A week ago today our youth group loaded up and headed to Scranton, Pennsylvania not really knowing what lay ahead. Today we are on the road home. A lot has happened in the week between our road trips. We have worshiped. We have worked. We have laughed, cried, and experienced many emotions in between. We have met new friends and we have deepened relationships with the people we came with. We have seen the face of God in our co-workers and in the people in whose homes we worked.

On Friday we finished up the work on our projects. For my work crew it was a time of touching up work that we missed and saying goodbye to our host couple, Rose and Jim. For me our conversation evolved into something deeper. As the week had progressed I had learned the they had a grandson who had recently died by suicide. For the first half of the week Jim was in the hospital so we really hadn’t had the opportunity to talk much. On Friday, with our work completed and a little more relaxed time on our hands, I found myself sitting in Rose and Jim’s kitchen talking about Jim’s surgery, work, and their grandson.

One of the sad realities of having two children die is that I am often put in a position to reach out to other bereaved parents and grandparents. On this day I was able to share with this recently bereaved couple as they were trying to make sense of their loss and as they were trying to find some way of coping and moving forward. They are very fresh in their grief so healing is still a little way off. I was, however, able to affirm with them the intensity of their loss and how inadequate our understanding of these situations can be. More importantly, I was able to help them know that I cared and also that God was still with them in this tragic time.

So, I spent a week painting their deck and porch. I helped hang some handrails and a safety light. We washed and cleaned a little around their house. But it is, perhaps, this conversation and the prayer that followed that may be the most important work that I did this week. The human connection that makes sense of all the brush strokes and driving screws.

When I think of this week, I probably won’t think of the work on their house. It is possible the work on rebuilding their home life I was able to help with as I sat with them in their grief was more significant. This soul building may be the most important memory I will have of the week.

Yesterday our theme in worship and the small group lessons centered around relationships and how important they are to our life of faith. Today, at our work site, God seemed to be bringing that message home.

For the past few days my crew has been struggling a little bit to complete our assigned tasks: painting a deck, painting some wrought iron porch railings, hanging a safety light, and hanging a stairway handrail. Part of our difficulty involved having the wrong supplies. It took us more than a day to get the correct color of stain and it wasn’t until this morning that we finally had the railing, stain, and hardware all in place so we could move forward on what seemed like a simple project. Our group was a little discouraged about the slow progress we were making.

That all changed today when we not only got all of our materials straightened out but also discovered that we were being assigned another crew to work with us. This crew had completed their tasks and were reassigned to our project. It was just the lift we needed. With the additional six workers and, maybe more importantly, with the renewed enthusiasm they bought, we were able to complete all our tasks before the end of the work day.

Projects like this are good reminders of the importance of welcoming help. We could probably have persevered and finished everything by Friday afternoon but the synergy of the two groups working together not only made us more productive it also gave us a renewed energy. We are looking forward to our final day actually exceeding our expectations of the past couple of days.

It was just a reminder – God wants us to work in partnership with one another. Sometimes that means we are the helper and sometimes it means we are the helped. We give thanks for our work partners today and pray we are able to lighten someone else’s load in the future!

So, a confession right off the bat – I had expected to publish this blog daily during work camp but we have been so busy and I have been so tired that I haven’t made good on that commitment. The program for work camp starts with breakfast at 7:00 AM and ends with team devotions finishing around 10:00 PM. In between there are large group teaching and worship times, work, and some early evening free time.

As the week has begun the emphasis has moved from the group you came with (St. Mark’s Cornerstone Youth) to your crew which consists of five our six people you work with and spend time with during worship and devotions. My crew is pictured with this blog and includes people from Connecticut and Maryland. I am the lone Midwesterner.

Our work has primarily involved painting at the home of a woman named Rosemary. Rosemary’s husband is in the hospital and she has some physical limitations. Besides the painting we are also installing a safety light by the front door and some rails on stairs to help make life safer for Rosemary and her husband. We have enjoyed getting to know her and she has been very appreciative of the work that we are doing.

During the week our crew becomes vital to the camp experience. It is interesting to see how divergent group shares a common belief in Jesus Christ while often having very different approaches to life and the work we are doing. This morning in our teaching and worship time we were challenged to memorize John 13:35. (“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”) The challenge is then to live out that verse as we spend our day together serving Jesus and our neighbor, especially the resident of the house we are working on.

While we are far from perfect, both in our home repairs and our loving actions toward one another, we know that we continue to strive to do our best and God blesses our efforts.

On Sunday we arrived at our work camp site and began to get organized for the week ahead. There are around four hundred participants in this camp including a group from one church that includes around 120 people! St. Mark’s is well represented in the leadership of the week. Don Broad, our Director of Student Ministries, is one of the main presenters, Abby Macomber is leading worship, and we have a number of other St. Marker’s in leadership roles.

This week we will not only be getting to know each other better but we will also be introduced to a significant group of people from other churches in other states. We also will be working for and with residents in Scranton as we serve and learn.

Sunday was also a day filled with worship. Even though some of the activities were organizational in nature and sometimes playful, God’s Spirit was evident in all that we were doing. We ended the day with a devotional time with just our group which was moving and inspirational. It will be a joy to see how God works this week!

This morning I slept in church. That is to say that I slept in a church last night and woke up this morning sleeping in Martin Luther Lutheran Church in Youngstown, Ohio. I am traveling with our high school students and adult leaders to participate in a mission camp in Scranton, Pennsylvania this week. We left Carmel yesterday and we will arrive at the place we will call home for the week early this afternoon.

I woke up before dawn this morning as I often do. I moved downstairs and sat in the sanctuary in the complete darkness. It was amazing to watch the dawn from this vantage point as the light began to make the stained glass windows in the beautiful 1930s sanctuary come alive.

In many ways this was a metaphor for what we hope happens this week in the lives of not only the campers but also the adults who work and share this adventure. It is our prayer that the light of Jesus shines through and people’s lives are changed. I look forward to sharing this week. I look forward to getting some useful work done that will help people have a better life. But most importantly, I pray that the light of Jesus will shine in and through our team as we try to be agents of God’s love and grace.