Welcome to Project Serve 2022
Hello to all of our Westover Fuse families and friends. Welcome to the Project Serve blog. We first want to start out and apologize for the fact that it is now Tuesday morning and we are just getting to post our first blog post. We have been keeping our social media and our google photos more up to date, but with all the moving pieces that are Project Serve, time to sit down and write has been hard to find. So please here our apology and a promise that each day from here on out we will continue to update this blog as well as our other forms of communication. We are already in awe of all that God is doing within our workgroups, our worksites and the lives of students. We have a lot to catch you up on!
Day 1: Saturday
We made it! Through traffic jams and rest stops all of our 13 vehicles made it to Project Serve Base here in Adams, TN. The Uhaul made it with us and we unloaded all of our bags and kitchen supplies into our spaces and headed to dinner. Our AMAZING kitchen team cooked up some delicious BBQ for us to enjoy and we spent the evening settling in to our new home here in Adams. we even met one of our hosts for the week, Rosie, the Youth With A Mission staff “mouser”. We have big plans for tomorrow and we can’t wait to see Nashville and get to spend some time with our work groups!
Day 2: Sunday
HAPPY FATHERS DAY! It’s a been a beautiful day in Nashville as we got to explore a new city! This morning we woke up to a cool 50 degree morning we all tried to soak in and take note of as we have days predicted to reach double what it was this morning! After sleeping in a little, students started their morning in God’s Word and we all headed to breakfast. Then it was time to load up into our workgroups for the first time and head into Nashville for church!
We rolled into the Crosspoint Church parking lot with our 12 vehicles and headed into the service. Crosspoint welcomed us into their amazing facility as we got to enjoy worship and see an interview with Bob Goff. It’s amazing when we can see God go before us and this message around distraction and focusing on other things that aren’t God seemed to fit perfectly into a week where students don’t have their phones or the distractions from back home. He challenged us to take a deep dive into who we are and who God calls us to be and was such a great jumping off point for a week of reflection and discovery of who we are when were out of our normal routines.
From there workgroups headed into downtown to enjoy lunch and some sights of Nashville proper. Groups headed to find some fun places to eat, like the Assembly Food Hall right on Broadway. They then had a couple hours to see some of the fun things Nashville has to offer, like the Waterfront, some cowboy stores and even a Goodwill trip! We then had to opportunity to go to our worksites for the week and pray for the week ahead!
We ended the day with another amazing dinner from our fabulous kitchen crew and headed to the first session as we talked through what it means for God to be Holy.
We’re excited for our first day of work tomorrow! Pray as we engage with each other and the people we have partnered with here in Nashville as we strive to show to love of Jesus to everyone we meet!
Day 3: Monday
IT’S OUR FIRST WORKDAY! We are so excited after hanging out here in Adams, but we are ready to head to our partner organizations and get to work! We are headed out to 6 different places and are excited to see our workgroups in action. One of our partner organizations unfortunately had a COVID outbreak so we are having to be flexible and move some groups around. Our highlighted groups today are at YAIpak, which is helping to organize clothes and items in a massive wearhouse that will become part of a mobile giveaway to people in Clarksville who need a helping hand and a reminder that God loves them.
The next group is working at the Youth With a Mission base, focusing on a huge paint job of one of the buildings that we are staying in. The staff here uses the barn for worship and teaching, but it was in need of a paint job. Our students worked so quickly and efficiently to get the whole barn painted white that when all the groups got back, the guys staying in the barn didn’t even know where their cabin had gone!
We all got back to PS Base around 4pm and headed for the showers and to have some fun playing games and relaxing after a long day of work! Then we headed to our evening session for a fun game, worksite reports, and our second night of our Project Serve series where one of our amazing volunteers Jacob shared what it means for God to be just!
After an amazing day we are headed off to bed to recharge and do it all again tomorrow!
Day 4: Tuesday
IT’S GETTING WARMER OUT! It’s our second work day and we are headed back to our partner organizations, some groups much earlier than yesterday. Our groups serving with The Masters Table headed out early to prepare food for the people we were serving. A second group left early headed to Radical Mission where they helped to connect with clients and get them all that they needed.
Another group was working with a local nursing home helping to fix up a couple paths for the residence as well as a wheelchair ramp. This group also has the opportunity to talk with residence as they are a massive form of entertainment for everyone around.
Another group is working in a local church in Springfield, helping to refresh some of the kids ministry rooms for the church and make them a place for kids to be able to hear about and experience the love of God.
We headed back to base and settled in for the night. We got to hear another amazing message from Alan and worship together before breaking into our workgroups and debriefing the day together! We are so excited for tomorrow with a half workday and a float down the Red River!
Day 5: Wednesday
WILD WEDNESDAY HERE WE COME! Our students have been putting in a ton of work so far this week and we decided that this afternoon it was time for some FUN! Our groups headed out for the morning to their worksites and worked really hard to be able to keep moving forward on their projects. One of our groups even had the task of heading to the local trash dump to drop of 2.04 TONS of trash that they had cleaned out from the Youth with a Mission Base! LITERAL TONS! Other groups kept working on the projects they had, like painting at Springfield Baptist Church and organizing at YAIpak and Radical Mission. It was a great short work day for the whole group!
As lunch rolled around, groups started heading back to the PS base as we had our sights set on one thing, cooling down from a hot day with a float down the Red River! We loaded up into our vans and headed down the road to the Red River Adventure lot, where we unloaded and got into our tubes! It was a scorcher out and no one was surprised by a rainstorm that came through right in time for us to get out of the river and head back to base!
When we got back, the amazing kitchen crew had cooked up some burgers and hot dogs and we enjoyed a good old fashioned cookout before having some free time and then getting to enjoy our talent show, where students showed off lots of talents and we even gave away some prizes for the best talent of the night!
Were looking forward to a full day at our worksites tomorrow and getting to get a lot done to finish out the week strong on Friday!
Day 6: Thursday
IT’S OUR SECOND TO LAST WORK DAY! After lots of fun yesterday we headed back to our worksites rested and recharged! As we approach the end of the week we can see the finish line and want to get as much done with our partner organizations as we can! We have already done so much for the Kingdom and want to continue to bless the people we are working with through being the hands and feet of Jesus!
One of our groups helped unload a full truck of donations to a local Goodwill in Springfield and then headed to help clean up a house of former missionaries that have moved back state side and open their home for pastoral care and trainings for those engaged in pastoral care. They just added a huge addition to there house for this purpose, so it was great to help them clean up from the construction and get the house one step closer to welcoming their first guest.
Another two group was serving with YAIpak and Radical Mission, organizing and sorting out tons of donations to help get things in place for mobile giveaways and outreach. While it may seem like a monotonous task, it has been so cool to see our student be able to bless this ministry with work that might not look essential but is vital to this ministry being able to support clients for months and years to come!
Another groups continued on a huge construction project at the Adams Nursing Home, finishing off the wheelchair ramp they had been working on and continuing to add on to an outdoor space for residence to enjoy for years to come.
We can see the finish line coming for us tomorrow and want to do our very best to finish the week strong! Be praying that we are able to finish the worksites and be able to bless the partners we have been working on, encouraging them as they serve the people here in Nashville.