Summer Missions

Luke and I just returned last weekend from a week-long mission trip in Cincinnati with 17 middle school students and 2 other adults (entire group shown below).

Most of the students who went had never been on a mission trip before, so it was great to experience things through their fresh eyes that week. Our team was split into four different crews for the week, so during the day we went to various work sites in the area. My crew and Luke's crew worked at a inner-city private school with a preschool teacher, Evangeline DeVol, who had us do various work projects around the school, preparing it for students to come back this fall. Evangeline is an amazing Christian woman, and I believe she is one of the reasons God placed us there all week--so that we could watch her and learn from her story. She shared her testimony with us and challenged us to "make our mess our message" as we share our own testimonies with others, which I thought was great advice! On the last day we were there with her, she treated us to Graeter's Ice Cream and gave each of us a copy of the "Starfish" poem, which she shared with us while we were there. Here is a picture of our work crews with Evangeline:

Tuesday night of the trip, we had a free night to do whatever we wanted to do together as a youth group, so we went to downtown Cincinnati, walked across the Purple People Bridge, ate at a pizza place, and then let the kids play in a fountain. It was such a FUN night!! Here are some pictures from that night:

The Whole Group (minus me behind the camera) on the Purple People Bridge!

Part of the Group next to the Ohio River during Devotions. (Purple People Bridge in the background)

The Girls Hugging Luke after Getting Wet in the Fountain

We ended the Cincinnati trip by spending some time at the Creation Museum on the way home. The picture below shows our group in front of the museum. It is such a cool place!

Now that the Cincy trip behind us, we have this week off from trips, and then we leave again on the high school mission trip this weekend to Milwaukee, WI. There are 31 of us going, including adult leaders. The cool part is that the other church going to the same site is the United Methodist church from Columbia City!! We didn't even plan it that way...God is good! Two of my cousins, Ryan Peppler and Sam Lipply, will be going with that group, so CC will be transplanted in Milwaukee for a week. I am excited to see what God has in store for us there!