Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy

After a long day of travel, we have safely arrived at our Houston destination. The weather is warm and we are all excited to serve this week.

Everyone pitched in and helped prepare an amazing taco dinner that definitely hit the spot.

We are diving into our first devotional this evening and getting some much-needed rest before heading to church tomorrow morning. 

After a much-needed night of rest, we woke up ready to worship the Lord alongside our brothers and sisters at Uvalde Baptist Church.

We had a wonderful time singing familiar songs. Pastor Shawn preached on Maturity in Faith. It was great to be reminded that God wants us to grow and mature in our faith. 

After the service, pastor Shawn and his right-hand man, Lawrence, sat with us and walked us through the work we are going to be doing with the church, starting tomorrow. 

Those include yard work for a brother who is wheelchair-bound, painting in the church educational building, reorganizing a storage room, and some maintenance around the church building.

It was good to hear that there is a bigger picture and purpose behind those projects, we are excited! 

Uvalde Baptist Church has a food distribution every Saturday. 

This morning, we are reorganizing their food pantry to help make the process much easier for them. 

We had a great time worshiping last night with Almando leading us on guitar. 

It took us about 5 hours and a lot of manpower to clean this yard, but we conquered it. 

The homeowner has been hospitalized and will hopefully be discharged tomorrow if the Lord wills.

We hope we can see him and share the love of Christ with him. 

Our painting crew is ready to start in on a makeover of the teen room at the church. We have some serious painters that are excited to get started. 

Impact Houston is a food pantry that has been serving the Houston community for over 30 years. 

This morning, many of us had the opportunity to be a part of what they do every Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening all year round. 

From 8:30 to 11, two lines of vehicles (about 200-300 families) drive through their parking lot and volunteers load up their trunks or back seats with all kinds of food from frozen meat, fresh produce, canned goods...to desserts. 

It was a very well-organized process and we were blessed to be a part of it. 

We are finishing up the paint job we started yesterday. It's looking great!

Loaves & Fishes is a large soup kitchen in downtown Houston where hundreds of Houston’s chronically hungry gather six days a week for nutritious, hot, home-cooked meals cooked by staff and served by volunteers. There is no cost and no requirement.

Our group of boys worked very hard today to serve meals to over 150 people. 

This morning we hopped on three small boats that took us to a small island to restore a bird habitat.

We planted 300 small trees that included Red Mulberry, Sugarberry/Hackberry, Texas Ebony, Carolina Wolfberry, and Coral Bean. What a neat project!

After some good work planting trees, we headed to the beach on Galveston Island. 

We had a great time playing in the water and the sand. The weather was perfect for a beach day!

The church storage room was packed with all kinds of wooden crafts they no longer used.

We worked for about 2 hours hauling them out to the church dumpster. 

Although it was throwing things away, it also took a big load off the church staff's shoulders. Plus, we had a lot of fun doing it as a group. 

We visited the San Jacinto monument this afternoon. It was cool to find out that Cincinnati was a contributor to its existence. 

Happy Birthday from all of us, Connor! So cool that we get to celebrate your birthday on a mission trip. May the Lord continue to shape your life. May He bless you and make His face shine upon you! 

Keep up the faith! 

Our team got the opportunity to enjoy and learn today at NASA. 

We had a tour and learned about all the space missions, astronauts, and space vehicles. 

What a great opportunity!