Last week, my church held it’s second bi-annual Hometown Work Camp, sponsored by our missions team. The week is spent reaching out to those in our area who need to have things fixed or cleaned around their homes. Though the mission opportunity doesn’t have the appeal of traveling abroad, it does have the benefit of helping those in our area, something God is calling us to do. Plus, it allows those who can’t commit to a week-long trip to participate on any days (or portions of days) they are able.

Throughout the week, over twenty-five volunteers worked at sixteen sites and completed thirty projects. Here’s what I spent my week on:

  • Monday: Replaced a weigh-bearing front porch post, the scraped, sanded, primed and painted the entire porch.
  • Tuesday: Installed wood paneling in a basement and covered the seam with a chair/dado rail (this job was particularly fun because I had the opportunity to use an air gun to install the chair rail); cleaned out a dryer vent that hadn’t been cleaned in over thirty years.
  • Wednesday: Pressure washed a two-story house. This was the first, and hopefully last, time that I’d ever been on the roof of a house.
  • Thursday: Yard work, yard work, yard work! Mowed lots of weeds in the front yard (perhaps three feet by forty feet), pulled weeds, trimmed bushes, cut down trees and hauled all the stuff away.
  • Friday: Painted trim on a house that had been painted earlier in the week. I learned that my level of patience isn’t very suitable for painting trim, but I prayed about it and God helped me through it.

The work camp was also held on Saturday, but I knew I would be tired, so I didn’t sign up to work that day. As it turned out, I ended up sleeping on my couch for three hours in the afternoon :)
The highlight of the week, however, was on Sunday when one of the ladies we worked for came to church after not having attended in quite some time. I don’t know the complete story, but apparently something happened some time ago and she felt that people would think badly of her if she showed up at church. After having crews paint her house for the week, she learned that we didn’t feel that way and was completely overjoyed.

Looking back, I’m very glad I took a week off from work to participate in this missions opportunity. While all of the volunteers gave quite a bit, I would be willing to bet that we all received considerably more in return. I look forward to the 2009 Hometown Work Camp and, hopefully, the 2008 missions trip to Mexico!