Greetings to you all in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. One thing vicarage is teaching me is that you can never be fully "caught up". As soon as you think you are making progress, you realize you have seven Lent sermons to write. Now I understand Lent is not for awhile yet, but I want to have the entire series done before the season actually begins. I have decided to use the seven Penitential Psalms as my series for the Wednesday nights of Lent. I will be preaching every Wednesday night and Pastor will preach every Sunday. I will be focusing in on the different ways the Penitential Psalms focus in on their sinful condition and their faith in God. I am hoping it will be a good series, plus everyone knows my love of the psalms. Speaking of the psalms, I am starting my devotions on the psalms again today. I kind of took a month and a half off from writing them, which means I didn't post any either. I am going to start them back up today and will be posting them here shortly.
The Mission Trip to Lyons, Colorado was the best trip I could have asked for. Everything went so smoothly and it was just such an enjoyable week. Friday, January 3rd, I went to campus and got one of the schools 12 passenger vans. Since we are a technical organization on campus, we were allowed to use the school vehicle. This cut our transportation costs in half. I had it figured up what we ended up paying the school in mileage on the van was pretty close to what just rental fees would have been for a van from somewhere else. So we didn't have to pay for any gas, and saved all of that money. It worked out very nicely. We also got the school's newest nicest van which was pretty sweet. We had originally thought we would pull a small enclosed trailer behind us for all the students' gear, luggage, winter clothes, and our tools we took. However, since I only ended up taking seven students plus myself we had enough room to pack everything in the van without the trailer. This also made the trip twice as nice because we drove in a lot of wind and that little trailer would not have had enough weight in it to not bounce around and be a pain. Also, we did drive on some snow covered roads up in the mountain which was scary enough, let alone with a trailer. So I got the van Friday. Saturday afternoon, we packed up the van with all of the students' stuff, had a short devotion, and then hit the road. The worst road conditions we had were actually leaving Brookings. It had rained the night before so everything was ice. However, once we got a little south, the rest of the roads were smooth sailing. We drove down to Grand Island, Nebraska. I have to give a huge shout out to my dear friends Ben and Shalee Peters. Ben is a life-long friend I made in college. He and his wonderful wife Shalee, let us stay in their house even though they were not home. So we spent Saturday night at their farm house. We got up the next morning and headed the rest of the way west to Colorado. Wed made it to Boulder about 4 P.M. Mountain Time. They had gotten 12 inches of snow the night before, but most of the roads were cleared off already. We met the pastor of the University Lutheran Chapel of the University of Colorado. He actually is a previous vicar of Brookings so I had met him and heard about him and his vicarage here. We had church with him and two of his students that Sunday night in their chapel. Then they went out to eat with us in Boulder. We slept in the fellowship hall of the chapel that night on either couches or air mattresses.
Monday morning we got up and went to Lyons. We met Pastor Curt at a house in Lyons. They had breakfast for us and then we had an hour Bible study. This is how we started our day every day that week. He is a Pastor affiliated with Calvary Chapel in Florida. He was definitely not Lutheran, but yet still a great guy and knew the Gospel very well. He led the Bible study, but I took notes on things that the students and I talked about later. There were just some comments or things he said that did not quite line up with what we believe. Then after Bible study and breakfast, we would go out to his trailer and get tools. He has a huge enclosed trailer with every tool you could ever imagine it in. Him and his wife, Mary Jo, are disaster relief missionaries. They travel throughout the U.S. going to the next disaster and helping out with whatever they can. They specialize in organizing work for groups like ours who come in and want to help. So we would get our tools out of the trailer every morning, and then head to the job sight. There was also a group of 13 students from Oregon, not Lutheran, but from the school George Fox just outside of Portland. We split in to three crews between the two groups. I was a crew leader for one crew. I had with me three of my students and two from the Oregon group. We went up into the mountains into the town of Pinewood Springs to do deconstruction to a basement up there. They had cedar 1x12's diagonally on the walls. So we had to pull off all of those. Then behind those was drywall that had to come out, and then the insulation too. They only had a couple inches of water in their basement, but they wanted everything out to just start over from scratch. We spent three days but we got the entire basement done. We found out that the crews for hire that come in and do what we did would have charged them between ten and fifteen thousand dollars. That was also a good feeling knowing they can now spend that money on fixing it back up instead of just tearing it out.
