Friday Night.  Late.

At this point we only have a few more hours until we begin our journey back to Wake Forest.  Everyone is asleep, safe, and tired.  It has been an amazing week.  Some highlights of this entire experience:

• Commissioning by the Children of Wake Forest Baptist
• Being the VIPs to a screening of a new documentary about Hurricane Sandy and meeting the people in the film
• Visiting the Statue of Liberty
• Helping over 12 families return to their homes
• Seeing New York City from the top of the Empire State Building
• Singing and working in a soup kitchen
• Donating quilts and books to a shelter for abused women and their children
• Evening Devotionals and Worship
• Singing at First Presbyterian Church of Jamaica New York
• Hearing rapping preachers
• Riding in a Double Decker Tour bus to see the City and the newly finished One World Trade Center
• Jack and Josh winning the award for working the hardest and being 3rd
• Meeting the Salvatore's
• A skype call to our church family from 1,000 miles away
• Getting in the ocean at Rockaway Beach
• Getting to see a home finally completed with no more work left to do
• New York Pizza
• Working on a worksite alongside our bus driver Stephen
• Celebrating two youth birthdays while on the Mission Trip
• Guest preachers:  David, Roy, Lee, and Adam
• Brooks, Chandler and Meghan serving communion
• Being 3rd
• 500+ confirmed 'God Sightings'

See you on Sunday as we share our experiences as Worship,

In Christ's continued service,

-Rev. Rob

AAAAAAAAAH!

So everyone is in an amazing mood! Happy and smiling! All of us have been working so hard all week and are dealing with the heat like champs. The church we are staying at is amazing and everyone in it is sooooo nice! None of us regret going on this trip. It is one of the most amazing experiences we get to share.

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Hey!  Here's some awesome pictures of WFBCYG in NY!  We are so proud of the work they're doing! 

~Sheila

July 23rd, 2014. We joined in a youth worship with local kids and the youthworks program that stays in First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica with us. The worship was unlike anything we had ever experienced. Two men named Army Regime & Watt led our groups in worship. We were blown away by the empowering raps about God. A group of local kids performed a step routine to inspire the feeling of strong faith and love for our God. We were enlightened by their stories of hardship, poverty and struggle that they had to deal with growing up in the projects of Jamaica. The stories infected our minds and made us realize why we are here doing God's work. After the worship, a few of our youth went to talk to the leaders. Anytime we would thank them for their inspiring recollections, they would say, "Don't thank me; all of the glory goes to God." It was amazing to see the amount of gratitude they gave to our God. The service inspired all of our youth to finish this week with strength, faith and love for the people of New York and our loving and eternally wonderful God.

Wednesday July 23rd

Today was a great day!  Today we worked on our worksites, helped in a soup kitchen (and sang in it) and were a part of a large youth worship service led by a Christian Step team and two preachers/rappers.  It was awesome!  Only in NYC!

The team took up a lot of tape as they painted today!  Enough to make a paint-tape-turtle

One wall done...13 more to go...

Tuesday July 22nd!  Second Day of Work Here in NYC!

We worked on a small house that holds 9 people within it!
- J Osika-

Shower duty = Never picking up hair in the showers again
 Jack Denny and Brooks Hill

Dry Wall fiberglass remains in your clothes throughout the week... and i mean all your clothes.
Jack Denny

Ear plugs save lives...
Carson Brewer

So many pictures...
`Sheila

Today is the 3rd work day!  It's in the 90's and sunny1  After we get back from the worksites, we're helping with the local Soup Kitchen.  It's gonna be a great day in New York!!
~Sheila

Cold showers are the worst...
-Watson

Wow!!  WFBCYG is doing awesome in NY!!  We started out bright and early on Sat., arrived in Jamaica, NY after a 12 hour bus ride!  We got unloaded, set up our cots, had orientation, finally had NY style pizza, followed by worship time!  We got to bed really late...no surprise there!

Sunday morning we got an early start!  We went to the 8:00 worship service at First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica.  Let me tell you, we went to church!!  It was such an uplifting service!  The service started with one of the best praise and worship times ever!  Our youth sang "Open the Eyes of My Heart" during worship!  We were accompanied by Rob on guitar, and the church's incredible praise band!!  Our youth rocked!!  I uploaded the video to Facebook, so check it out!  The pastor gave a sermon about refueling our lives!  One of my favorites quotes from the service was, "Put the tiger back in your tank...Jesus Christ!!"

After worship, we headed to the Big Apple!  We had such a great time in NYC!  We took a tour of NYC while riding a double decker tour bus.  We got off the ferry at Liberty Island and saw the Statue of Liberty. Then we went to Times Square, and the Empire State Building.  We ended our day by watching a movie about Hurricane Sandy.  The Friends of Rockaway invited us to have dinner with them, then we watched the movie.  It was a long day!

Monday started bright and early and we headed off to our worksites.  We taped, applied mud to drywall, dug a trench, sanded, plastered, painted, fit door frames, worked on baseboards, broke concrete, and so much more!  We are really proud of the work we did today!

Keep praying for us!!  We love you!!

-Sheila Brown

Monday!  Today was our first day on our worksites.

The first day we went to our worksites my group was doing dry wall for a house of a young couple who had just gotten married basically a week or so before sandy hit. The couple were also expecting their first child about 3 weeks after the storm was supposed to hit so they basically fled the house and came back and it was destroyed (it also happened to be their first house they owned.) When we got there we met our site leader Collin and he was really and cool and understanding because no one had ever done dry wall before. It was really cool because the people of the Rockaways were really happy to see us. There was a point where an elderly neighbor noticed all of the dry wall on me and said "you look like you're working hard!" I don't know why that made my day, but it did. So far I am really enjoying my stay in NYC!
-Catherine

AAAAAAAAAAH! I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN
 -MAX
i got a hat!
-max
ny is soo cool
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so much plaster is in my hair!
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