Sunday, May 07, 2006
Scripture reading and Rick's May 7, 2006 Sermon
He has lived for months, alone, in a tiny FEMA trailer, right next to his little home, which is about 400 square feet in size. Yes, I said 400 square feet. That’s not the trailer, that’s his home.
It is elevated on pilings, as are almost all of the structures in this region. But the floodwaters were so high, they still damaged his little house.
We had one of our three teams work all week at Nick’s home. People were lying on their backs under the crawlspace there for three days, redoing the plumbing for the entire house. Inside, were new appliances, new doors, newly painted walls, a new kitchen sink, and a new ceramic tile floor throughout. The exterior siding was all painted, and trimmed in bright blue.
And when we were done there, he said that he was happy, because now he wouldn’t have to be ashamed when he had visitors.
People cried when we left there.
About three miles away at another site, there was the Thibodeaux Family:
Peggy and Gary, and their two children, Travis and Rachael. There is a third child - another son - in the Marine Corps - in Iraq. And Rachel is a special needs child, a VERY special needs child. After the waters receded, their home was destroyed, so this family and their pets lived in a pop-up camper for several months. Then they got their FEMA trailer and they’ve lived in that ever since.
Gary, the husband, is a welder. He used every bit of his free time to build a NEW home up on stilts, about the size of a single-wide trailer. On his own, he had constructed a shell with windows and siding, but now, they too had exhausted all their resources.
Our second of three teams worked with this family for most of the week. When we were finished, all the new interior walls were built and framed in. All the wiring for the house was completed, and the outside was painted, trim and all.
Little Rachael, with some help from team members, wrote a thank-you note to all of us from Michigan. It was read that night at our meeting back at camp. In her childish scrawl, the note thanked us for helping to fix up her house, and for making it pretty again.
People cried when we left there too.
About half a block from the Thibodeaux home, was Mrs. Henry’s place. She is a recent widow. She had just buried her husband three weeks earlier. Although her home was also built on stilts, the 12 feet of water that raced up that part of the bayou brought the flood halfway up the inside of her living room windows.
She and her married son, Kevin, had redone the inside of the house. It was the outside that needed to be totally replaced, with new siding, new insulation, new porches and stairways.
But they too had run out of resources and had nowhere to turn. She told me that they had pretty much given up all hope and so they just started praying - praying that somehow, God would help them. And then suddenly, on Monday morning, she heard all this noise, looked outside, and saw 10 vehicles and 50 people standing in her front yard.
She said we were her answer to prayer. I have been called many things in my lifetime. An “answer to prayer” has never been one of them. Especially by a woman. But I cannot shake the mental image in my head, of this woman on her knees, in her damaged house, praying for help, while at the same time, over a thousand miles away, a convoy pulls out of a parking lot at a place called Rosedale Gardens. And 48 hours later, we all come together on her front lawn. And now she’s shedding tears, but they are tears of inexpressible joy.
And yes, when we left THERE, people cried.
It is AMAZING how attached you can become to people who, only five days earlier, were complete strangers. This is powerful stuff. And we were ALL moved by that sort of thing.
I cannot tell you how enormously PROUD I am of this team - all 49 of them. They were relentless, never fatigued, never defeated. Tough jobs, hard work, hot sun, violent storms, very little rest, but NOBODY stopped. Nobody batted an eye.
The only frustration that I ever heard expressed, was that there were not enough work sites for us, and our Team Michigan always wanted more to do, even taking on projects around our base camp after dinner, sometimes until dark.
Once again, the social service agencies, the disaster assistance folks, the homeowners whom we served, their neighbors, friends, relatives, and all sorts of passersby – ALL of them were overwhelmed with our work ethic and with our relentless stamina. All of them were stunned when they’d watch us pull up, get out, tool up, and literally ATTACK the work that needed to be done.
It was a beautiful thing. And it was done BY beautiful people, FOR beautiful people - ALL of us GOD’S people - brought together despite great distance and devastating destruction.
You know, anytime we talk about helping other people we run directly into that classic passage of Matthew 25, where Jesus is telling the parable about the King who returns to his people and begins to divide them, as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, in some form of final judgment.
And the people who are blessed, the people who are applauded, the people who are accepted and thanked, the people who are welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven, are those who in some way or another, HELPED OTHERS!
They are the ones who fed the hungry and gave drink to those with thirst. They are the ones who clothed the naked and visited the lonely. They are the ones who assisted others with their basic human needs.
