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

 

 

Beautiful Sad Day

We had a phenominal day today....starting with 9:00am ice cream cones at McDonalds....(yes my team has a great leader :).  We were able to finish the 2 sites that we had started and get a great start on our next job clearing brush from a congregations members house.

 

 

 

The awesome part was getting to know our new friend Jackson over the last few days, having a great connection with Camillo, even having Jackson and his Oma come to dinner and praise and worhip at Bradenton CRC.  The sad part was dropping him off and knowing that we won't see him again this week. 

 

We will miss our little dude.

 



Great day!

 

Today was an amazing day! We had bad weather so we had to cancel our morning mission, and went shopping as a group! After that we went back to the same worksite, and did some more painting, and of course had a paint war! After that our small group went to the beach and jumped in the waves. I am loving this week and don't want it to end!!

-Julie

 

 

Great day

What a great day we had. 

We were almost able to paint an entire house and rake up 15 bags of leaves from a backyard.  It was great to see my team begin to get to know each other and create a bond.

What a great team I have been blessed with.  They worked hard, played hard, and were able bless the community we are working with.  Tomorrow we go back and finish off.  The team is really hoping that Jackson will be around to play with again

First Day of SERVE and other happenings

Hey Everyone!

The last couple days have been action-packed and has made me somewhat tired . . . but there's so many things to do and so many new people to meet that I don't want to go to bed ;)

So I found out that I can actually eat a lot - and by a lot, I mean two full plates of pork, cheesy potatoes, corn, string beans, bread & butter, two servings of apple sauce, and a whole slice of caramel coffee cake :O

Yesterday, I met my prayer partner, Katie. She is absolutely adorable! We get little sand pails and shovels where our prayer partners can leave notes of encouragement and other stuff. They are quite awesome!

Today was my first day of SERVE!!!!! We helped out at two ladies' places:

1) Her name's Johanna, and she lives by herself in an apartment building. We helped her clean her windows with the help of Evan Roberts, a guy from Bradenton CRC.

2) Her name's Trudy, and she lives by herself in a mobile home. It was cute, a very bright yellow colour. We helped her clean up her front yard, wash her mobile home, do some scraping, pick out weeds and at the end, she treated us with donuts, pop, chips and raisin-bread. She is a sweetheart. (Evan was also on-site for this one).

Today, my small group, LOL (Living Out Loud), is leading worship for breakfast and dinner: we're focusing on the protection and safety that is our Lord and the theme for this week at SERVE: Just Be.

Talk to you guys later!

First Day At Work!!

This is Kaitlyn!!

We had our first day at work today and it was awesome!   My group worked on 3 houses in the suburbs where we power washed the driveways, raked up the leaves, cleaned out the gutters and I planted some Azaleas.  It was fun to be in our group (because we're awesome) but it was hot in the sun so our leader Sandra made sure we wore lots of sunscreen and drank lots of water.  The nice owners of the house gave us apples, water, donuts, ice cream sandwiches, popcorn and bananas.  It was an awesome first day and I can't wait until tomorrow!

P.S.  No, I am not sunburnt, at all.

Show of hands...who thinks the girls should stick to other sports.

 

A picture from the beach, and a picture of our new friends :)

Julie

 

Had so much fun at the beach today! The clear blue sky, white sands and clear water was beautiful!

The Florida sun is ten times hotter than the one back in Ontario, so we had to layer on the sunscreen continually...those who didn't now look like tomatoes ;) We played volleyball (the girls team won of course) and then jumped into the chilly, salty water. It was very refreshing!

One of the leaders had brought a water surf board, so we all decided to try it. That was a bitter-sweet experience! Lets just say we aren't very good at keeping balance so we all got our fair share of war wounds, but we are all glad we tried it!

Tomorrow we begin serving the community around us, so it would be great if you guys keep us in your prayers :)

Leanne

 

Swam out to the bouey and didn't get eaten by a shark, mission accomplished.

 

Today was our first full day of serve and we went to the beach, don't worry mom I put on sunscreen, and we played volleyball, tried out this surf board thing and I'm pretty good at it Martin might upload the video of it, and we made new friends. We had not one but two church services today and the pastor had an accent which made it interesting, maybe Pastor Jeff could try like a British or American accent sometime to change things up ;) But yeah it has been so much fun so far and we work tomorrow which should be fun!

