Charlie, Three Step, and Staffers... What a Summer

Reality.
This is a hard job.
We are about finished with week three and I am beat. God has done so much for me this summer and I realized today (again for like the twentieth time) that He put me here to serve him. It is incredible how much God has done.
Volunteers are great and they really seem to be enjoying their week here. It's hard for me to lead them and not jump in there and help do the work myself.
I realized I needed to take a different view on what I am doing here. Not only am I here to help people who are living in poverty, but I need to facilitate a week where volunteers can truly have an experience with God.
It's difficult because the way I worship and lead at home is not the way that is known here.
I am so excited about God and my joy is hard to contain. I am going to try and lead the worship like I do back home for my volunteers on  Friday and see how they take to it.
While on the subject of volunteers I just need to say that the willingness of volunteers to do work is something that continually amazes me. I feel like if I told them to build a wall 12' high and then take it down move it 2" to the left and then rebuild it, they would. I appreciate them so much because I can only provide the opportunity for them to do the work. I cannot do the work myself and they are out there everyday doing the things I don't really want to do.
My day off is tomorrow. WOOT!!
I cannot wait for this day. There is a habitat store down the road from us and they are selling really cheap golf clubs and I am going to go to the driving range tomorrow!!!!
I am so excited.
Something I realized this last weekend though is that it is going to be so hard to say goodbye to all of my friends here. They are incredible. My staff has bonded so well. We laugh so much and I think we work very well together.
But furthermore, my staffers who aren't in my county. I am going to miss them. I cannot believe the summer is almost half over. Incredible.

Absolutely incredible.

I do still need prayer however. My job literally starts from at the latest seven AM and ends around 1ish AM every morning. I have very little time for myself, and even less time for God and this is hard. I am still struggling to find a balance between what I am doing and what I can do to be closer to God. I cannot just have one devo every other week. This is a huge prayer request for me.

Thank you everyone back home whom I really, really miss. Come visit me!!!!

How One Week Changed my Life

I feel as if I need to explain why I decided to come to Appalachia and serve. There are so many things that impact people in life to do things and one week almost a year ago that happened for me.
I had an opportunity to go to Ecuador for a week and serve by building a home for a family. This family was great and they deserved the home we were able to build for them.


But that is not where my story begins. Before I went to Ecuador I had been on several missions trips and in fact even though I don't really agree with going on a trip every year I have been on a trip every year since my junior year in high school. This is an interesting point because as I am thinking about it I never planned on going to Rockford or Ecuador. These trips kind of fell in my lap. At the time I would never had guessed God had been preparing me for this.

When i went to Rockford i found out that I was going legitimately a week before I left for the trip. I was able to pay for the trip myself and I didn't need to send out any support levels. That trip changed me. For the first time in my life I started to feel God pull my heart toward helping people in need. Furthermore, God started showing me the way the Church has failed in doing things for the poor and needy. The Church should be a movement, not a building. Looking back I can see now how God has been in every aspect in my life molding me for this trip. When I went to Rockford God taught me to depend on him for energy. This supernatural energy only comes from him. It's as if when I ask God for energy he gives me a glass of fresh water that fills me to the brim. When I am depending on Him I am able to do so much more. I have energy when others are tired. God rocked my life on that trip.

And then there was Ecuador.

However on a side note I feel like it is so interesting how we as God's children are never satisfied when it comes to growing in God. We only get tastes as Christians here on earth. We cannot and should not be satisfied with just getting energy from God to do his work. He wants to do so much more in us and through us.
There is a verse in 1 Corinthians 13 that says, And now these three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. I was having a conversation with a good friend before I left for Appalachia about this passage and I realize now that faith and hope are going to disappear but love will always be there.


In Ecuador God showed me the meaning of love.


When we got to give a house to Eduardo and his family it was hands down the most obvious example of Christ's love for us that I have ever seen. Christ died for us and gave us something that we don't deserve and cannot afford. In the same way my work crew was able to give Eduardo something that he could not afford, and something that in his mind he didn't deserve.