The second crew was the other four of my students plus two or three from Oregon. They worked on a house in Lyons that had over a foot of water in it. They had to tear out everything up to four feet on the walls. They had to even rip out all of the flooring though to the point it was just the running 2 x 6's that stand vertical to hold the floor up. You could see the dirt right below the house through these runners. This crew also got their house done within the four days they were there. Then the third crew that consisted of the rest of the Oregon students was at the local community church putting dry wall back up.
We worked Monday through Thursday. Mary Jo told us that most crews take at least a week if not two to get a whole house done and our group got two houses done in the four days we were there. Everyone out there was so impressed with the students. Not only their work ethics, but just their general behavior, manners, and positive attitudes. I was very proud of my group.
We stayed with Pastor Paul Rhode in Longmont Monday through Thursday nights. They fed us two nights and were such gracious hosts. It was nice having a house with beds to sleep in. We would spend our evenings playing cards and just relaxing after working hard all day. We did run up to Fort Collins the one night to see a couple of the students' cousin. She took us out for supper to the local brewery and restaurant. It was a fun evening and they had some good beer. We only had two students who were under 21 and they behaved themselves. Then Thursday night, the church fed all of the workers and volunteers. This was nice because the students from our group and the students from Oregon got the chance to interact and get to know each other. Then we went out to a local micro-pub and restaurant for the evening.
Friday morning we packed up the van, and Pastor Paul had a devotion with us as we went on our way. I cannot thank him enough for everything he did for us while we were there. Then we drove up the mountains just west of Boulder and went skiing. It had been sunny and nice all week as we worked. Then Friday as we are skiing, it was cold with sixty mile per hour winds blowing snow. We bundled up though and spent all day skiing. I found out mountain skiing is much different than Midwest skiing, but I did get the hang of it. I even made it from the very top of the mountain to the bottom all in one run without falling down so I can say I defeated the mountain. I also went down a black diamond or two too. It was a blast even though it was cold. Then Friday night we stayed at the chapel in Boulder again. Saturday we got up and drove the whole drive back in one shot. I had two students who were drivers and each took a turn to help me out.
Again, I cannot thank the Good Lord enough for such a perfect week. We had so much fun and a lot of laughs. We had zero accidents or injuries. And we worked hard to help others in a time of need. We did not get to do a lot of direct witnessing, but the second crew did get to witness to a guy who had been hurt by the church. He was a neighbor who was helping them work. They had been warned he had a foul mouth and did not act very Christian. By the end of the week, he apologized to the students and said he was going to work on his language. He also told them he was beginning to think differently about the church after meeting them and seeing how they worked and acted. When the student told that to the church in our presentation, one member said that right there made the entire trip worth it even without all the work you did. It truly was a blessing to the students and myself, but also hopefully to the people we helped in Lyons.
I could go on and on for another four pages but I have a sermon to write. I will leave you with this, Lyons is going to take about another several years to fully recover from this flood. So if you know of any groups in the church looking for a mission trip or opportunity to serve, tell them Lyons is in desperate need. Also, Colorado is becoming the number one state in the nation of unchurched people. So the more Christians we can send in to help, the more opportunities there are to show the love of Christ through the abilities He has given us. Pastor and I are already considering a second trip this summer with church members and I would go back in an instant. I continue to pray for them and that not only the work gets done, but the light of Christ may shine in their darkness. If you have any questions about our trip, do not hesitate to ask. The Lord bless your day this day.
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