Where's My Community?

I usually try to get each mission team member to write a brief (or long) message for our final blog.  However, we were having so much fun at the pool and with the shorter travel time, I didn't get a chance to get the notebook passed around.  Therefore, you get my comments now and I'll try to get each trip participant to add a comment with theirs.

The end of a mission trip seems to always bring two feelings to me.  On the first night back, I am really happy to be back in my own room and not having to carry my things to the bathroom as I get ready for bed.  Then, I wake up the next morning wondering where everyone is.  I so enjoy each mission trip community - it is hard to believe this was my 10th mission trip.  Each group is different in composition, quantity, and interactions but they also have similarities.  The joy of working with youth and adults as the hands and feet of Jesus is so hard to describe.  The mission trip is always a highlight of my summer.  All the people we met and worked with were great - Mark at Metro North Recycling seemed to know most of the people that came on Saturday morning.  What a great example - greet everyone as a friend.  We worked with just our group that afternoon - a time to grow closer.  On Sunday, some of us found an overlap of our communities at church.  Linda saw several people she knew and I ran into someone who grew up in our church.  Then we worked with the Kebe's to clean up their yard and helping them feel a part of our community.  On Monday, we painted at a house of worship that is part of our Methodist community.  Tuesday, we picked tomatoes for After the Harvest, which we picked because Jim Merrill is president of the board.  (Jim's wife, Charlotte, is a much missed member of our church family community.)  We then went to Cross-Lines to work in their thrift store. Cross-Lines has served the KCK community for around 50 years.  Our last day, we served at Lazarus Ministries.  They have served the KCMO community for 21 years.  Each community we served was slightly different but also slightly the same.  They were each a part of the most important community - God's community.

I'm sorry to see this trip end but look forward to next year's trip - wherever it may be.  Thank you, Connor, Kate, Molly, Howard, John, and Linda for making the trip so special.  I will always smile when I think of the week and the special moments that made this trip unique.

Barbara (so grateful I signed that lifetime contract 10 years ago)

Wait - It's the Last Day Already?

It's hard to believe that we reached our final day already.  We were up at 6:30 to pack up, fix breakfast, and make our final lunch.  We worked at Lazarus Table, which used to be located at Grand Avenue Temple downtown but are in the middle of relocating to 31st & Olive.  They are working on getting their boutique set up so we helped sort, hang, and de-tag clothes and shoes.  We made pretty good progress so, hopefully, they will be able to meet their timetable of having the site set up for a practice run this Saturday with the goal of being back open for the public by September.  They really appreciated the shirts and jackets that we took with us -  thank you, Barbara Redieck for the donation.
We headed back to Hollis Renewal Center to have our final lunch and load the vans.  The plan was to grab lunch, change, put away the clean dishes, and head to the pool.  Ooops - someone (me) forgot to start the dishwasher before we left in the morning.  So, being ever flexible, we lunched, napped, got in a little foosball, and loaded the car as we waited for the dishwasher to finish.  I'm happy to report that Molly finally achieved her goal - she and Connor beat Howard and Kate at foosball.  I think it took 2.5million tries - perhaps a bit of a stretch on the count.  :-)

For our "fun" event, Linda Z offered the use of her community pool for the afternoon.  I ran a quick errand and when I returned to the pool, there was a rousing game of hand hacky sack going on.  I'm not sure if they tried regular hacky sack in the pool first or not.  I think we made it to our goal of 31 hits without a miss - but it took a lot of tries with many of them stopping at one.  We reminded each other quite frequently of the difference between up and down.

We finished the trip back where we started - at our church.  Our  biological and church family members joined us for our final devotion as a mission trip community, which included communion.  It was so fun to watch the team visit with those that came to celebrate the completion of our trip.  There are many stories to share - so keep an eye out for our video that will be shared.

Thank you for your support.  Watch for updates on the plans for next year's trip.  We are looking into returning to the Four Corners Native American Ministry in Shiprock, NM.

Barbara (who zoned out and then fell asleep last night)

Every shoe in its place

Never too tired to share a smile.

Hanging with Howard

John works on hanging in the boutique

One down for the count.

Another one down for the count.

And a third one - we tired a few folks out this week.

How did that happen?  Congratulations, Molly and Connor.  (Not sure how I missed a picture of the victorious team)

Pool time!

Final devotion time with our church community.

Day 4 (dog picture included!)

Day 4!

This morning, we got up at the crack of dawn (5:30), which is a little too early for most of us. We ate breakfast 'made' by Howard and Connor (cereal and yogurt), then packed lunched and headed out. At 7:15, we arrived at Wohletz farm to glean lots of tomatoes. By 9:35, we had gleaned half a ton of tomatoes. By 10:00:05, we had arrived at Dairy Queen for our annual stop. After our ice cream, we delivered tomatoes to Family Health Center, then to the Cross-Lines kitchen. We parked ourselves in a park for lunch, then arrived approximately an hour and a half early for our shift at the Cross-Lines thrift store. There, we sorted donated clothes into different bins. I'll let Linda finish the rest (this was Kate, hint the dog title). 