Ecuador changed my life.

I remember praying for weeks before going that God would change me in some radical way. HELLO I AM IN APPALACHIA!!!!!

God changed my life in a week and I am now spending eight or nine weeks of summer in Appalachia doing His work.

It is so incredibly sad that the homes I am seeing here are just as bad or worse than the homes in Ecuador. This should not be.
How can we as Christians live in luxury while there are children sitting without clothes on top of plywood in trailers that have crazy bug infestations.
How can we as Christians who live in luxury be o.k. with letting elderly people not have windows in their homes, or ceilings above their heads. This should not be.

God is teaching me to feel love for these strangers.
Love for these people who live in flyover land.
Love for these people who look weird, speak differently, and are filthy.

If someone had asked me five years ago if A) Do I think I would be living in a school working ridiculous hours serving the poor for the whole summer? and B) Do I even know what Appalachia is? I would have laughed and said no.
Christ moved me and I feel like I can zero in on the one week in Ecuador when I really felt God calling me to serve him in this way.

Set-up Week

Who knew something so tiring could be so much fun.
This week I have gotten to do so much stuff and it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to explain what exactly I am do.
Let's start with this...
I am the kind of person who finds things to do. If something needs to get done I like to work until the job is finished. I see now that God really did put me as Operations Coordinator for a reason.
My job description basically tells me to deal with food, allergies, supplies, chores, and making sure chores get done. Most of these things can't be done before volunteers get here. This has enabled me to really get things done.
I really feel like I have been able to help my staff this week by doing the odds and ends things that no one wants to do. I have put up shower curtains, built supports out of 2x4's, and driven an hour away to get keys made.
I knew God put me here for a reason, but I thought that reason was to help people who are living in poverty. Now I see that not only has God done that, but he put me here to support my staff.
Yesterday me entire staff came back from doing initial home visits

clarifying note:
Initial Home Visits or IHVs are the first step for us as a staff in choosing a home to work on.

Anyway. They came back from doing initial home visits and they were really discouraged. It is so frustrating here to have to turn around fifty times while trying to find a house by following directions that go something like this:

Go up 27 until you see the gas station
turn right and veer right
Once you see the hill with the rock go two streets and turn right
look for a trailer with a red roof and a white porch
Turn immediately there and look for the three dogs
Turn at those dogs and drive for awhile
Pass Jon's house and turn left
We are the third house on the right.

We seriously get directions like that. Immediately we have a dilemma. Which direction are we going on 27!!!!
It is so frustrating.


But I digress

My staff was really discouraged and they were tired from all of the driving and not finding houses. I had been building support posts all afternoon in the hot sun and was tired also. But they were by far more tired then I was and I felt like they just needed a hand. So I went and made dinner for all of them.
Everyone else had tons of stuff they needed to do and I was able to help them and this gave me energy.

My co-worker Penny said something today that really hit home for me. We were driving in the middle of nowhere and we found a trailer we were looking for.
She said, "That has to be the house. That person is definitely living in poverty."

I've been looking for homes to fix. God is looking at the person who is living in that poverty. The person who doesn't have the money to fix the floor that has rotted away because their toilet leaked and no one would fix it. God looks at the person who can't get their wheelchair into their house because they don't have a ramp which makes them unable to leave their house.
God is showing up here and we only have two more days before volunteers arrive. THIS IS CRAZY!!!
We have so much stuff to do still. I feel like we need to kick it into high gear..... but we did that yesterday : (

This is what it's about though and I am so excited to actually get the construction started.

This blog was supposed to be a video blog but for some reason it won't load. So I am typing things out.
Prayer requests:
That I can find time to read my bible (it s getting increasingly hard to do so)
That we would find quality homes to work on
That God would change my attitude from finding a home to finding the person living in poverty.



Oh and i found two ticks on me today... Luckily neither of them bit me woot!
I am tired and I've typed a lot so good night I miss you all.