Mountain Day

For us, it’s much bigger than Hump Day! We’re past the halfway point now, and the church is really starting to look different. We moved a little slower this morning, but once we got up and going, the pace picked right back up.

Each morning we eat our breakfasts, make our brown-bag lunches, and pack our shower bags before heading out. Once we got to the worksite today, we jumped right back into our work. We painted two of the downstairs classrooms and the narthex, cleaned the kitchen, and continued work in the balcony and the men’s bathroom. Our goal tomorrow is to finish those projects and painting, so that we can spend most of Saturday cleaning.

I have to share a couple of funny moments with you. First, while Sean and I were at Lowe’s today, Sean (who is Irish, in case you didn’t know) was asking a worker how thick he should mix a certain compound. Sean said, “Should it be the consistency of peanut butter?” The worker replied in a heavy Kentucky accent, “Naw, just like yer biscuits.” The look on Sean’s face was priceless! I said to Sean, “Don’t worry, I think I know what he means.” I guess Sean doesn’t have a lot of experience with homemade biscuits, which I imagine is a staple in these parts.

Now, imagine this: You’re a bride getting ready for your big day. The day before the wedding, you’re running around doing a million last-minute things. You walk into the church’s fellowship hall to get ready for your reception, only to find the whole church downstairs has been taken over by a mission trip group from Chicago!

Thankfully, Pip and Bev met the bride and assured her we would have the room looking perfect for her by tomorrow evening. That will mean stacking all our air mattresses, luggage, and supplies in a couple side rooms before we leave in the morning, but it will all be worth it for the bride and her new husband.

Tonight for dinner we’re having BBQ sandwiches and leftovers from the last few nights. After dinner, we’re going to check out the local miniature golf/laser tag/arcade place. I can’t imagine the youth have the energy for laser tag, but they’ve already told us they’re looking forward to it.

Tomorrow night, we’re going straight from the showers to Ivan and Sarah Jean Woods’ house for dinner, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get onto the computer to update the blog. It may be fairly late, so don’t panic if you don’t hear from us! I want to make sure you see plenty of pictures from our time at the Woods’ house.

In yesterday’s blog, I mentioned a story I’m going to share with the group tonight. In Matthew 10, while Jesus is teaching the disciples, he says, “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, or the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

We don’t know what’s going to happen after we leave Hazard Christian Church. As far as we know, no other groups are coming in after us to continue our work. There will be plenty left undone, and so much more will be needed to make this old church look new again.

But I do know this: We have placed a lot of patches around Hazard Christian Church. I don’t know if the church will grow after our work is done, but I’m pretty confident it wasn’t going to grow in the condition it was in. Our prayer is that God fills this new wineskin we are working hard to create with new wine and that by doing so both the church and the new people coming into it will be preserved. I hope one day to read about the resurgent Hazard Christian Church, which is just bursting at the seams with new people! May the work of our mission trip group be a fresh wineskin on this majestic old building.

In case you are not aware, clicking on the picture below will take you to an album of pictures from today.

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