New Mexico: week 2 day 1

My first day at Four Corners was awesome. My first impression was of the weather. It is HOT! not the kind of  humid heat back in Virginia, but instead a dusty dry heat. The wildlife is just as interesting. I've seen wild dogs, prairie dogs, and lizards. Maybe I'll see a cool snake or spider. The terrain is also much different from home. Instead of hills and green forests, there really isn't much here. There's mostly sand, and towering mountains and cliffs. It's quite a pretty sight. My team and I are working on an add on to our family's house. We spent most of the day fixing measurements of the previous group. We met with the family a couple of times, and got to talk to the homeowner's granddaughter. Tomorrow we will begin working on the walls now that we finished the roof and got everything square. I can't wait till tomorrow! I know it will be even more awesome than today. That's all for now!    

Patrick Weaver, Fairfax High School, Class of '11

My Appreciation of Drywall

Greetings from Shiprock, New Mexico!

As I'm writing this, I can look out across the plateau and see the sacred Navajo mountain named Tse Bit Ai, or the "Rock with Wings," looming on the horizon. Shiprock mountain is the town's claim to fame, due to the cliffs that jut more than 1500 feet up into the air from the flat desert floor. My friend described the view like "the landscape of Mars" - flat, erred, rough, and dusty.

Today is day two in Shiprock. We arrived here late Saturday night and spent Sunday sleeping off the jet-lag and settling in to the nice facilities the ministry has provided for us. We went to Shiprock United Methodist Church that morning and listened to a wonderful sermon about the sower and the seed from Frank Harnage, who is also one of the leaders of the Four Corners Native American Ministry. After that, we drove a couple blocks to the flee markets and browsed tents filled with delicious fried bread, beautiful native jewelry, and old Conway Twitty Cds. This was our first taste of the modern reservation culture, but was nothing compared to what we saw today.

For those who are familiar with the Appalachian Service Project, (which is the missions project our church has participated in in years past) I'll try to compare this to ASP. It is similar in the way that we operate from our base center and crews come every week to work on the project sites. The biggest difference is the structure of the mission ministry. Fairfax UMC is the only crew here and the ministry is not as structured as ASP. They are able to be more flexible with the projects because the land is leased from the Navajo government. In fact, all land on the reservation, commercial and residential, is leased from the government. Because the ministry does not have as many guidelines to follow as ASP, work crews are challenged with more in-depth construction to undertake, such as installing electrical and plumbing systems as well as usual roof and floor repair, insulation and drywall installation, painting, etc. This results in crews having to really think on their feet, problem solve, and use all their resources to finish the job.

So this morning, we broke up into three work crews, two groups of six kids and one group of four kids. I was a part of a group of six - Charlie Clouse, J.P. Clouse,  Bobby Doyle, Paris Ervin, and Kara Tribbie. Our adult leaders, Mike Hensley and David Peacock, herded us into our white rent-a-van, packed up our lunches and tools, and embarked towards our worksite.

As we turned onto a dusty, bumpy road to our house, I began to turn over in my head what I was going to expect. We had been told a plethora of information at the center: "There's a lot of dry-walling involved." So I said a little prayer asking for today to going to go well and readied myself for anything.

The house was no bigger than a typical master bedroom back in Fairfax. There was no plumbing. The house had no kitchen or bathroom. There was a hallway that ran the length of the house, connecting the front door to the three 10 foot by 10 foot bedrooms. This living space is going to house a single mother and her six daughters.

The work crew from the week before us had insulated the walls and had dry-walled the first bedroom. The electrical system was installed, but we had the rest of the house to drywall, sand, and prep for painting.

We got right to work, measuring the sheets of drywall and putting them up. We discovered that the room that had been dry-walled the week before was poorly done. Paris and Charlie spent a good two hours re-screwing the drywall into the frame.

We worked from nine in the morning to four-thirty in the afternoon. Only stopping for lunch, we screwed, measured, and laid drywall left and right. By the end, we had three walls of the second bedroom done, the  ceiling of the second bedroom was finished, and the ceiling of the third bedroom was partially complete.

As we climbed back into the van and pulled out, I was thinking about how tedious dry-walling is. It is very detailed and your measurements have to be exact. I gained some appreciation for how much work and effort goes into building a home. Mike decided to drive through the neighborhood directly down the road from our house. The lot where our house is on is  an open hill. At the base of the hill, a neighborhood built with grant money from the federal government stretches about six blocks to the main road. It looked like a typical suburban neighborhood. Multiple single level houses with arched doorways and two car garages lined the street. As we drove past, we stared in shock as every house stood vacant. All the windows had been smashed; glass splintered from the square frames. Gang art and profanity was spray painted on every white garage door. Looking through the broken windows, we could see the drywall had been kicked in, ripped out. The last houses on the block were chard black from arson. A whole neighborhood of beautiful new houses, torn to pieces. None of those houses ever got the chance to become homes for the residence on the reservation.

It was at this moment that I  really appreciated every screw and every cut I made in that drywall today. It is going to a woman in true need. The house far from enough, but it's better than nothing. In a neighborhood that was destroyed by anger, in a place where domestic violence, drugs, and alcohol are common community problems, it is God working through me, my work team, and our mission group, to spread hope and love to one home at a time.

