Our fourth day on site here in Moss Point, Mississippi was incredible. First off, it was the day in trip when the boys really got into the manual labor part it. Will especially kind of “adopted” a section of the sidewalk and wouldn’t quit until he had the overgrown grass scraped away. Both he and Parker mowed a little grass and then it was off to the community center for our last day with the children and a puppet show. That’s where we snapped that last picture of me and Parker an one of he campers.

Days 2 and 3 consisted of cleaning up 2 pretty overgrown baseball parks and then helping run a day camp for elementary age students. Parker and Will did an amazing job at both. Unfortunately, Parker was a bit under the weather today and didn’t get participate as much as he would have liked. We’re praying for a better physical day tomorrow.

I got to share with the group tonight and I talked about Matthew 9:35-38. That’s a great passage about how Jesus sees the crowd as helpless and we all agree that He does. But what blows my mind is the fact that He doesn’t fix them on His own. Instead, He prays that God would raise us up to go get the harvest. I hope He finds us all faithful to that call.

Parker, Will, and I left this morning to go to Moss Point, Mississippi, with a team of youth from North Albemarle Baptist Church. I’ve prayed that God would expand our ministry into 2 more states in 2008, and this week is one and next week will be the other. This week the new state in Mississippi and I’m excited because it’s and answer to prayer and it’s my sons’ first mission trip. Next week I’ll be in West Virginia and that’ll be the second state God has opened to us this year.

Today was all about the road. We drove somewhere around 650 miles and with all the stops for meals, gas, and bathroom visits (pretty much in that order, too) it took about 13 hours. That’s a long time. Some things I noticed:

1) You can eat a lot of junk food when you’re driving in a car that long.
2) Some people appear to be idiots even if upon further investigation they may not be. Case in point: As we were driving, we passed through some pretty intense storms and passed a pick-up truck on the side of the interstate. They had a bunch of stuff in the bed and had all climber out to try to get it covered. At first, I felt bad for them. Then I realized that there was an overpass literally 100 yards behind them that they could have simply backed under. See what I mean? They’re probably not idiots when you get to know them, but they appeared to be.
3) After driving for a very long time, there was a bright spot. Really. There’s a place near Mobile, Alabama called The Bright Spot. I can’t find it anywhere on the internet, but I’ll try to snap a pic of it on the return trip this Friday.

It’s late and I’m tired. More tomorrow.