mississippi
on april 22-30th, i went on a missions trip with my church to gulfport, mississippi. the drive was around 22 hours. gulfport is like a bay in the gulf of mexico. there is still so much garbage and destruction left after like 8 months. 34 people went down with my church. erin went with me =) we were soon known as bert & ernie. our days were long and hard, doing a lot of labor stuff. we dry-walled, spackled, and painted a house, 4 rooms. we de-shingled and shingled 2 roofs. we demolished a couple houses and just did a lot of cleaning. everyday we were split up in groups working on different projects. we woke up at 6 every day and worked usually until 4ish with a lunch break. after that if we were lucky, we got a shower then we went to another youth group and hung out with more people for the evening. there was a Bible study every night. i really enjoyed mississippi. it made me realize how much we have and arent half as thankful as we should be. the people we helped out were so thankful, and it was only a week out of our lives to change theirs. =) i had a lot of fun, even though it was a lot of work. the last day we were down there, we got to go walk on the beach for a little while. even the beaches are still full of trash that hasn't been cleaned up yet. the best part was just how happy we made people by just helping out a little bit for each person or family. people driving by on the streets even stopped to thank us for helping out. it was a good week. =)