Day one in Abaco by Hattie Fancher, a student with Pella Christian’s team
When we got in yesterday, we drove to camp along a very isolated road. Along the road, we saw a few cars, a stove and refrigerator, and even a treadmill along the side of the road from Hurricane Dorian. We arrived at camp, which is right on the water, and we ate lunch and took a tour of camp. Then we went into the ocean and paddle boarded, attempted surfing with no waves, explored, and played baseball in the ocean. We were all very exhausted from getting little sleep the night before so us girls crashed after dinner. We stayed up and talked for a while and then went to bed around 9 (8 Iowa time). This morning after breakfast we went into town and started to work on a church that had been affected from the hurricane in 2019. We painted the soffit, painted trim in the front, and picked up a ton of trash. While we were painting we got the opportunity to talk to the people working there. There was another organization there called Crisis Relief, based out of Ohio. They were here for 5 weeks, and they were working on replacing the lighting and windows. One of the leaders was JD. He was in the air force, then a highschool teacher, and now he is a pastor over all the pastors in his reign. He felt that he had been called by God back when he was leading a youth group, and he has taken many highschool students and adults to Mexico, Jamaica, and a few others.
There were also 2 other Keiths there. There was an orange Keith, because he was wearing an orange shirt, and the Keith, he was the head of Crisis Relief (The boys named them). Orange Keith was talking and one of his phrases stuck out to me and it was “it’s not right or wrong, it’s just different.” This stuck with me because when we go to different places and see something different, that is not what we are used to, it’s not right or wrong, but different. And I think that we can change our perspective to how others live as different and not wrong. The other Keith, who was the leader of Crisis Relief, talked about how he didn’t come to Christ until he was in his 40’s, and now God has called him to mission work, and that God can use you at any point in your life, and you might not know it. We came back to camp and had lunch. In the afternoon, we picked up lots of trash and found many things such as a little plastic baby, blue bear bank, and some interesting fish sandals. They boys also took down a structure that they used to watch movies on, but now there is no projector. It was a huge eyesore, and now we can see the pretty ocean. We also got to swim again, and lay out on the beach talking. We had dinner, did our IMPACT booklets, and now we are playing games and journaling.