Now the interesting thing to me about Jesus’ words in Matthew 25, is that the single great criterion for judgment didn’t have anything to do with where you went to church, or how much money you had, or what set of doctrines you accepted.
Entrance to the Kingdom had nothing to do with how successful you were in the material realm of life or even what it was that you believed!
In that parable, the single criterion for entry into the Kingdom of Heaven had ONLY to do with how you treated other people who were in distress; had ONLY to do with how you responded to other people in need.
From April 22nd through April 30th in a place called Houma, Louisiana you were ALL part of reaching out to others in need. You ALL stretched out your hands to help, with your participation, or with your prayers, or with your financial under girding, or with your concerns, or with your support.
Those of us who actually went, went to change the lives of others. And in the process, we DID find that OUR lives were changed as well.
So, on behalf of the 49 of us who made that trip, those of us who went out in the name of Jesus Christ, carrying the banner of Rosedale Gardens Presbyterian Church, I offer YOU ALL our heartfelt thanks. For without you, NONE of this would have ever happened. God bless you all. Amen.
¶ 3:19 PM 
INTRODUCTION TO THE MORNING SCRIPTURE READING
SUNDAY, MAY 7, 2006 – LUKE 5:17-26.
For our Scripture reading this morning, we turn to Luke’s Gospel and find ourselves with a somewhat familiar story. Jesus is teaching in someone’s home. The place is literally packed with people. In the midst of this mob scene, a paralyzed man is brought down the street on a stretcher. He is being carried by four friends who seek to have him healed. But they can’t get through the crowd!
Ingenuity prevails, however, when they go up on the roof of the house and remove a bunch of clay tiles. Then, they lower the helpless man down on his stretcher through the hole with ropes! Jesus applauds the faith of these dauntless helpers and then heals the man.
Nearby are the ever-present Scribes and Pharisees, who are always trying to catch Jesus doing something contrary to religious law. When they hear Him forgive the paralyzed man’s sins, they erupt with shouts of blasphemy, for this is something that only God can do!
The story has many characters and many lessons. Luke’s primary purpose in recording this event, was to demonstrate the Jesus was indeed the Son of God, and that He had the power to forgive sins. To prove this fact, He was able to heal people from the most severe diseases and afflictions.
We read now from chapter 5, verses 17 through 26:
One day, while Jesus was teaching, Pharisees and Teachers of the Law were sitting nearby (they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea, and from Jerusalem): and the power of the Lord was with Him to heal.
Just then, some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof, and let him down, with his bed, through the tiles, into the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus.
When Jesus saw their faith, He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” Then the Scribes and the Pharisees began to question, “Who is this who is speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”
When Jesus perceived their questionings, He answered them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier to say – ‘Your sins are forgiven you’ or to say ‘stand up and walk?’ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins (he said to the one who was paralyzed), I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home!”
Immediately, he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God. Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying “We have seen strange things today.”
READER: This is the Word of the Lord.
PEOPLE: Thanks be to God.
CHANGED BY THE LIVES WE CHANGED
Sermon preached by Rev. Rick Peters
Rosedale Gardens Presbyterian Church
Livonia, Michigan May 7, 2006
Two weeks ago, every one of you went on a Mission Trip! Now it’s true that only 49 of us actually loaded our stuff into vehicles and headed off to the bayou country of south Louisiana. But make no mistake. You were ALL part of that undertaking!
This entire congregation was involved! By way of your support, your prayers, and your finances. You either went, or you sent a loved one, or you knew somebody who went. In ALL these ways, you were involved, thus making it a truly church-wide experience.
For those of you who happen to be visiting this morning, let me clarify:
This church sponsors FOUR different mission trips on an annual basis. There is one for our high schoolers, one for our young adults, one for our adults, and then THIS one, that is connected with hurricane disaster assistance.
A mission trip that’s devoted to disaster assistance is like nothing else. It’s an experience that truly stands alone. It is different. It is very unique, because the need is so huge, and it cuts across all of our human-imposed social barriers. And that need right now, is the result of a horrendous natural disaster - the largest ever in the entire history of this nation - Hurricane Katrina.
I’d like to share my thoughts about this trip by looking at two categories:
The first is what I’ll call THE BIG PICTURE.
The second is what I’ll call THE PERSONAL PORTRAITS.
First then, THE BIG PICTURE.
Last year’s hurricane season affected several million people in five different states along the Gulf Coast of America. There were massive evacuations and thousands of misplaced persons.
Now, nine months later, there are STILL tens of thousands of people who continue to be uprooted from their homes, living in other places. Large portions of major cities, like the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, are ghost towns – places that cannot, and probably never will, be rebuilt, because the destruction there is so utterly complete.
