Day 5 in the park feeding the homeless community.

Day 4 was another chance for us to be at Joshua Station working with the residence who live there. We were able to participate in a car wash fundraiser to provide several items that the facility can not regularly afford. We were joined by Greg and Bobbi McMahon as they were there in Denver to visit their son, daughter-in-law, and first grandchild. The car wash was great raising money for some projects around Joshua Station and the kids really enjoyed the interactions they experienced with the residence that came out to help. We also wanted to give a big thanks to the missions committee at VVCC for graciously providing us with the resources to assist a great number of people. One of the items we were able to get was a large toddler house for the 20+ toddlers at Joshua Station. 

Also, the students on the missions trip have been doing a morning devotional called "Do Hard Things" where they are being challenged to not accept the status quo of avoiding challenging situations but rather to embrace these difficult things because it is through those challenges that we grow. We have been looking at how God has called people in the Bible to do hard things and how by accepting that challenge, they were able to further God's Kingdom. My hope is that the students will return encouraged to continue doing hard things throughout the rest of the year reaching out to the community in the Victor Valley. Thank you for supporting us and following our trip.   

Day 3 brought about some of our toughest challenges yet. It was very warm and pretty humid (for us). We worked with Extreme Community Makeover where we cleaned up two blocks worth of alley ways between two streets by weeding, picking up trash and throwing out large items. It also provided an opportunity to talk to the neighbors about Christ and why we were weed wacking in their back yards. We then hurried to Costco to get some food for a community dinner that we were putting on for the residence at Joshua Station (about 85 or so). While in Costco, the weather went completely nuts outside with rain coming down in sheets and lightning every couple of seconds. We got totally drenched getting to the van with the food but it felt kind of refreshing. We then picked up over 30 feet of sub sandwiches from Subway and went over to Joshua Station where we had a great dinner with the residence and got to talk to several families. Though it was an extremely long and exhausting day, we felt good about the opportunities that God provided us. Please pray that we get many more of these opportunities tomorrow as we are offering a car wash to the community as a fundraiser for Joshua Station.

The day began VERY early with a 3am departure from VVCC. We wanted to start by thanking the Lopez and Keightley families for graciously taking the time to drive us all the way to LAX. Ahhhh...LAX. Such a wonderful place to begin a journey. We were a little late to board our plane after LAX traffic, getting through baggage drop off, getting boarding passes and getting through security but after some unintended cardio, we made it safely to the plane. The flight was great especially because some of our youth had never been on a plane before. And finally, we arrived at Denver, got our 15 passenger van, and the fun began (no rhyme intended). We managed to stuff all of us AND our baggage into the van for a single trip to the house where we are staying (see the picture above). We then got to take a tour of Joshua Station where we met the volunteer coordinator and became quickly excited about our opportunities there. We will be at Joshua Station tomorrow (Wednesday June, 22nd) where we will be doing maintenance on the property. We will try to start posting videos tomorrow as well. Finally, thank you for all of your support and prayers. Please continue to pray that God will open up opportunities for us to be a part of the transformation in the lives of these families.