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Youth & Family Peace Lutheran Church |
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Youth and Family MinistryLummi Mission TripI’m not sure where to begin! What I’ll start with is what an incredible experience we had. For all of us that were given the special privilege to work together and build an awesome bond with not only each other but the Lummi leaders is truly God at work.To paraphrase Philippians 2:5-11 (please read the passage): Be like Jesus, willing to give up everything in order to be closer to God in the way you think and act. Be positive and joyous in all that you do. Think about how God would act and do you act like God? This passage was part of our morning devotions. As we all had read it and put it into words the one thing that kept jumping out at me was attitude and the willingness to give of one’s self. Erik, Molly, Paul, Taylor, Cody, Blake and Suzy were so amazing. They were positive and filled with energy. I was so proud of each of them and even more thrilled that none of them stabbed themselves with a pitchfork! 
The project we were given was cleaning out the large play area next to the Nooksack River. The
same January flood waters that deluged our valley also hit this small town. The dike above them broke and
sent water rushing in. The area we were to work in had waters 5 feet deep during the flood and every home
had a minimum of 2 feet of water. Most of the people are still living in travel trailers.Some of you might wonder why we were working in the play area instead of people’s homes. The answer to that is the Lummi people wanted a safe place for their kids to play. The play area was large and had 2 - 3 feet of beauty bark in it covered with silt left from the flood. When we first viewed it the Lutherwood staff hoped that we would make it half way through the project in our week. The youth and I said we would complete the project by Friday afternoon! As you can guess, this was all manual labor. We shoveled the bark into garbage cans and then lifted them into a pick-up that had a dump bed. We had the area cleaned down to the pit gravel by Thursday afternoon. I will fess up now, as I know the youth will be sharing this with anyone who will listen - I did get the truck stuck once and high centered once! Thanks to a group effort everything was back and running within minutes. We completed out job by Friday afternoon by pressure washing the play equipment and spraying an all natural germ killer. Yes, we worked all week but some of the experiences were life changing.
God calls to you but are you ready to listen? Will you open your eyes and see what’s in front of you or will you shut out the world around you? Life is too good to live alone, be generous to those around you; friends, family, people, nature, generous with emotion, time, love, spirit and your daily life. I am so blessed to have been with these youth! They were willing to give up one week of their summer in order to serve others. If that isn’t listening to God I don’t know what is. I give thanks and praise for each one of these youth! My thanks to each of them for a job well done. Peace, Mary J Fuentes PS: If you would like to check out the pictures and hear the stories that the youth have we will be giving a presentation during the Sunday School hour on September 20. Peace Lutheran Church P.O. Box 100 (1717 Larson Road) Silvana, WA 98287 Phone: (360) 652-8739 Fax: (360) 652-1064 Email: PLSilvana@aol.com |