Basic services have been restored to most areas along the Gulf. But in many locales, thousands of residents continue to live with nearby relatives or neighbors, or in FEMA trailers, or in tents - surviving on their property while they wait for the money and material to rebuild their homes.
That was the situation we found outside of Houma, Louisiana - the gateway to Cajun Country - in that part of the state. It is a very rural region, populated by people who are proud and independent. These are people who are used to GIVING help, not RECEIVING it. They are people who speak that unusual dialect, peculiar to the area. They are people who love to work, love to listen to their music and above all, my how they love to EAT!
Many of us bought tee shirts that were locally produced in Houma. Actually, I brought one back for Kellie, and here it is. It says: “Cajun Heritage” and you can just FEEL the pride in those words. (I also remembered to get it in SIZE EXTRA, EXTRA LARGE! And oh, it just happens to have a BIG CRAB on the front of it!)
But I digress! They are WONDERFUL people down there; generous, hospitable.
But they are also people who now have mostly exhausted their resources and they’re at the point where they can do little more for themselves, and so they have reached something of a “Plateau of Paralysis.”
In our Scripture reading for this morning, we have this exciting story of Jesus healing a man who was paralyzed. But this is equally the story of those OTHER people who GOT this man to Jesus, so that he COULD be healed and made whole once again.
The story is a paradigm, I think, of what our role was on this mission trip.
Throughout the South, there are people still paralyzed, still traumatized, still totally overwhelmed by the losses they’ve had to live through. You and I simply cannot imagine the circumstances they’ve endured. By April of this year, they used up most of their assets and resources, and now they have nowhere else to turn in order to regain a sense of healing, a sense of their own wholeness.
And they are feeling largely forgotten, ignored, not cared about.
And folks like us who go on these trips, well, we are those OTHER people in the Jesus story. We are the one who show up, suddenly, out of nowhere. And somehow, through our ability to improvise and adapt (like tearing apart a roof to lower down a stretcher with ropes), we get them to where they can be healed where they can walk again and start to regain something of the wholeness of their lives.
Our mission in going south was to help change the lives of people in need.
We DID that! Dramatically! And in the process, of course, OUR lives were changed as well. I can guarantee you that NOT ONE OF US has come back the same as when we went. And that too, is the power of this kind of experience.
But we also came back with a MISSION for HERE as well! And our mission in returning to you today, is to tell you that the extraordinary needs CONTINUE along the Gulf Coast. They haven’t disappeared, and they haven’t been solved.
They’ve just slipped from page 1 of our newspapers and they have been eclipsed by other lead-in stories on the 6:00 news. And because our nation has such a pathetically short attention span we have essentially FORGOTTEN our brothers and sisters down there. We focus instead on the latest TV winner on “American Idol,” or on the most recent exploits of Paris Hilton. God help us!
The need in many areas in the South, is the same now as it was nine months ago. And THAT is the message with which we return today, on a Sunday less than 4 weeks away from the beginning of THIS year’s Hurricane Season.
Okay, if that is the BIG PICTURE, then what do we say about the PERSONAL PORTRAITS?
Well, let me first describe to you a man named NICK. Nicholas LeBeouf. He told everyone he was in his 70’s. I was told by the social services people that he was actually in his later 80’s.
Nick has a face like a sea captain - perfect for photos or paintings. His Cajun accent is so thick, that he’s sometimes hard to understand, but he has a smile that is translatable into any language.
SUNDAY, MAY 7, 2006 – LUKE 5:17-26.
For our Scripture reading this morning, we turn to Luke’s Gospel and find ourselves with a somewhat familiar story. Jesus is teaching in someone’s home. The place is literally packed with people. In the midst of this mob scene, a paralyzed man is brought down the street on a stretcher. He is being carried by four friends who seek to have him healed. But they can’t get through the crowd!
Ingenuity prevails, however, when they go up on the roof of the house and remove a bunch of clay tiles. Then, they lower the helpless man down on his stretcher through the hole with ropes! Jesus applauds the faith of these dauntless helpers and then heals the man.
Nearby are the ever-present Scribes and Pharisees, who are always trying to catch Jesus doing something contrary to religious law. When they hear Him forgive the paralyzed man’s sins, they erupt with shouts of blasphemy, for this is something that only God can do!
The story has many characters and many lessons. Luke’s primary purpose in recording this event, was to demonstrate the Jesus was indeed the Son of God, and that He had the power to forgive sins. To prove this fact, He was able to heal people from the most severe diseases and afflictions.
