news-record.com

Taking a week out of their summer vacations, 30 members of the youth group from First Baptist Church in Greensboro traveled to Cleveland, Tenn., to help in the community by rebuilding and cleaning homes through the Ocoee Outreach organization.

The group of sixth- through 12th-graders and their chaperones worked for a week painting, cleaning and roofing three homes in the Cleveland area. Ocoee Outreach finds homes that are in need of help, but where the homeowners can’t afford repairs.

The groups complete the work free of charge. Our week was full of hard work and early mornings, but in the end, it was very rewarding.

“Ocoee Outreach is a way of bringing the fellowship of God back to some of the families in the community of Cleveland through the mission of home repair. When I first stepped onto Mr. George’s front lawn, I was amazed at the trash piled in his yard. At that point, I thought my job that week was to clean up this man’s yard. I was wrong. Showing up at this house gave this man encouragement and the comfort of realizing that he is not alone. God is with him!”

— Dillon Peeler, eighth grade

“I went into my week expecting the normal heat and pain from working on a roof. Well, now that I think about it, I got what I expected, but I didn’t anticipate the struggle our group was going to face in completing the roof. After the first day of work, things weren’t looking so good; we hadn’t even finished one-fourth of the roof. Through perseverance over the next two days, we made up for our lost time and eventually finished early. This effort was my favorite part of the week because our group worked as a team and was able to successfully finish the roof.”

— David Culclasure, 12th grade

“We had tons of fun on the mission trip this year. My favorite part was in our meeting room after the banquet on the last night. We ate cake to celebrate one of our chaperones’ birthdays, and our youth interns presented everyone with a paper-plate award. They were all very funny and represented each person well.”

— Erin Stephens, eighth grade

“My favorite part of the mission trip to Tennessee was working on the roof, even though heights aren’t my favorite thing. I quickly had to get over that fear. The first day, it took me a little while to get comfortable. Our first task was to shuck the old shingles off. After completing this, we had to put down felt and then start nailing down new shingles. To complete both sides of the roof took four days. There was never a dull moment with everyone, so the days seemed to go by very quickly.
“On Thursday, I felt a great sense of accomplishment after coming down off the roof and looking back on our work. Before leaving the house, we got to meet the homeowners. They were very appreciative for all that we had done. It was a great experience to see how grateful these people were to God, just for doing a little work for four days. I’m very glad that got to experience this trip.”

— Seth Wilson, 12th grade

“My favorite part of the mission trip to Tennessee was the rafting trip we took Friday morning. On the way up to the drop-off point on the Ocoee River, I could tell people were getting a little nervous. However, once we got in, we calmed down and worked together to get down the class IV rapids — sometimes not so gracefully. In the end, it was an amazing experience and I would definitely do it again.”

— Reid Hix, 12th grade

“I was on the painting crew; we pressure-washed and painted two houses. Even though the mission week was filled with hard work, it was awesome to see the difference that we made at the end of the week. It warmed my heart to see how thankful the homeowners were. Seeing those people filled with joy because of the work my youth group did makes me feel like God sent us there for a purpose. The purpose was to portray God through our good works.”

— Kelsey Peeler, 12th grade