Construction Ministry Mission Trip to Lee, Massachusetts

Kevin and I left Friday night, July 7th on a church bus for 21 hours to go on a mission trip to Lee, Massachusetts. We were going with our church to help the church "Open Door" get started on their new church building.  We have a wonderful week, a very busy and tiring week, but we were able to accomplish a lot and get the church started. This was the first time we had been on a mission trip with our church and the first time Kevin had ever been on a mission trip.  We both hope to go again sometime.  We had a 23 hour ride back home due to some bus trouble in Virginia and were stuck for about 2 hours, but we all made it back home.

This was about 6 in the morning on Saturday, July 8th. We were somewhere in Virginia. It was a pretty drive or ride really, from that point forward.

Crossing the Hudson River

We stayed at this camp called "Lakeside" for the week.

My room I shared with two other ladies from our church.

My bunk...I didn't have any twin sheets except the ones Madalyn uses so that explains my "Little Pony" sheets.

Sunday, we went to church with the church members we were helping.  They are currently using this building to hold their worship services until the other is completed.

This church has the highest wooden steeple in New England.

This is our work site for the week. We also ate all of our meals here. The church provided lunch for us every day. All week we worked on building the walls and roof.

The last day, we worked on building the walls inside.

The church also owns this property and house too. There once was an Olympic size swimming pool in the backyard.

As we were leaving that afternoon, Kevin saw a bear cub. There was a mama bear and two bear cups that visited in the early morning hours each day. The kitchen crew were the only ones that saw them.

One of the tasty discoveries this week was a local ice cream shop that made homemade ice cream from local ingredients and it was so yummy! In fact we visited this ice cream shop 3 different times during the week it was so good! :0)

We started working Monday morning and each day made more and more progress. Friday, it rained all day and was to wet to finish the roof, so we worked inside. I actually helped out with the kids because there wasn't much for me to do on the site Friday.

Me and my roomies :0) Mrs. Darlene and Mrs. Belle

Wednesday afternoon, we got some time off. We went downtown Lee, but it poured rain all afternoon, so there wasn't much we could do.

We saw a groundhog in the front of someone's yard.

Thursday morning they were able to get the trusses on for the roof before it started to rain. 

This is the inside 

This was the room in the house where we ate our meals this week. If it was pretty weather, we ate outside, but after Tuesday, we had rain every day at some point.

On the way home Saturday morning...I don't remember if this was Pennsylvania or Virginia...it was a VERY LONG ride home and did I mention our AC was out on our bus until we  switched buses due to ours breaking down.