One group went back to the home of the single mom and continued the work on her patio.
Another group spent the morning at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store in Exeter.
There was also a lot of clean up to be done at a halfway house in Clinton. There were a lot of donated paint cans, and piles of garbage on this property. As the host team goes around to check out and support the teams at their work site, we frequently take a freezie along for them.
They also started patching holes in the drywall and prepping for paint.
Betty carefully walked them through how to patch the holes and helped them.
Yesterday, at one of the work sites, we were given a handful of rhubarb, which Nellie turned into muffins that will be brought down to Sanctuary London.
Another group was also at a Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, this time in Goderich. They cleaned and sorted a lot of stuff that came in, as well as reorganizing some of the display racks in the store.
They spent time loading and unloading vehicles and trailers that came in.
There is one group that consists of youth over the age of 16 that is volunteering at the Habitat for Humanity build in Goderich. They spent the day building interior walls.
Something as simple as framing photos, can bring great joy for people. After the youth painted the walls, and cleaned other ones they took the time to hang artwork and photos for them again.
They also painted a few dressers so that once the room was back together everything was nice and fresh.
Every morning and evening a group is responsible for leading devotions for that meal.
We also 'punish' people for anything they do wrong. This morning our community life organizers slept right through their alarm clocks and didn't wake anyone up. Thank goodness our security crew was on the ball and got the youth going this morning. They had to do a minute to win it, where they received some vapo rub on their noses and had to try and get as many cotton balls moved to the smaller bowl using only their noses.
During worship time Gil again encouraged the youth to come forward and share their God moments.
For the message tonight Gil asked the youth for the top 5 issues in the world today, he then went on to ask what the top 5 issues are in the church. He asked why these would not be one and the same. He told us that we need to stop conforming. He shared that the enlightenment praised science and reality and dismissed religion. God intervenes only in the miraculous. Romanticism told us that if I feel God then I will respond to Him. Ego centrism then made "I" the most important thing. In the Reformation Luther reacted to the wrongs in the church, and placed the word of God not is the hands of a few but of many, and everyone's own interpretation becomes right. During the revival movement led to the individual personal relationship with God. Over time religion became more of a personal thing than communal. It is important to have a personal relationship with God, but that is only half, we also need a kingdom relationship with God. We need to be nice to each other and we need to do things that are hard. We need right living, not good living. We can't avoid places where we might sin, or try to be safe, and we all need friendship. This needs to be fulfilled by Christ in us. Everyone needs someone to be their "home" with. Those who are alone need to be befriended. Gil said that the next homeless person is already homeless right now in their own house. Gil ended the message with a prayer that talked about "letting me be foolish enough to do what others say cannot be done".
The youth are getting to know each other and be comfortable around each other and are starting to get more excited and opening up a little bit which we are really noticing in the praise and worship time.
