First week was spent in St. Louis. Registration was on Friday with 14 youth groups from churches in Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, and Kansas. With churches and staff we had close to 300 missionaries on the field in inner city St. Louis, MO and East St. Louis, IL.
Our lodging was, as last year, at First Baptist Church, Arnold, MO. I took Gavin with me because his birthday is August 1 and he will be 11 years old. I thought it would be a great chance to get mema time with him. Mallory Schmitz also went with us to take pictures of the sites and events of the week.
Here's Mallory, so happy that we got our beds set up.
And here I am in my office suite, pouring over the books.
Gavin made a tent over his bed so he could watch a movie on my tablet.
The weekend was spent in training for the youth groups with great speakers and band and worship with FBC, Arnold congregation on Sunday. Monday morning started VBS at the 6 ministry sites around the cities. Here's Mallory on the job at one of the sites.
On Tuesday, our midweek break, we went to Gavin's favorite, the City Museum and another day we ate at Crown Candy. Gavin said besides City Museum, he really enjoyed visiting the sites.
We left St. Louis on Thursday afternoon, so we could stop by Springfield and have a night at home to wash our clothes, sleep in a real bed, pick up the mail, etc. before heading to Kansas City on Friday morning. Registration is at 1:00 pm, so we needed to get there in time to get ready for the 160 youth and leaders from 9 churches in Missouri and Arkansas who would be moving in for the week. It's always somewhat of a reunion to see youth pastors and wives that I haven't seen for a year and meet new ones whom I have talked to on the phone in preparation for the trip.
Gavin stayed home this time as Mallory and I met up with Todd, Heather and their kids. Todd is Lodging site Coordinator for the week and Heather has worked with me in the preparations. Gary & Lynette Hirsch and their family were there as well and Gary shared LSC duties with Todd.
One of the biggest jobs of the Project is held by our cooks. We have incredible Head Cooks, Cindy Hunter in St. Louis and Randy & Rosie Bumgarner in Kansas City. Then each youth group brings a kitchen helper. It really takes a lot of hard work and long hours to feed these crews and we appreciate each one who volunteers for this job.
We were also able to visit all the sites and see the students ministering to the children. Mallory again took pictures for us. On our free day, we went with Todd and Heather & kids and the Hirsch's to the Crown Center.
It was an amazing two weeks and I thank God for the 108 people who came to know Christ during this time and pray for the students who will go back to their most difficult mission field....their schools.
Praying to be on mission every day,
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