Trinity Lutheran Visit

I haven't had a chance yet to write about the awesome group we hosted from Trinity Lutheran (Madison, OH) yet.
They were amazing! They came in with this incredible attitude of humbleness and willingness to serve the LORD, and we were blessed by them.
We made life long friends, and I mean that. We were able to acomplish things that would have taken me days worth of time to get done, and the church has never looked or smelled better than it did when they were done with it.
To give you an idea of the amazing work done I am going to share a multitude of photos. That is by far the best way to illustrate how much was accomplished. We truly had a great time with this group, and are so blessed by their support and love.

First night s'mores! Who says an urban church can't have a fire pit??

On Tuesday afternoon, we went to serve at Free the Girls, a great non-profit that fights against human trafficking with used bras!! We also became an official drop-off location, so Chicago people, you can bring your bras as far as us, and we'll make sure to bring them to the shipping center in Chesterton! for more info. check out freethegirls.org

One of the big projects of the week, was creating some large maps for our conference room. We wanted a space to envision the Kingdom of God in big ways. We now have an amazing USA map, where we can place pins for the various churches and individuals who support us, and that we support. We also have a City of Hammond map to help us to envision and record the Holy Spirit's work here in our City.

The group was able to completely clean out a classroom (where things got put while removing the ceiling last summer) so we'll be able to use it for VBS. Speaking of VBS, on the right is an example of one of our VBS crafts, that were put together by this amazing group! They made samples, wrote instructions, and put together all the supplies for 25 sets of crafts EACH night of VBS. What a time saver!

Baking cookies to pass out to neighbors with invites to our block party!

The cleaned up our ceiling, so now it's almost ready to be painted, but in the meantime, it's clean enough for us to be able to use this space this summer, while we wait for a good time to paint the ceiling!

We had plenty of time for lots of laughs as well!

We didn't have many days without rain, so on Tuesday morning, while it was sunny, we accomplished A LOT of outdoor tasks. The lawn was mowed, hedges trimmed, and weeds removed.

Our walkway ceiling paint has been flaking, and it looked horrible. Not anymore! It was scrapped, and looks so much better!

Mac worked from home on the last full day they were here to work on some projects. They made 2 more garden beds, including one for a potato bed. Then he taught some of the teens some photography tips as we toured downtown Hammond.