Day 5-Service Day

St. Mathew's Ready to Serve!


We woke up bright and early for our Service Day Adventures.  We headed up to meet up with others that would be going with us.  100 of us (2 charter busses) headed for Helms Elementary School

Helms Elementary is an elementary school where half of the students speak Spanish and half of the students speak English.  Then they pair students together so that they can help each other learn.  The classes are instructed in both languages so that students become bilingual as they study.  The parent volunteers and and principal were so thankful for our help too, which was amazing...we were just glad we could help!

Our project was helping by painting their outside phy ed area. Our kids worked together with a group from Jamestown, ND to paint railing and hand rails all along the edges of their play space.  Your Tommie crew worked hard and really got a lot of painting done.  It was awesome for us to be able to use our hands to do God's work.  And we were thankful that much of the time we were painting we actually got to be in the shade!

After painting we ate lunch with the other 100 or so kids that were working at Helms that morning.  After lunch we loaded back up on the busses and headed to our Celebration of Service stop.  There we got a chance to have some fun doing things like making buttons and bracelets.  From there we headed to hammock village for a quick nap and then we headed over to check out the Interactive Learning Center to get an idea for what we wanted to do there on Saturday. 

Then it was a quick bite to eat at the Food Trucks that are here for the Gathering and then on to wait in line for Mass Gathering in the heat.  Our kids have been troopers during the wait each day for Mass Gathering.  The heat index usually hovers around 104 or so and they are packed together with complete strangers.  But we have been lucky enough to get good seats everyday of the gathering so far.

The evening of our Service Day the speakers and musical acts did not disappoint!  Rachel Kurtz started us off...it was cool to see her in person because she had led us by video at our synod day as well.  We also had speakers like Michaela, a student who talked with us about what it is like to be dying and struggling with a chronic illness.  She shared with us how the grace of God is what gets her through each day.  We also heard from Jaszy Segarra a student who shared with us the importance of using the gifts that we all have been given.  Next in the line up was Pastor Will Starkweather who talked about how he overcame self harm (cutting) and how God's grace will help get our students through any burden they might be facing.  Then we heard from Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber (a favorite of a lot of our crew) who talked about how all the hard things we go through are texture for our future and how the jagged edges of our identity are what connect us to each other.  She encouraged the students to be who they are, even though each of us are "magnificently imperfect".  She reminded us that grace is why we have Christian communities...so that we can hear each other's pain and share each other's tears. 

We ended our day as just our small group, sharing high and lows and praying together about all that we had seen and heard.  It was a day, full of God's grace, and we are so thankful that we got a chance to be a part of it!

Pastor Amy

Many hands make light work

With the Principal Lola