World Changing in Sioux City......Iowa!

I just got back from taking my youth group to World Changers in Sioux City Iowa. The drive from Salt Lake City is 17 hours if you drive straight through which we found out the hard way. I'm not sure if I ever want to drive that far in a stinky van full of teenagers on Mountain Dew ever again....but I probably will as the trip was amazing!

God did some amazing things in the lives of our youth this year. One of them even committed their life to full time ministry! The Sioux City WC project completed 11 jobs that included everything from roofing and wheelchair ramps to building garages from the ground up.

A the coolest thing about the trip for me was getting to see our home owner use the ramp that we had built. Our home owner had recently returned from the nursing home recovering from pneumonia. She had a set of large steps in the front of her home that took every bit of energy to go up and down when she tried to leave. This caused her to just stay at home and have her daughter take care of her. We put a new roof on the house and built the ramp and on Friday she walked down it on her way to a doctor appointment. What a cool moment to see that we could help her with something as simple as a ramp. Hopefully it will help her get out of the house more as she continues on the road to recovery.

Another cool moment happened in the service today. Our church has two services and the second service needs some extra chairs put up. I asked some of my youth to help and all of them stood up without complaint and put up all the chairs that we needed. Hopefully this attitude is contagious!

I will leave you with some pictures of the trip.

(from the top....Bill losing his head, Nail Heads 2007, George taking a nap, Happy mural in the school, the most evil looking painted face in history, Jordan taking a break)

Check this out...

Guys like to show off war wounds so I had to show this baby off. I play in a Men's softball league on Tuesday nights and this is proof of what a line drive to the leg will do. I was playing 3rd base and didn't have any time to get out of the way. This picture was taken a week after and believe it or not the bruise actually got bigger and darker!

Not to worry though...it has healed up fine and they won't have to amputate.

June already?

Life has been busy lately...thus the lack of posts to our blog. I have been working on all things world changers. I will be taking our youth group to Sioux City, IA on Friday and will be roofing, fencing, or painting all next week. Rachael is bummed because she is in the middle of a summer internship and isn't able to take the time off to go with us. She will get to hold down the fort in SLC. She has been working with some community patients and has plenty of stories of some strange people and their crazy antics.

I have also been working on the World Changers project that is going to be in SLC from July 14 to the 21. I have had to drive all over SLC getting things ready and we are still more than a month out. I am scared to think what the week of the project will look like. I am also working on bringing our local churches together to work on this massive project. We have committed to 29 projects in South Salt Lake and Salt Lake City. 14 of those 29 projects are new roofs. Our youth are also raising money to benefit these families during the holidays...they will be buying thanksgiving dinner for them with the money they are raising now. I couldn't be more proud of them.

Things on the church front have been moving slow for my taste but they are progressing. We still don't have a Sr. Pastor but for now that is a good thing. Our church is dreaming again and that is amazing. My overall feeling is that the church is ready for some changes and we are moving forward to make those changes in the way we minister to our members and our community. I have been frustrated, excited, mad, let down, encouraged, and supported...it kinda sounds like life huh? As we discover who God wants us to be as a church I can't help but press on. I have a good feeling about this...more posts about this soon. I am also our church's new webmaster and have used a great website sofware called snapshot to create our new site. Check it out at www.hbcutah.org. It is still a building process but at least we have current information posted.

Check my next post for some of Kevin King's Wedding photos.