It was the final day in Abaco for the Lutheran Church of Hope – Ankeny IMPACT team, and after a day of cultural experience yesterday, today was spent tackling three final work sites. They finished painting, hung a door, and salvaged sentimental crown molding. The afternoon was dedicated to cleaning and, most importantly, sharing vulnerable IMPACT stories of how team members encountered the life-changing love of Jesus. The trip concluded with a delicious Bahamian dinner of souse and johnny cake and a surprise birthday party!
Today was our final day in Abaco. After a restful culture day yesterday, we were back at it, wrapping up some projects we began earlier in the week.
For morning devotions, Shirley Hovland led us through a summary of the book of Esther and gave us four things to think about as we headed into town for a morning of work.
We divided the work between three locations.
A group finished painting at Marlin’s house and then began the process of salvaging crown molding from his mother’s home that carried sentimental value.
At Dolphin Lane, the crew worked to complete the sanding and mudding of the dry wall and were able to hang another door.
The third group went to Yvonne’s home. The project’s there included sanding and priming kitchen cabinets and sanding and staining a headboard.
At noon, we packed up and came back to Camp Abaco for lunch before taking some time to clean up around camp. Vans were vacuumed. Tree branches trimmed to keep them away from power lines. Dozens of garbage bags were filled with trash that had been left along the road to camp near the beach.
The rest of the day was spent working on and presenting our IMPACT stories. It’s hard to describe how meaningful it is to hear people share from their hearts how they have encountered the life-changing love of Jesus this week.
Dinner was our most Bahamian meal of the week: souse and johnny cake, and it did not suck!. The meal was followed by a surprise birthday party for Josiah complete with birthday cake and ice cream.
Samantha penned a letter to the next Impact crew. She had helpful (and sometimes not so helpful) input from the rest of the team. 😉
Now to clean the cabins and pack our back before flying home tomorrow.
– Scott and Michael