 

Oh and this is Christine!

This is Julie..
Today was an amazing day! We went to the beach and some of us got tanned, while some got terribly burnt ;) We met lots of new people when we started a beach volleyball game and I'm pretty sure our team won! We went swimming in the ocean and enjoyed the warm weather. Later on, we got commissioned by the church and met our prayer partners. Tomorrow we start working and I am looking forward to it!

Busy Good Two Days!

Hi Everyone,
It has been a good two days, I have never driven so much in 2 days! We drove from the cool winds and air of Oakville and into the warmth of Florida. Several things i'll remember from the past two days is.... that if given a choice, girls could keep shopping, also the girls making friends real fast, never stop in Dayton Florida for gas when its "Bike Week" and the girls beating my high score in Flight Plan.
We are now settled in our rooms and I'm anxious to get to my bed tonight and have a good sleep. Tomorrow will be an early morning with a 9:00 morning service and loosing an hour of sleep.
Have a good day everyone and we'll talk to you tomorrow.
Nighty night
Cindy

Hey Guys!

We are now settled in at Bradenton CRC. The hospitality here has been fantastic and we had our first Worship time tonight - it was amazing, completely relatable, great Youth Pastor speaking and an awesome one-man worship team (Matt).

Today, we ended up seeing someone that we had previously met before while at our Richmond Hill Overnight-er. His name's Dakota, he's in  Gr. 12 and this is his first SERVE!

Tomorrow, we will be having two church services - one at 9 AM and a commissioning one at 5 PM. Super excited for both of those!

I just got back from a bonding game of Apples to Apples with a ton of people. Met some friendly people.

Food has been great so far, though I think I ate too much tonight . . .

Check out our newly posted pictures from today tp see all the stops we made on our trip!

Tomorrow is a beach day! We have been warned multipe times to APPLY SUNSCREEN! I'm sure you will be seeing some burned people in our pictures soon ;)

Talk to you later!

Great day, met our new groups and new friends.  Going to be a great week.

Hope you like our pictures, by the way we did make it through the other 5 states but couldn't get pictures of the signs.

Pennsylvania....too early for shopping

still in the snow

Beautiful mountains

Enjoying the ride

Focused on the road

Everyone had a nap

Guess where we are

Made it

This is Julie :)
After lots of driving we finally arrived today! Looking forward to tonight when we figure out which groups we are serving in! So excited for the week :)

Hey Everyone!

We are now all safe and sound back at our hotel in Columbia, South Carolina! After a whirlwind day of leaving at 4 AM, making stops at different state Travel Information Centres, yummy food, fun, and shopping at Target and Outlet malls, we are finally able to refresh and relax at our hotel.

Tomorrow we will be continuing our journey to Bradenton, Florida, hopefully making a stop in Savannah, Georgia (fingers crossed!) I want to try a Georgia peach so badly ;)

Can't wait to see what God has in store for us throughout this week!

Thanks for all your prayers so far, they have been greatly appreciated. Keep it up!

Come back often for funny pics and stories of our adventures on the road and at SERVE!

Lillie

Made it Columbia SC. Little bit of traffic in Charlotte but otherwise a great trip.

After a good sleep we will be on the road for Florida at 7:00 in the morning

Driving in the party car

We are loving this American freeway rush hour

Getting Close

Less than 24 hours and we will be on our way.  It has been a lot of praying, planning and discussions to get to this point, but it is almost here. 

I am really looking forward to getting to know our youth better, and getting to know some new youth while we are there.

Please pray for good travels and safety, and I look forward to updating you on our adventure

Almost Ready to go!

I am so looking forward to this SERVE mission trip. I have been preparing for it for a long time, and I can't wait to get there! I am excited to meet new people and get to the work sites :) I think it'll be an awesome week! 5 more sleeps!

Awesome

What an awesome fundraiser night.  Lots of great fellowship, community and great support for our youth.

Only 5 days until we head to Florida.....can't wait