So I will tell you what we did.
On the way down there, we were following Darrel.. I was in my own car at the end of the line.. without a GPS.. in Texas... and I missed an exit when everyone barely made it. It was a little sweaty stressful time. Plus I was literally praying the entire time that I wouldn't get pulled over because I was speeding to stay with everyone. I am on probation in Texas for driving 15 mph over the speed limit. I don't usually speed and I didn't know at this one area in town that it was 55 instead of 70. oops
Anyway we stayed at this apartment/church/building. I'm not really sure what it's classified as. Either way we were across the street from:
The New Dallas Cowboys Stadium
This was our room:
A balanced breakfast is very important before a hard day's work at Mission Arlington
and great attitudes
Most of the day we sorted through the bins. It can be very overwhelming because the donations never stop and we either recycle or store everything... very little is trashed Everything is sorted and divided into glass, metal, trash, clothes to be hung up, clothes to be stored, things that go in the 2nd house (home furnishings) or 1 1/2 house (new toys).
We did this from 8 in the morning until about 7pm, sometime stopping to load boxes of toys upstairs. One of the things we do at Mission Arlington is assembly lines. We are pros at assembly lines now. Zig zagging is what it's all about.
Isn't it amazing the amount of toys that people give? It's such a blessing... this picture doesn't even touch on how many brand new toys are donated... this is probably a tip of a pen compared to all of the toys. No joke.
The next day we split into groups and went to different apartment to do apartment church. It goes to show that you don't have to confine worship into a building with a name, you can take Jesus anywhere. Some of these people don't have cars and are not able to hear the Truth. Some of these people are thirsty for Jesus, and really want to learn more... some have never been introduced to Him. We knocked on everyone's door (like Jehovah's witnesses?) noooo. ;-) We invited everyone to our service by the pool. Most of them did not speak English, so my brother translated into Spanish (iglesia Mission Arlington. Biblio Estudiar. La Piscina. Once') Which he found out later didn't mean much. haha. One guy even laughed in his face. Eh. We tried.
We had 6 little kids end up coming to our church, other groups had different ratios of adults to kids. It was a good time. One little girl asked, "Are those animals gonna eat that baby?" Referring to baby Jesus when Michelle told them that Mary put Jesus in a trough and wrapped him in cloth. It was precious. This was our group:
The next day (today), which was my last day because I had to go home early to work, we raked leaves, packed & sorted through some moldy boxes from a moldy trailer (NOT even close to being as bad as last year) :) and helped in the Christmas store.
I had a great and exhausting time as always at Mission Arlington. I talked to one of the main people about volunteering for a couple of weeks in the summer at the Medical clinic. He said they are always needing nurses and he'd check on whether I would need a Texas Nursing license or not. I'm excited about this possibility. Goodbye Mission Arlington! See you soon!
(P.S. Don't be jealous of my awesome picture taking skills) ;-)
looks awesome brandi. it's so cool to see people doing things that aren't glorious or exciting (unless you get a thrill from sorting moldy boxes), but that show people real, practical love.
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I'm a little behind - just saw this. Isn't it such a great place? I'm so glad we get to go together every year!
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