My video from Senior Serve 2013

So long Bradenton Serve 2013

It was really sad to leave Bradenton, Florida and we will miss all those who served. On our drive back we stopped at Walmart and picked up some snacks, mmm, and we found huge bags of cereal!!! Gotta love American groceries and we found exotic m&ms :D

Brace Yourselves, haven't blogged since Sunday

Monday

Was our first day of work, we painted a house a bright bright green, and all the neighbours disapproved of the colour. We demolished the overhang because it was rotten from termites and we saw fire ants and termites while demolishing. My work group is so much fun and it was amazing how we didn't know each other and yet we worked together easily and we were a team. We made new friends by playing bump and slap jack.

 

 

Tuesday

It rained today and we got to go to the mall instead of working in the morning. I didn't get anything but it was fun! For work after our little expedition to the mall my group stayed at the church and this girl named Allison and I cleaned out eaves troughs from the roof and while we were on the roof we saw a gecko so we went to corner it and it turned out to be dead. So we decided to keep the dead gecko and place it into the boys' shower, just to see what would happen.... It was really funny; who knew boys could scream louder than girls. Here's a picture of the bunch of kids that we are with this week.

 

 

Wednesday

Our group hosted devotions this morning and we decided to try to teach the group a new version of Jesus loves me, it ended up pretty much me singing in front of everybody but people thought it was cool so I made some more new friends! Woo! But we also sang "These are the Days of Elijah" which involves actions and if you look you can see Cindy jamming out in the back.

We had an actual work day today and we had to repaint the lady's house because the neighbours complained. I'm not sure if Canada has this but you have to confront your community manager if you want to do any landscaping, lawn decorations, house colour, etc. before you do anything, we called it the community cult, but anyway we had to repaint it. And the finishing product was beautiful and also ended up in a paint fight and I got a paint roller rolled on my head, and all over my shirt. Muriel, the owner of the house that we fixed up, was truly touched and began telling us how much our work meant to her and told us of her struggles she has gone through. She said that she could see God in our work, which is pretty cool. Serve is an amazing experience and I strongly recommend it to anybody. Today's theme for devotions was to be transformed and to become new. Get rid of your sin and give it to God, become knew and holy.

And after us working we were lucky enough to finish in decent time so we got to go to the beach with Martin and Julie's group! In this picture we are out jumping the waves.

Thursday

Today was our last work day; they had no more off site jobs so we painted bumpers in the church parking lot. And after we finished that up we went, with Cindy's group, on a search for manatees and crocodiles. Unfortunately we did not see any but we walked around on a trail and that was pretty. Our sermon for the day was at the beach while the sun was setting. 

It was about being surrendered. Surrender yourself to God, surrender everything including your family. Give yourself to God and surrender to him.

 

Friday

Today was our last dayL. We spent it at this water park called Adventure Island. It was super fun, and everyone wore sunscreen and had a blast. Its kinda depressing that we all have to go because we all are really close and we love spending time with each other. Today's devotion theme was to "Be Free". This was the most emotional one because everyone shared things and knew that the next morning everyone would be leaving. But luckily our curfew was 1:00 so we had lots of fun dancing and talking and just chilling. We all were up to watch the first group's bus leave at 3:30 and it was really depressing, no one wanted to go. Now it's Saturday and we left at 5:00 this morning, really sad to leave Florida, coincidentally as I'm writing this in the car it's raining like in the movies during a sad part and now I miss everything to do with Serve. 

 

 

 

Clearview Serve 2013

 

Maybe Leave on Time

I don't know if we will be able to leave on time Lilllie, the girls have to clean their room first.....

May take a couple of days....:)

Our Last Official Day . . .

Hey Everyone!

Wow, I can't even comprehend that today is the last day of Bradenton SERVE.
Just one week ago, we arrived in Florida and fell in love with the beauitiful sunshine. But in just a couple hours, we will be leaving it for the snow and cold of Canada.
 
We just got back from an amazing day away at Adventure Island (the water park), in Tampa. Kaitlyn and I went on literally every single water slide that was open. I am extremely hungry now and can't wait for dinner :)

Tonight is going to be our last night or worship, along with many other things. Worship has always been one of my favourite parts about SERVE and I especially requested "In Christ Alone" tonight for our last worship. Just singing that song with a whole bunch of other people in church gives me goosebumps (in a good way).

Tomorrow, we will be getting up at 5:00 AM to take the 24 hour drive back to Oakville. I'm praying that traffic at the border and getting out of Florida won't be brutal.

Tonight, some girls were even talking about staying up all night to hang out one last time before everyone leaves tomorrow morning. I'm kind of tempted to do that because I won't see these people for a long time, but at the same time, I could use some sleep . . .

Below is just a couple pictures that summarize our week at SERVE.

Our group (the LOLs) working with Evan - see blog post below

The OMG group leading morning worship with Matt Hanegraaff

Beautiful picture at the beach

The official Bradenton SERVE sign :)



 We will be back in just two sleeps!

Awesome work-site helpers and evening of worship at the beach!

Hey Guys!

This week at SERVE is going to be over soon . . .

Here is a picture of my group leader, Cindy, and Evan, our work-site supervisor/helper.  He is the sweetest thing ever, we love him :)

On Tuesday, we went back to MRS, an organization that helps out with homeless people and we SERVEd there. Every night, we are encouraged to share a God moment during worship and my God moment was Cody (below center, very tall).

The LOL group (the best group) with Evan, Lexie, and Cody in the center.

Cody is only in Gr. 8 and he got in trouble with the law. Because of this, he had to do 20 hours of community service. He ended up working at MRS with us and told us his story. I'm glad that God brought him to us. 

Yesterday, we went to the beach on our time off with Evan and his wife, Mary. A great time was had by all and our group bonded while wave-jumping, even though some of us got injuries wiping out . . . 

We just came back from an incredible evening of worship at the beach. We sat and watched the sunset at Manatee Beach while listening to Pastor Todd preach about surrendering yourself to God and Matt Hanegraff leading us in great worship. This has to be one of the highlights of my SERVE experience so far. 

Pastor Todd (the Youth Pastor at BCRC) preaching in front of the setting sun. 

  

 The beautiful setting sun :) 

Matt Hanegraff leading worship with us on the beach 

Just an awesome picture of our group, posing on top of al l the work we got done  at one of our work sites

Hope your March/Spring Break is coming along as well as ours!

Last work day

What a busy day.....a lot of tree and brush removal from a grandmother of a congregation member

 

 

That was just the branches, this is the leaves

 

Wish we had more time we could do more, but it was a vast improvement.  Ask Julie about the mugs though.

 

At the end of the day we had our Praise and Worship service on the beach tonight in order to experience God's majesty in the sunset.  Although it was very chilly for Florida, the sunset was beautiful just the same.

 

 

 

Sadly the week is coming to an end, and although it will be great to see our families again, it will be hard to leave our friends.

 

 

Martin