A New Home

So a little background, Mayfield is a relatively small town out in western Kentucky that got smashed by a cat 5 tornado back in December of 2021. Since then, Samaritan’s Purse has set up camp in a little pentecostal church in the area to host volunteers that come to help rebuild. They do very well apparently, considering they’ve had a group sign up to come every single week for the last year and a half. Anyway, we World Race boys were their 72(?) group to come through, pushing their total number of project volunteers to 2001. Really cool.

I’m estimating with a lot of the numbers here, but If I remember right, SP’s working on a total of 81 houses throughout the area, most of which are in a neighborhood now called New Hope Acres. We got the honor of helping out with a few of these over the week we were there.

The specifics of what we all did varied a ton – everything from building decks to landscaping to trim and painting – but the craziest part was that whatever you were doing, all the tools you could ever need plus more could fit in the back of one of their trailers

I seriously considered asking these guys to pack my world race pack cause the amount of stuff they were able to fit into that relatively small space was seriously impressive. Maybe it was because they grew up playing Tetris, or maybe they’re just good 🤷🏽

Anyway, I collected a few action shots for y’all as well, so here they are…

Also, not shown in this last picture is Jack, an SP construction worker with some crazy stories and lots of wisdom to share if you can get him talking.

Which reminds me… I haven’t done a team introduction yet… I should get on that pretty soon.

One of the most powerful things from that trip though, was getting to hear the stories of some of the soon-to-be home owners about the night of the storm and their life since. All of these families were renters as well, and so most of them are going from losing most of what they have, including a house that wasn’t theirs, to owning their first house ever and starting over. Their joy and thankfulness was really inspiring in and of itself, but it also put into perspective for me my joy and thankfulness in Christ. They are brought to tears at the thought of living in their new home, how much more so should I be brought to tears at the thought of my new home in heaven with Christ?

Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet the home owner of the house that my team was working on, but we wrote her letters the day we left and it was a sweet moment even in her absence.

It was an amazing week overall. I also grew closer to a lot of the guys on my squad and it just served as a great decompression and launching pointing into the last week of training and beyond.

This past week we spent back here in Gainesville hanging out with and getting to know our coaches, debriefing everything that’s happened so far, and getting ready to fly out to Guatemala on Wednesday! Which, side note I’m case you were wondering, is a delayed departure. We were supposed to fly out 2am Saturday morning, but political protests in Guatemala were going on and there were roadblocks everywhere. We decided it’d probably be better to push through a couple extra nights here than in the Guatemalan airport without transportation, food, or a place to shower. It’s all peaceful stuff, so there’s no danger in going, and they’re dying out now, so we’re all super excited and looking forward to leaving.

That’s about all I have for today, I’ll be back again soon! Thanks for reading

 

In Christ,

Jackson

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