center. At Sunday school, we learned about
green energy and team work from Pastor Rustin. I found the service to be
interesting in its differences from our usual contemporary service. For
example, instead of focusing on one Bible verse and the issues presented in
that verse, Pastor Rustin seemed to focus on a theme and then choose multiple
verses to back up that theme. The People’s Chapel was also a lot smaller than our
church. The most significant similarity between our churches was that God is
definitely present and at work in both. What God can do will never fail to
amaze me. This thought was definitely playing in my head at the baptism we
attended after the service. It was such an honor to be invited to such a
beautiful event. An older man who had lost his wife last year had recently
accepted Christ. Weakened by cancer, it was his wish to be baptized before he
died. On Sunday, he was walked down the hill and knelt by the water of the
creek, where he was baptized in the name of the Lord. It was such an incredible
blessing to see someone who had been through so much in his lifetime, someone
who could have felt he had a reason to feel bitter toward God, humbly kneeling
down and accepting the free gift of Salvation through Christ Jesus our Lord.
After the baptism, we drove back to the church for a lunch
of spaghetti, garlic bread, and fruit cake before heading back out for an
afternoon of fellowship and just enjoying each other’s company. We chose “Party
Rock” at the Tygart
River. After no less than
15 drives up and down the river trying the actually locate the rock, we parked
the bus and got out to enjoy the hot sun, the powerful waterfalls gushing out
from beneath the rocks, and each other’s company. When we were done at the
rock, we stopped at the Dairy King for some ice cream. The rest of the evening
was spent back at the Community Center. The teenagers watched a movie, and a
group of us sat around a table to play the word association game, a creation of
Pastor Charlie’s.
Monday was departure day. Baylee, Alicia, and Coral lead us
through a devotional on facing our fears. The girls really challenged us to
give our fears over to God. After the wonderful devotional, we were lucky
enough to be able to do a few hours of work before lunch. We decided to split
into different areas for our last day. I volunteered to get up on the
scaffolding to paint the side of the building with Charlie and Coral. The three
of us made a good team; we were able to get two coats of paint on the section
of the building we were working on. However, although we were only about ten
feet in the air, the scaffolding was still a little bit scary. Every time one
of us moved, it would shake. That is not to mention the occasional wasp that
flew by, creating an internal struggle between the part of me that wanted to
freak out and run from the wasp and the part that would really prefer not to
fall off the scaffolding. Despite the possible challenges presented by our
final tasks, none of us were hurt. We enjoyed one last meal with Bonnie and
Dave (leftovers from the weekend), swept and mopped the Community Center, and
loaded our things onto the bus. We said
our final good-byes and took lots of pictures before departure.
Driving through the picturesque mountains of West Virginia,
homeward-bound, many of us fell asleep, exhausted from the last four days of
serving God and loving others. Each of us had been presented with challenging
work, both physically and spiritually. We were asked to do not only the
physical work asked of us by our hosts, but we were also asked by God to do it
without complaint. As Christians, all of us are asked to follow Jesus’ example
and serve faithfully and joyfully in whatever circumstance we are placed,
whether we are on a mission trip or in our own homes. I am so proud of our
mission team for the work we did and for consistently adopting the attitude
that every detail of our trip was just the way we liked it.
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