Mission Arlington '09 ~ Part 2

Alright, so day 2 of our mission trip we went to Mission Arlington as usual to find out our assignment for the day. It was kind of neat not knowing what we'd be doing until we got there each day! Day 2 started with cleaning.  One of the apartment complexes Mission Arlington works with has given them an apartment to help house their volunteers, which is so cool that they've done that.  This apartment was very much in need of a cleaning, so that's what our group did that morning.  

We spent a few hours in this two bedroom, two bathroom apartment wiping down the walls...

cleaning the toilets...

cleaning the kitchen, refrigerator, stove...

cleaning the furniture...

vacuuming all the carpet and baseboards...

and removing nails and screws from the walls, reattaching shelves, replacing light bulbs, etc.

Oh, and cleaning windows... Apparently it takes four men to clean a window.

Here we all are outside the apartment when we were done.

We worked up an appetite, so we went to a place called Black Eyed Pea for lunch and they had good ole southern cookin' and sweet tea!

We got to introduce fried pickles to our New Yorker friends who had never heard of them!

Here are the girls back at Mission Arlington:

Then that afternoon we got to go back to the apartment complex we'd been to the day before to hang out with the kids again.  We were really excited to be able to go back again and see them all.  We did another Bible story and played lots of games.

Here is Jose - we love him!

And another pretty little girl.

Me and Matthew again:

And another game of "Stop and Go" (it got pretty intense as you can see in the background)

Day 2 was another great day.  We got to the Mission on Day 3, again not knowing what we'd be doing.  What we ended up doing all day was really cool.  Mission Arlington gets a LOT of donations every week of clothing, furniture, and miscellaneous items.  People call them to let them know of what they want to donate, and they send volunteers to pick these donations up.  So that's what we did.  Our group got split up into groups of two or three, each got to use an F-150 to drive around (all that had been donated by Ford to the Mission), and got our assignments of where to go and what to pick up!

It was actually really fun and exciting to get to drive all around Arlington picking up these donations that were going to be given to families who really needed them.  

On this day alone, they had 180 pick-ups to do!!  This happens every week and they totally rely on volunteers to get this done.  It's so amazing to think that God had us here for this specific week to get these specific things done.  What is equally as amazing is that they told us that by the end of the day, all the donations that the volunteers had picked up would probably already be given out to people in need!  As many people as they have calling daily to make donations, they have more people calling daily who have nothing and are requesting things. I am just still so in awe of what they have going on here at Mission Arlington and how many people everyday are getting to experience the love of Jesus through it!

So one of the highlights of this day was that while we were out doing pick-ups, we had to stop for lunch and we happened upon this Chick-fil-A!  Thank you Lord for this provision! ;) 

Wes and Derek had to secure this refrigerator we picked up since it fell over while we were driving.  Woops.

When you come back to the Mission, you just pull your truck in and there are more volunteers there to unload everything you've picked up and sort it out in the bins:

Pretty amazing.  After doing the pick ups for most of the day, we then loaded up a trailer with a lot of the furniture everyone had picked up that day and took it to a local apartment complex. We unloaded it and let people come out and get anything they needed! I'm so thankful to have been a part of such a tangible way of sharing God's love with people!

I don't feel like I've been able to get across how great this trip was, but I am immensely thankful that God worked this out exactly how He did, and we were all blessed so much to be a part of Mission Arlington.

Here we are at San Antonio airport, ready to head back north!

And of course the on the plane shot:

Flying into Buffalo over Lake Erie:

Thanks to everyone who prayed for us, prayed for this trip, and gave to make this possible!