Savannah, Here We Come
A Senior High Mission Trip
In September 2007 the Senior High Youth Group met and voted to travel to Savannah, Georgia on our 27th annual summer mission trip. While in Savannah we will help repair homes devastated by the constant barrage of sea air.
Since September we have worked tirelessly to raise the funds necessary to make the nearly 2600 mile round-trip from Minnesota to Georgia. We hosted dinners, breakfasts, and golf tournaments. We sold stock, flowers, cookbooks, and Christmas trees.
Another part of our preparation for our trip was to work with Brush with Kindness, a Habitat for Humanity program that helps homeowners struggling to restore and maintain a safe and decent place to live. By the time our three days of service had ended we had scraped, primed, and finished two coats of paint on a house in Minneapolis.
The senior high mission trip to Savannah, Georgia this year is notably different from mission trips of recent past. The 19 year old Oak Rover was on its’ second mission trip of the year when it broke down somewhere west of Cleveland. We may be witnessing the end of an era. The beloved Oak Rover may never come home.
As sad as that news may be for people, it is amazing how God works. We originally invited Rick Konecki on our trip to help chaperone and drive the bus, but Rick had an important decision to make. He could use his summer vacation time either helping his mother fix up her small house near Chicago or he could travel on the mission trip. Shortly after talking together, Rick and I discovered a new possibility; we could merge the two activities.
The brake down of the bus clarifies for me our true calling this summer. Rick was never supposed to be along on this trip to drive the bus, we were meant, as a church, to find this opportunity for mission.
Instead of taking a bus, we are renting two vans and the Wasmoens have graciously agreed to follow us with all of our tools packed into the back of their family van. Barb Wasmoen and her daughter Chelsea will continue on past Savannah to visit Barb’s family in Florida.
While in Niles, IL we will spend two nights at the Niles Community Presbyterian Church. Members of the church have welcomed us with open arms and are preparing a breakfast for us on the morning of our departure. We will also stay in Louisville, KY and we have found an active loving church in Spartanburg, SC. Second Presbyterian Church of Spartanburg converted an old gym into a soup kitchen and our young missionaries will have an option to serve at the kitchen on the night that we arrive.
This trip was made possible for us by the grace of God and the support of our wonderful church. Our members and friends have generously given thousands of dollars towards this trip through our various fundraisers and annual stock sale. They have stopped us in the hall to congratulate us and offer other kind words of encouragement. We will return their blessings by being blessings unto the world.
We need your prayers. Prayers for our safe travel, that we might recognize how God is touching our lives, that we will grow closer as a group, and prayers that we are able to participate with all of our hearts, minds, and souls in what God is doing in this world.
Work Camp Documents