Hi, this is me, Linda!  Yes, it was a busy day!  These kiddos have so much energy that they make me tired.  And between that and Howard's puns, we have had so much fun - it's been an amazing trip, even though we didn't even go out of town (unless you call KC MO and Edwardsville "out of town!"

This is our last night here at Hollis Renewal Center.  It's a really nice place, and very reasonable.  Our accommodations have been really nice and comfy.  We've played lots of foosball, lots of Kings' Corner (a card game) and we've sung "Where is My Hairbrush" many, many times.  If you'll come to our "closing" at the church at 6 tomorrow night, we'll sing for you!  

Well, I'll let Barb close us out.  Sayonara for now.  Maybe next year, YOU can join us!

We worked with After the Harvest this morning.  It made me remember of an important member of our choir community that is no longer with us - Charlotte Merrill.  Her husband, Jim, is on the board of After the Harvest.  This connection is one reason we wanted to work with them.  It has been a great time so far.  We hope that some of our church family will join us tomorrow at 6pm as we finish our trip with our final short devotion and communion.  Thank you for your support.  Barbara

Connor's artwork from painting yesterday titled: "Harry Potter's scar", featuring his sister as the canvas

Last night's s'mores

As you can tell, we like s'mores a lot

Tomato pickers who don't like tomatoes

Turns out cows like tomatoes--even the bad ones!

A lovely lady with some lovely gleaned tomatoes

Gleaning crew

We all like to get close while waiting for our ice cream

Napping between ice cream and delivering tomatoes

Our group at the Cross-Lines Thrift Store

Last but certainly not least, Murphy!!!!

The Lesson of the Bucket

We start off with Molly and John making and serving us eggs, yogurt, and cereal along with drinks. We make our lunch and then we head off to the church to paint. We painted a whitish color to paint over a dark brown. The pastor wanted the walls to look invited rather than dark colors. We start to paint the walls while Howard comes up with a new invention where he connects a stick to a brush to get high corners that the roller can't get. He wants to sell it for money for "modern technology". Our job was to paint 2 floors in white paint with high walls which took longer than expected. We finished about half and decide to take a lunch break, (which lasted about 45 minutes, got too involved in conversations). When we head back to work I (Connor) head to the paint bucket for more paint when I decide to dunk the paint bucket in the paint instead of pouring it. Well, it didn't go as well as I though it would. It was to messy so it becomes "The Bucket Dunker".  After I told everyone we all call it "The Lesson of the Bucket" (title).We finish painting around 3:00 but didn't leave till 4:00 because of cleaning up. We head home and shower so we can have an early dinner. But the time that Molly and John took to shower, we had dinner at normal time. We all were starving so we finish dinner in under 30 minutes. We then have free time where Connor and Howard play competitive foosball. Connor lost again right as we begin Devotion, which Kate and Linda lead. As we finish devotion, it then comes to the gaming time till bed time. Connor beats Molly, Kate, and Barb in cards while Connor and Molly get mad 2 times after Howard and Kate beat them at foosball. We then go to bed early since we leave early for gleaning tomorrow morning. That is a wrap for a the "gang" for today.
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And now...finally...as we prepare for bed...after much "waiting" for the computer to do its 'updating' (sigh...) and a certain young man to complete his blog with pictures...don't want to mention any names... I get to add my brief thoughts...

So why does a pastor go on these crazy mission trips, anyway? "Isn't it a lot of work?" Well...yeah, but it's a lot more than that. It's fun getting to know one another through work, play, eating, singing, praying, playing, worshiping, riding, talking and just being with one another as community.
We've talked about many things, singing about any tune that comes to our head while working, and zeroing in on scripture and thoughts during our devotion time.

As physically tired as we all feel by the end of the day, the spiritual energy flowing through us is amazing. Each of us brings a special gift as a beloved child of God. It's a great reminder! Next time, maybe your gift could be part of this experience!! Think about it!

 Linda hard at work!

 Connor chillin on the rail

 Lunch Break!

