So this past weekend I went along with several other people from church to Nashville for a mission trip. There is still a lot of work to be done for flood victims and we wanted to go help out.
It was an awesome experience for me. I have never done a mission trip or anything like this so I had been looking forward to it ever since I signed up to go. It was great to go and do something for someone else. It was also a great time to get to know people from church that I didn't already know while doing this.
We took away from it positive and negative things and we are going to use all of that when looking at future trips. As always you are constantly learning so you can always make the next time even better.
So we headed out Friday afternoon and drove down to Nashville. We stayed in some cabins at a campsite. It was like being at summer camp. Bunk beds in each room and the two rooms divided by the bathroom slash hallway. It wasn't a cushy hotel but it was it was a place to put our stuff down and sleep. Also gave us a place to bond when not at the work site. Only downside was walking up that sort of steep trail up to the cabin.
Hit the work site Saturday and started working. We started building a shed that went much faster once another volunteer came over. Obviously we were thinking about it too much and just had to wait and he made it look easy. We stained a deck and put some lattice around it to keep the dog from getting under there. We also did some other various duties that needed to be done including raking straw out of the front yard.
After calling it a day we headed back to camp and cleaned up so we could go out for dinner. Ate out a very cool restaurant and spent some time getting to know each other more. After dinner it was back to camp to play some games and spend some time to just bonding. Had a great time that night.
On Sunday we headed back over to continue doing work around at the work site. We were not able to get the shed done but we did the best we could. We were able to accomplish and finish other things that needed to be done though. We packed up and rushed back to St. Louis. We wanted to make it back to the six o'clock service and we all made it just in time. Heard a great sermon and then went out one more time to debrief and talk about the trip before heading home for the night and crashing since the next day was a work day.
Great experience and looking forward to being part of more trips in the future or if I am not able to go at least help out in some way. Made some new friends which is always a plus. And of course we were able to do some good for someone else which just warms my heart.
That is all for now. Later gators.
