Living the Life Separate and Apart: Praise You in This Storm

The title of this blog was the theme for Model City Missions 2011 in Anniston, AL! What an amazing week this was! Our kids were able to serve God by serving the people in the Anniston community and those affected by the tornadoes in the Webster's Chapel community. I'm pretty sure we have more stories about the travel for this trip than for the entire week! We left last Sunday morning to make our journey to Bama. We were making such good timing until we rolled into Alabama and blew a tire! But as always, our God was so faithful to protect us! 1.Noone was hurt when the tire blew! 2. It blew right by a tire store! We were able to take the bus to this tire shop and take a supper break while they fixed the tire! Over the course of this amazing week our kids were able to work with younger children at a kid's camp, visit elderly people in a nursing home, participate in a prayer walk, and help with Tornado Relief in Webster's Chapel.
For the most part we helped two different families in Webster's Chapel. The first house we worked at was owned by an elderly couple. Both the man and woman were killed in the tornado. Their house was picked up off of the foundation and thrown across the street in the woods (we were only able to find half of the house). The children of this couple have been too traumatized with losing their parents that they have not been able to go back to clean up the site nor look for any salvageable valuables. So we did it for them. We found so many things such as shoes, old pictures, and homemade quilts!It made it so surreal to find so many things that I know would mean so much to me to maintain my parents' memory. The other family that we helped lost everything. We helped a lady named Paige. Her parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and brothers ALL lost everything they had in this storm! So we went and helped clear off the lot so they can start rebuilding her home here in the coming weeks. This site became a BIG blessing for our kids, because Paige actually stopped by to meet us! The teens were able to see her raw helplessness. It was a amazing to watch the teens surround Paige and love on her and pray over her. Once she left it was as if a whole new group of kids had shown up to help work. You could tell that by meeting Paige, it gave meaning and a purpose to what they were doing.
I have to tell you it was HOT this week! So it made any and everything we did that much harder to stay motivated when we were so exhausted by the heat! It was such a blessing to see God work in so many ways.
The time came for us to head back home yesterday. I will have you know that if we didn't get an hour down the road and blow yet ANOTHER tire..then I am not sitting here! Unfortunately this stop turned into about a 2 1/2 hr stop because we left so early that noone was open to help us! So after hitting every traffic jam for Alabama to Texas, we finally made it home at about 10:00 PM last night!
This week was full of worship, service, laughter and tears. But more importantly God was glorified by the selflessness of these kids! It was such an honor working alongside them! I will leave you with several pictures of the week! Love you all!