I got up Monday morning at about 7:00 and read a chapter in my Bible (I was in Isaiah at the time). Once I finished, I took a run into town to Dunkin’ Donuts to get a hot chocolate and sandwich. While there, I picked up a coffee for Nate and a tea for Rachel. I got back to camp just as breakfast was being served, and the students were wandering in to the kitchen. After breakfast, one of the students (Lauren) read a psalm, and then we got ready for the work day.

We got divided up into groups again. We sent three loads of students to a local Habitat for Humanity chapter. This Habitat did all the framing for houses inside a large warehouse. Once the walls are framed, they get sent out to the job site once the weather gets nice enough for construction. So, the three groups spent the day framing inside the warehouse.

I stayed back at Camp Carl with a group of eight students. We spent most of the day doing landscaping of one kind or another. We split our group in half, and half of the kids worked on raking rocks out of the grass along the gravel roads (so the lawnmowers would not hit the rocks), and the other half was spreading topsoil on a new embankment (with a few students helping to clean windows in the chapel along the way). The topsoil was still fairly wet, so we had some trouble in parts spreading it effectively. But, in the end, I think it looked pretty good.

Our topsoil group them moved on to a job of moving several piles of mulch. The much had been dumped near the office building of the camp, and was now in the way of some landscaping improvements. So, we spread the mulch out along the edge of the building using shovels and pitchforks (the pitchforks worked really well), and that carried us to lunch.

We had leftovers from the church dinner for lunch, and we got warm again (it was only about 32-33 degrees out). We took our time, but got back at it after about 45 minutes. We finished moving the mulch piles, and then we helped one of the camp workers, Chuck, spread out plastic along the ground so that weeds could not grow there. Chuck then jumped in the Bobcat (small tractor) and started dumping topsoil on the plastic, while we spread it around. By now, it had started raining/sleeting lightly, and so the topsoil started to behave like clay and caked on our boots and clumped together. The work was hard and it was cold and wet, but the kids took it in stride. I never heard any serious complaining (there was lots of joking around). Chuck was very precise in dumping his dirt – if you happened to be near where he wanted to dump, you had to get out of the way in a hurry. This made for a few close (but not too close) calls, and much merriment was made in fear of the Bobcat coming for you in the night. After we got the plastic about 3/4 covered, Chuck finally stopped work for the day – the topsoil was simply too wet to work with. So, we gathered up our tools and called it a day at about 3:15.

Since we only had one shower for the guys, and since I still had the key to the apartment, I went back to the apartment shower where I could take a really long and hot shower. I have back issues, and my back was really stiff, and the hot water helped to loosen it up. Once I was able to move fairly normally, I went back to the main building and chatted with a couple of students and typed up some notes.

The other group came back, and Craig and Nate told me that the kids had knocked out in one day what Habitat had thought would take most of the week. This is pretty typical for our trips – our kids always seem to get more done than is expected. It did mean that there was going to be some rearranging of groups for the next few days, and Craig and Nate started trying to figure out where else we could go to serve.

Craig had a grad school class that evening, so he headed off in my car for that after supper. We had a hang-out time for awhile, and then we had a time of worship. One of the girls, Kaity, asked us to pray for her mom; her mom was having fairly risky surgery for cancer that evening. We prayed, and then sang a few songs, and then Nate shared some thoughts out of Romans 12.  “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.”

Nate touched on not thinking more highly of ourselves that we ought to, and he was talking about how we each have gifts to use and how that works like a body, but I can’t give more specifics. One, I did not take notes after the worship time (or for the rest of the trip, which was dumb since it has taken me so long to get to typing things up). Two, partway through Nate’s talk, Kaity got a text message that her mom’s surgery was not going well – there was a lot of bleeding. We all immediately stopped, and the girls gathered around Kaity and everyone prayed. That was right and appropriate, but it also ended Nate’s talk, so I cannot tell you more about his points. The good news is that Kaity’s mom came through the surgery okay, and the surgeons got 80% of the cancer. Her mom is supposed to go in for out-patient surgery for the other 20% this week.

Craig got back and was apprised of the situation. Kaity insisted she wanted to stay on the trip, so we took her at her word. Craig had also gotten the names of some ministries we might be able to help, and so he was going to contact them the next day to see if we could arrange a schedule.

Craig always points out how these trips create community, and how Christians are supposed to live in community. It was sobering but heartwarming to see a collection of different “cliques” of students become a community in support of Kaity. The students reached out in compassion to someone in need, and a small display of the love of Jesus resulted. CVCA’s students never cease to amaze me, and I am proud of them for their hearts and their service.