Senior High Mission Trip - Day 1

We're on day one of our first ever Zion senior high mission trip to Georgetown, SC! Zion's congregation generously supported this opportunity for our students to serve and share God's love. We were able to raise $2143.00 to help with expenses of this trip and the mid high trip (last weekend) to Beaufort, SC. And, a fellow congregation, St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Pawley's Island, graciosly opened up their church and fellowship hall to host us this week! We'll be doing our work through the United Methodist Relief Center. We'll be working on several houses in the Georgtown/Andrews area doing some flooring, painting, roofing, and intalling new windows. Today, I'm writing the blog. However, each day this week, one of our students will be blogging and sharing information about the work we are doing and the evening programs being led by Jillianne.

Today, we traveled to Pawley's Island after the 11am worship service at Zion. Our time began with a lunch stop at 5 Guys in Lexington. Once we arrived in Pawley's Isalnd, arond 5pm, we were greated by Pastor Lyle at St. Peter's and we "moved" in to our temporary home!

I explained to the youth that this week is all about stepping out of their comfort zones! When we are willing to step out, God grows us and we are better able to sense God's presence in our lives and the lives of others! To prove this idea, each dinner meal we share together will be an "out of your comfort zone" dinner. Tonight's meal - the youth were given $50 and asked to provide food for the ten participants on the trip. The only rules were no pizza or sandwhiches. The youth brainstormed for a while and decided to to breakfast for dinner. As they were making their grocery list, someone decided going to Waffle House would be easier. So, off we headed to waffle house! After some free waffles and biscuits and gravy, we met our goal!!!








After dinner, we returned to St. Peter's for a program on servanthood. We started with some hilarious games that focused on attention to detail and building/teamwork (important jobs for us this week)! First was a reverse photo scavenger hunt. Basically, the youth started with a list of 8 captions and they had to be creative and capture a picture to go with it. Here are some examples:







"Who would have thought a youth group could do this an no one got arrested?"











"It was pretty obvious to onlookers how THIS was going to end."









"'Be Careful!' someone shouted at the group. "THIS could cause an unstoppable outbreak of peace in the world."








In our next game, we built towers out of marshmellows and spaghetti! The goal was to see which group, the guys or the girls, could build the highest tower. This was the winner (built by the guys):










We then brainstormed the characteristics of a servant and a missionary and decided that we are called to be both this week! Some of the characteristics of a servant/missionary the students came up with were: willing, hard working, committed to sharing God's love, and helpful. We used Matthew 5:7-12 to talk more about the charcateristics of a servant/missionary!

We also looked at several examples of servants in Scripture and the senior highs acted out the scenes of Jesus calling the fishermen to be fishers of people, Mary and Martha, and Jesus washing the disciples feet.

We ended our evening by serving one another, and again stepping out of our comfort zone, by painting and washing each other's feet and hands.









After all, this week, we are Zion's and God's hands and feet in the community of Georgetown and Pawley's Island! By painting ... we created this: