Hello readers, how are you today? I hope
you’re doing well, a lot of us here are either sunburnt, bug bitten or somehow
perfectly fine. Your bloggers for today are Alyssa , Emily and Makenna .
Today was our first day spent as a split up group. Ten students went to Ransom
café and the other 20 went to the Habitat for Humanity site. The wake up time
was 6:30 if you were going to spend the day with Habitat for Humanity or 7:15
if you were going to spend the day at Ransom café.
Emily and Makenna spent the day with
Habitat for Humanity and Alyssa spent the day at Ransom café, we will each be
telling you about our days at the different sites.
Hey! Emily and Makenna here, today we spent
the day working on one of Habitat for Humanity’s work sites. We arrived at the
site in Mobile around 8am “bright eyed and bushy tailed”. We had no clue what
was in store for us, but we were open to do anything. The day began with
getting some brief instructions from Marcie, the supervisor. We got on our
gloves, hard hats and grabbed our hammers and were ready to rock n’ roll. We spent most of the day preparing the house
to prepare soffits. Houses here are constructed little differently here than in Canada. We
knew it was going to be a hot day because after fifteen minutes we were all
sweating like pigs. It’s amazing how hot it gets so quickly, especially when
your swinging them hammers. Most of our crew had never done anything like this
before, but by the end most seemed to get the hang of it and were becoming more
and more efficient workers. We spent a lot of the day standing on scaffolding
and looking upwards to pound nails into the overhang of the roof. (This
explains all the burnt noses and sore necks.) What we didn’t mention before was
we did everything by hand, no air guns or screwdrivers but we did have a table
saw and a skill saw. It was a very well spent day we all worked as one big team
and everybody had jobs they needed to complete. We were one big oiled machine!
We may have ended the day with some bruised fingers and sunburns, but all in
all it was a fantastic day!
Now its Alyssa’s turn. Our day started a
little later than the Habitat for Humanity group. We had to do some gratis
(chores) around the camp for the first part of the day. We swept, vacuumed,
took out garbage’s and did the breakfast dishes. We completed our tasks pretty
quickly and still had about an hour and a half of free time before we had to
leave at 9:30 to make it to Ransom. That free time was spent napping. It was
about a fifteen-minute drive to one of the many Ransom café locations, our
group was separated into two different groups. One of the groups (the one I was
in) started out in the café. Our task was simple; if you weren’t serving food,
go talk to someone. We had a pretty steady amount of people come in for the first
hour before we switched off with the other group. The other group was cleaning
the “Clean Machine”, a mobile trailer that has two showers, three washers and
dryers and two toilets and sinks. This trailer will drive around Mobile (the
city, just to be clear) and allows homeless people to clean themselves. When my
group went outside we walked around the property picking up garbage and taking
little breaks to play on the Merry-Go-Round. After we finished that task we
went back inside to eat some lunch of our own. We all sat at different tables
and talked to the other people eating lunch there. I sat with a 73 year old man
who had driven across Canada, stayed in every state, and insisted that Seoul,
Korea, had the best shopping in the world. He also talked to me about how he
was brought up with the knowledge of both Christianity and the Islamic faith,
study’s both of them by reading the Bible and the Quran, and makes his own
conclusions about faith instead of going to church. We got to celebrate an 80
year-old mans birthday with him and got to hear some more wonderful and tragic
stories. After cleaning up the lunch dishes we headed back to Camp Christian
and helped prepare supper. We listened to music, laughed, learned how to cut pineapples
and added a ridiculous amount of powder to make our juice taste ‘up to par’.
 |
| Matt Armbuster shared his power story of how Ransom Ministries came to be. Seeing a need, Matt answered God's call. It started as a simple way to feed the poor by "giving people a hand up and not a handout". It has grown exponentially! It now includes many facets including the Ransom Cafe, The Clean Machine, Community Garden, Mission Teams, the ReProgram program and Ransom on the Road. Ransom Ministries mission statement is simply be Salt. be Light. be Jesus. |
After supper we played a volleyball game in
our free time. Today was the day we finally got to go in the pool here at camp.
This was super exciting because we had been waiting for this moment since the
day we arrived. So after supper we got to spend a few hours hanging out in the
pool. We had a lot of water fights and some crazy chicken fights. Luckily no
one got hurt in this chaos! Now everyone is sitting around a huge bon fire that
the camp coordinator, Debbie has started for us. Soon we’ll eat night lunch and
then head to bed, ready for a full day ahead of us tomorrow!
 |
| Campfire 'Bama style' |
Peace out!
Makenna, Emily & Alyssa