- Elliot Meyer, 18

Last week at JP was awesome.  Our wifi is finally up and running - sorry about the delay.  I'll be posting some reflections from our students below.

During out JP week 1, Sean Gundry was our program director - that's right our very own Sean Gundry.  He did a fantastic job, and the kids had a blast at camp.  They all worked super-hard doing home repair for four days, as well.

Here are some of their thoughts:

Cara Golias writes:

This is my first year at JP and it has been great so far. The staff and adults here are amazing and fun, and you get to become friends with the other campers as well. One thing I like about JP is that they make worship very comfortable and easy for youth to understand. At home, it’s not always the coolest thing to talk about Jesus and your relationship with God. At JP, you can also work well with each other for the same reasons, the love to help God’s people. So, today at JP my group and adults went to wash and refinish decks for a family. From what I’ve heard from other campers from previous years is that the families are always very kind and that you will love to get to know them and their stories, and I found out for myself that this is true. When we pulled in their driveway we were immediately welcomed by the mother of the house. She brought her family out and showed us her two daughters and her son; she also brought out her sister. As we started working we didn’t get to talk with the family often, but we saw the conditions they were living in. There were at least 5 people living in their small house with no running water. At the end of the day, it was really cool to have seen the difference we made in these people’s lives and I hope to keep up with the work for these families.

Grace Weaver writes:

Today we started out with devotions. We thought about the parable of yeast. After that we got in our working groups to pack for the day. We went to a sweet lady’s house. Her house needed some painting to be done. So we first used painters tape around her house. Then we painted part of her house this brown color. We took a break for lunch. After lunch we talked about the parable of yeast for devotions. Then we got back to painting. I took a break with some people in my group and got to talk to her. She was an amazing person. I wish I could talk to her more, but we had to get back to work. So we got back to work and got finished with the job. We got to talk to her a little more before we left. Then we got back to camp. This was an amazing day to be with God and my friends.

Eric Burks writes:

Today… it was one of those days. You know, like the kind you never want to end. We went to a trailer park again. We knew we were going to be doing a bunch of small projects so I thought I knew what to expect. When we arrived, the man (insert name here) took us inside to see an autographed helmet. Then I looked at him as just another redskins fan wanting to show off his real helmet. So, big deal right? We walked inside the house and then the real heart-felt story came out. We learned that the helmet had belonged to his son, his dead son. His dead son who died of cancer. His dead son. But he story gets better. Apparently his son was in that “Make a Wish” program, they offered to take him to Disney land but all he wanted to do was to go to a redskin’s football game. Talk about a diehard fan. How could all this happen to him and he still has faith in God? But sure enough there was a cross hanging on the door showing extreme faith. How did all my problems compare to this? How did my faith compare to this? It was nothing. But it was only later I realized that it didn’t have to be nothing. I had helped these people but I think they and helped me just as much. They helped me grow in my faith and helped me to know that God does watch over people and works his will through them. Was it God that put me inside that trailer today? It just might have been so.

Zoe Cooper writes:

So far this week, I have had an amazing, educational, life-changing time. From waking up every morning, to evening activities at night. In fact today, (Tuesday-the 2nd day of the trip), I got to experience going to my work site at Ms. Blankenship’s home. We were assigned to build steps up a hill to connect to her house. We all got to greet Ms. Blankenship, and then immediately had to get working since we had to build six steps altogether. I had a blast getting to know the others while working with the tools. In the beginning, we got assigned to different jobs throughout the week, to do along with building in general. I offered to do the “Tool Person” duty since I thought it would be fun. So, today, I checked off all the tools before we left camp and before we left the site at 3:30. Besides that, I started off digging the hill to make the ground even, and put the step in place. After, some of my teammates did that, while my new friend Amy and I, went to cut some steel bars. That was not so fun, but luckily, Ms. Blankenship own 22 cats that she rescued herself, so we got to watch them run around! One of the rules at the Jeremiah Project though is, “No petting the animals.” So, obviously, we couldn’t pet them, but they were still very cute. Overall, the week has been great, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for me tomorrow!

And Away We Go!

Dear friends,

I can't believe that July is almost here!  That means that four weeks worth of awesome mission trips are right around the corner.  Here's our schedule:

June 26 - July 2: Jeremiah Project (Winchester, VA - 7th & 8th graders)
July 3 - July 9: Jeremiah Project (Winchester, VA - 7th & 8th graders)
July 9 - July 16: Four Corners Native American Ministry (Shiprock, NM - 9th thru 12th grade)
July 16 - July 23: Four Corners Native American Ministry (Shiprock, NM - 9th thru 12th grade)

Over the next month, you'll be able to track the progress of our mission teams and read about our students' experiences by visiting this blog.  Be sure to bookmark us and check back often.

Finally, if you are reading this, there's a good chance that you are one of the people who helped make these trips possible.  Either you are a parent who encouraged your child to attend, a donor who gave generously to one of our fundraisers, or a congregation member who encouraged and prayed for us.  I cannot adequately express my gratitude for the support we have received.  Youth mission trips are life changing journeys - as cliche as it sounds, it's absolutely true.  None of this would be possible without you.

Ready to hit stuff with a hammer,
Mike Hensley
Director of Youth Minsitry
Fairfax UMC
Fairfax, VA