Madison Methodist Church Youth

The team arrived last night after a long drive from Madison, MS! We talked about the ministries we're going to work with this week and the community we're in.  Then of course we had to play games before bed!

To kick off our ministry day one of the students, Maggie, led us in our morning devotion. We focused on love people as Christ loves us and humbling ourselves to service. What a beautiful way to start the morning in worship of God!

We got to serve at the Christian sharing center this morning. They are such an awesome resource to the impoverished community. The sharing center meets a large variety of needs in a manner that gives dignity to the recipients. Instead of just getting clothes in a bag, recipients get a voucher to go shop in their store . One of the places we got to serve in today.

This week community church has so lovingly opened their doors and their hearts for us to be able to stay with them this week. We are so grateful for their generosity and want to meet their need and bless the church. Community Church runs a care center to meet the needs of the community. This afternoon we helped build shelves in the care center so they can have more organized space to store donations. 

This morning, half the team started clearing out the overgrown trees and vines that had encroached on the church's parking lot from the pond. It was a lot sweaty hard work, but we're so thankful we could bless the church in this way. Especially since if we didn't do it, then the 80 year old groundsman would. 

In the same hallway that we pulled up carpet and scraped the glue off on Monday, we jumped into the painting. We primed and then rolled the paint onto the floor. God was so present in this activity. He was in the conversations and the worship music they sang and even harmonized with.

After mining devo and worship, we split off to our work sites. Some of us stayed at the church to pull the weeds and bad bushes out from the front of the church! The paster came by and was so thrilled at the fresh apperenace of the garden beds.

We we're back in community churches donation closet! Now that the shelves have been built we had a betteridea of how to group the clothing sizes. While sorting some of us did find out that the "T" in sizing means toddler for the first time today. But thank goodness we were working together to bounce ideas off of each other.

We partnered with habitat for humanity this morning. Habitat directed us in how to rebuild a house . They didnt expect to know how to use the tools, just be the hands and feet of Christ. While there, we met so many incredible people with such unique stories.

After lunch, we were back at community church to continue clearing out the jungle around their parking lot. We've been working on it all week, and we're so proud to have completes it. God gave us all thw strength we needed to recharge and tackle the rest of it with so much joy and excitement. It was all God they we were able to clear the trees.