Missions: Middle School Retreat

The weekend of April 19-21, our middle school students braved the torrential downpours to make their way to Asheville, NC. Friday night's journey was rough, but Saturday and Sunday could not have offered more beautiful weather for the mountains in April ( I would have liked it to be a few degrees warmer).

On Saturday morning, we woke up to the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, continental breakfast, and a dormitory full of veterans waiting for us to arrive.  We loaded up our vans to head over to the Veterans Restoration Quarters (VRQ) of Asheville-Buncombe Christian Community Ministries (ABCCM) to meet the volunteer coordinator, Kelly Freeman, and the numerous veterans who shared their Saturday with us.  Once we arrived, we were introduced to two veterans who had been involved in the VRQ's program for a while, and we could really tell how much they felt loved and cared for just by the way they shared their stories with us.  

After we met and were oriented, we were broken up into two groups - one to work on the garden at the VRQ and one to participate in cleaning up the Swannanoa River as a part of Asheville's Earth Day celebration.  If you ask anyone who went, they will tell you that the best part of our trip was eating lunch with the veterans.  Our students and adults learned so much by splitting up and sitting with a veteran as we broke bread together and shared our stories.  At the end of the day, everyone told stories beginning with the phrase, "Well, my veteran..."  

Once we finished work, we all cleaned up and headed over to the Fun Depot for food and fellowship.  Games were played and fun was had by all!  

On Sunday morning, we packed up and headed over to morning worship at First Baptist, Asheville where we participated in their youth-led Sunday worship.  It was wonderful for our students to see the different ways that students just like them were involved in sharing their faith and inviting one another and the adults in their congregation to think about the topic of prayer.  

Thank you all so much for sharing your students with us to serve in missions.  And, a big thank you to all of our adult leaders for the weekend - Charlotte Edwards, Dean Bailey, Beverly Munday, Joy Blashaw, Marti Perez, and Todd Whittington.  We could not have done it without you!