Final Days in LA

Happy Saturday AM from CA!

Last night at devotions, there were a lot of long, sad faces. Our group had just said goodbye to their friends at VBS. One VBS boy asked if one of the IA youth could please leave their clothes in CA and instead take him to IA in their suitcase.

Two IA youth were invited by their young friends to come to their house to spend the night so they could spend more time together. Everyone worked really hard sharing the love of Jesus with their words and actions. Each day there were additional youth who came to the various VBS classes. As VBS was starting, Derek invited three youth who were skateboarding past the church to come in for VBS.

To Derek’s surprise, they did stay. The seed of God’s word has been planted. Many Iowans have decided that they are leaving part of their heart in CA. The big work project at St. Paul is finished. A lot of good Iowa work ethic and muscle was used by Lee and Jessica Overturf, Amanda Ballou, Kenny Headley and Michael Rothe. They worked really hard to clean up, till the area and prepare a large playground area into a “soft playground area” for the daycare. They also painted the wall around it and designed and painted a mural.

Thursday, Kenny and Michael left the hotel at 6:00 with a church member to get a huge truck load of mulch, only to sit in stalled traffic for two hours because of a major accident. (No, they were not in an accident but needed to wait for it all to be cleared up) I headed out at 7:15 with a group of Iowan reinforcements and Lee followed with the next group. We made short work of a huge project. We helped finish painting the mural, laid landscaping fabric and hauled and leveled the mulch to a five inch depth. We had tired, dirty Iowans and Californians but happy that they were able to complete the project.

Today is a sleep-in day, but I was up at 6:30 ready to go…go figureJ It’s my birthday today, so I guess I am going to make the day a long one. This is the eighth year of celebrating my birthday in California. This will be a relaxing day spent sleeping in, making hundreds of witness bracelets for a Pastor who would like to have them as a neighborhood outreach and meeting and hearing how we can serve our military friends from Naval Chaplain Jason Dart who is stationed near San Diego. (Chaplain Dart was a Vicar at Trinity in Des Moines a few years ago)

Then we are going to the beach for a picnic and a sand castle building contest. Following that we will have our devotional time and start packing up all the craft and VBS supplies we leave at a local church for next year’s VBS. Sunday we will be going to worship at the churches where we worked for the past two weeks and in the evening we will meet as a group for a special ‘sending and foot washing service’ by Pastor Porter.

Monday, we fly back to Iowa. There will be updates from each of the church groups. They will be writing those today and tomorrow. Thank you for your prayers and please continue to pray.

We feel your prayers. GOD is GREAT!!!!