 Howards great invention at the end of its life

 "I'm hungry"

 The doors to the sanctuary

 Connor and Howard's painting

 Another rail picture

Finishing touch

The Sabbath- Day 2

Hello Leawood Family! This is Molly and John bringing you a blog post for day 2 of mission trip 2017! Today we got to sleep in an extra half hour, we got to get up at the late time of 7am! WOO! Then after a wonderful breakfast of waffles we had an extra hour and half to kill before we headed out to Jacob's Well church, So obviously we continued our foosball "tournament" (basically a lot of shouting and trash talking). Then around 10am we headed over to Jacob's Well which is a church in Westport that has very nice people and a very nice set up (beautiful sanctuary!) We sat up on the balcony, and luckily being in the first row I (Molly) didn't fall over the side like I thought I was going to, just knowing me. After a nice service and a picnic for lunch in Penn Valley Park we all headed (except Howard who had to leave us to go to his grandkids birthday party) to the Kebe's house. The Kebe's are Linda's second family from South Sudan. We went to their house and did a lot of yard work for them and got to meet some of their 8 kids. We got done faster than we thought we would, the kids were very eager and willing to help us pull weeds and trim branches and bushes. After saying goodbye to them we decided to stop at McDonald's to get some ice cream and Diet Coke for Barb, sadly they were out of Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper so Barb settled for some "overly sweet" tea and the rest of us got ice cream cones! Then it was one more stop on the way back to Hollis Renewal Center, to Walmart! We really needed gas for the van and we needed to pick up some more supplies and food for us. We managed to not get lost in the store and made it back to pull weeds out of the sand volleyball court, though it wasn't really a sand volleyball court...more like a weed court. Howard met us back at the cabin for burgers and watermelon (I'm, Molly, proud to say I ate 17 slices of watermelon, though they were small, and I, John, tried to keep up but quickly fell behind) Then we roasted some yummy s'mores outside on our grill after devotions and now we are here writing this blog for you all! It's getting late and we don't get to sleep in tomorrow, see you soon, miss you all!
Sweet Dreams, John and Molly!

PS - from Barbara - I received communion from Amy Mardiat, who grew up in Leawood UMC.  (I don't recall her married name but I got to meet her two children and her husband.  I'm so happy she recognized me - I'm not sure I would have recognized her if she hadn't spoken first.  Linda also ran into a few people she knew at church.  Our community extends further than we know. 

 breakfast table set and ready!

 Cute puppies next door to the Kebe's

 The Kebe's

 Kate decided to be special and get a slushy instead of ice cream like the rest of us

 The "weed" court

 s'mores!!!

(part) of ALL the watermelon consumed by Molly

Day 2

Well, we are all really tired tonight!  We went to Metro North Recycling Center this morning and helped people from the area recycle everything from 9-1.  Mark, the supervisor, said that people in the northland don't want to pay for curb recycling, that they'd rather bring their recyclables to the center, and boy, do they - in BULK!  Never seen so much plastic and bottles.  And aluminum!  People in the Northland drink LOTS AND LOTS of sodas and beer!  It was fun, but really tiring.  We sat any chance we got.  Of course, I (Linda) got too much sun, so when we got to Howard's house later in the day, I didn't feel like doing much other than supervising! 

So after a great dinner (baked chicken, rice and salad), some of us are playing foosball and some of us are just sitting and contemplating the BLOG!  Here's Kate!

Today I (Kate) got to see lots of dogs, so I would call it a good day. The foosball games we've been playing have become quite competitive. At the recycling center, I had the honor of fishing a broom out of the tin bin, as well as lots and lots of misplaced beer cans (lots). At Howard's house, we got to meet his dog, Chloe, and his bird, Rosie Peach (who knew he had a bird??). We also got to put lots of mulch around his tree, as well as cut lots of brush and straighten up his apricot tree that got pushed over by the wind.

Check out Connor.  We took a mattress off the top bunk for him, but he fell off of it (it was on the FLOOR) and slept quite comfortably on the cold hard floor. 

So glad we got the top bunk mattress down for him.

Mark, our fearless leader, and the gang at the recycling center.

Happy crew after straightening the apricot tree.

Home Sweet Home

We have made it to our Lodge to stay our whole trip! We are safe and glad we didn't hit any animals on the road. We started blowing up mattresses so we can sleep, but as dedicated as Connor is to Molly and Connor's camping mattress with Brandon, Connor will not sleep on Linda's extra mattress, a couch, or an extra bed as he will not give up on his mattress as he quotes, "Me and Mattress go WAY WAY back." While we wait for the mattress to blow up, we start devotion. Our theme for our trip is Community as we will be helping other family's and more. As we finish up devotion, (mattress still not done yet) Molly and Kate did a ukulele show for the rest of the "gang" for Joy and comfort. As of writing this blog right now, we are all worried that Connor's "legendary" mattress might not be blown up by the time we go to bed, we have come to conclusion that we will not go to bed until the mattress is done blowing up! This is a wrap for the day and will begin a new day tomorrow as Connor and Howard will make Breakfast and Dinner Tomorrow!

Written by Connor

PS - we  gave up on the mattress.  Thank you, Anne Byrd, for our delicious dinner.