My kids spent the first two weeks of the summer going on two trips with their old church youth group from Naperville, Illinois. This post is about their second trip, a mission trip to Oklahoma City. This trip had been planned for a long time, before the devastating tornadoes hit the area. So, in addition to their scheduled activities, they also helped with some tornado cleanup.
The kids spent six days helping at the Capitol Hill Church of Christ, in Oklahoma City. They were helping with the children in the summer-long program. The children are there from 9-2, and participate in all sorts of activities.
Austin made some new friends.
Savannah spent her time helping with the 3-6 year olds.
Austin spent his time with the 9 and 10-year-olds. One of the activities is shared reading time, to reinforce the children's reading skills.
Austin also helped plan a water balloon and shaving cream war.
Apart from their duties at Capitol Hill, they also had a chance to visit the Towers Elementary School, where 7 people lost their lives in the tornado.
Savannah took this picture. This used to be a neighborhood full of houses.
Austin and Savannah are helping at a house struck by the tornado. All the Sheetrock had to be removed, so that the insurance inspectors could determine the damage to the structure. Being one of the tallest, Austin had ceiling duty.
They also spent one day helping clean a lady's yard. A stranger asked what they were doing, and bought everyone a snow cone. The snow cones were much appreciated, as the temperature was over 100 degrees!
There was some play time in the week. The kids all got to attend a minor league baseball game. Austin was chosen to participate in the Silly Human Tricks. Why am I not surprised? :)
Not sure what Jenna did, but Austin pretty much made silly faces.
Savannah and a friend at the game.
This is an e-mail that Austin wrote Joe at the end of the trip. I have decided to include it, since he can sum up the week much better than me!
Hey pops. I am on the way back home to Aurora! The mission trip was a roaring success. We helped out a lady whose house was hit bad enough to warrant help. I took down the ceiling and all the drywall. I got thoroughly soaked in fiberglass insulation but that was alright. After we helped the lady we gave her the $5,700 we raised for her with our fundraiser at church and at Uplift. The next person we helped was an older lady with a terribly messy backyard. Like junkyard messy. It was bad. She didn't get hurt by the tornado but she signed up for the volunteer help anyway. We got a large trailer and filled it up twice. Exhausting work! It was just above 100 degrees and it was a lot of physical labor and I was surprised how well everybody did! No one complained! We also took down two well built sheds which was super fun destructive work. But now my shoulders hurt. Anyway, so we found a hole under one of the sheds. Turns out that the women's husband was about to go to jail and so he dug that hole so that he could hide from the cops under the floor of his shed when they came to arrest him! It was completely understandable that this guy got arrested cause there were weird things spray painted all over one of the sheds. It honestly felt really good to wear myself out helping someone. Savannah worked hard and was always begging for the sledgehammer. Rusty even commented on it during one of devos. Now to the main reason we are here. We were helping out with a church called Capitol Hill Church of Christ. This is in a poor neighborhood in Oklahoma by where we were staying. We went to a church service when we got there on Sunday and it was said in English and also translated into Spanish. Oh and every church service the church provides a meal to all who comes and that night it was frito pie with watermelon which was amazing. The next morning we came to the church at nine and started helping the summer school that was there. Well it was closer to a day care. Our job was to make a buddy and in general just to be helpful and help the interns control the kids. I was with the 9-10 year olds which was quite a challenge. Was I ever that crazy at that age? We worked until two everyday which is when we went straight from the church into tornado relief work. I made good friends with our two girl interns and that led to me suggesting an attack on yellow group. So me and Yvon loaded up about fifty water balloons and got about four cans of shaving cream and at recess time we attacked. It was a battle of epic proportions. I had shaving cream absolutely everywhere! Since I am the giver of piggy back rides or the general jungle gym, they all had to tackle me and rub shaving cream into my hair and stuff. It was great. The last day we went to a museum! You can imagine how difficult it was to control four boys who all wanted to do different things. But this was an awesome museum. We rode segways, fenced, and watched a chemistry show about explosions. Saying goodbye was surprisingly hard. You become close to a few kids without even knowing it and its sad to leave them. Most of them have sad family stories and you can tell how much they love us right then. I even cried a little bit. But the part I think is funny is that I have a few more nine year old Facebook friends. This trip has drained me physically and mentally and I am ready to get into a bed and sleep for about a week. But I know that won't happen cause I have to see all my friends! Anyway pops, I gotta catch some Z's on the bus ride home so I'm not wiped and cranky when I get back. I love you so much old man. Hope work is going well people are being good! Miss you and I'll call you sometime in the next couple of days and give you more detail. PEACE!
I am proud of all the kids on this trip. They worked so hard to make a difference in those lives in Oklahoma. I also want to thank Rusty and Adam for their pictures I used.
The kids and I are now in Texas, where we will spend the rest of our time in the US. Visiting family and as many friends as we can squeeze in!
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