We read now from chapter 5, verses 17 through 26:
One day, while Jesus was teaching, Pharisees and Teachers of the Law were sitting nearby (they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea, and from Jerusalem): and the power of the Lord was with Him to heal.
Just then, some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof, and let him down, with his bed, through the tiles, into the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus.
When Jesus saw their faith, He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” Then the Scribes and the Pharisees began to question, “Who is this who is speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”
When Jesus perceived their questionings, He answered them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier to say – ‘Your sins are forgiven you’ or to say ‘stand up and walk?’ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins (he said to the one who was paralyzed), I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home!”
Immediately, he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God. Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying “We have seen strange things today.”
READER: This is the Word of the Lord.
PEOPLE: Thanks be to God.
CHANGED BY THE LIVES WE CHANGED
Sermon preached by Rev. Rick Peters
Rosedale Gardens Presbyterian Church
Livonia, Michigan May 7, 2006
Two weeks ago, every one of you went on a Mission Trip! Now it’s true that only 49 of us actually loaded our stuff into vehicles and headed off to the bayou country of south Louisiana. But make no mistake. You were ALL part of that undertaking!
This entire congregation was involved! By way of your support, your prayers, and your finances. You either went, or you sent a loved one, or you knew somebody who went. In ALL these ways, you were involved, thus making it a truly church-wide experience.
For those of you who happen to be visiting this morning, let me clarify:
This church sponsors FOUR different mission trips on an annual basis. There is one for our high schoolers, one for our young adults, one for our adults, and then THIS one, that is connected with hurricane disaster assistance.
A mission trip that’s devoted to disaster assistance is like nothing else. It’s an experience that truly stands alone. It is different. It is very unique, because the need is so huge, and it cuts across all of our human-imposed social barriers. And that need right now, is the result of a horrendous natural disaster - the largest ever in the entire history of this nation - Hurricane Katrina.
I’d like to share my thoughts about this trip by looking at two categories:
The first is what I’ll call THE BIG PICTURE.
The second is what I’ll call THE PERSONAL PORTRAITS.
First then, THE BIG PICTURE.
Last year’s hurricane season affected several million people in five different states along the Gulf Coast of America. There were massive evacuations and thousands of misplaced persons.
Now, nine months later, there are STILL tens of thousands of people who continue to be uprooted from their homes, living in other places. Large portions of major cities, like the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, are ghost towns – places that cannot, and probably never will, be rebuilt, because the destruction there is so utterly complete.
Basic services have been restored to most areas along the Gulf. But in many locales, thousands of residents continue to live with nearby relatives or neighbors, or in FEMA trailers, or in tents - surviving on their property while they wait for the money and material to rebuild their homes.
That was the situation we found outside of Houma, Louisiana - the gateway to Cajun Country - in that part of the state. It is a very rural region, populated by people who are proud and independent. These are people who are used to GIVING help, not RECEIVING it. They are people who speak that unusual dialect, peculiar to the area. They are people who love to work, love to listen to their music and above all, my how they love to EAT!
Many of us bought tee shirts that were locally produced in Houma. Actually, I brought one back for Kellie, and here it is. It says: “Cajun Heritage” and you can just FEEL the pride in those words. (I also remembered to get it in SIZE EXTRA, EXTRA LARGE! And oh, it just happens to have a BIG CRAB on the front of it!)
But I digress! They are WONDERFUL people down there; generous, hospitable.
But they are also people who now have mostly exhausted their resources and they’re at the point where they can do little more for themselves, and so they have reached something of a “Plateau of Paralysis.”
In our Scripture reading for this morning, we have this exciting story of Jesus healing a man who was paralyzed. But this is equally the story of those OTHER people who GOT this man to Jesus, so that he COULD be healed and made whole once again.
The story is a paradigm, I think, of what our role was on this mission trip.
Throughout the South, there are people still paralyzed, still traumatized, still totally overwhelmed by the losses they’ve had to live through. You and I simply cannot imagine the circumstances they’ve endured. By April of this year, they used up most of their assets and resources, and now they have nowhere else to turn in order to regain a sense of healing, a sense of their own wholeness.
And they are feeling largely forgotten, ignored, not cared about.
And folks like us who go on these trips, well, we are those OTHER people in the Jesus story. We are the one who show up, suddenly, out of nowhere. And somehow, through our ability to improvise and adapt (like tearing apart a roof to lower down a stretcher with ropes), we get them to where they can be healed where they can walk again and start to regain something of the wholeness of their lives.
Our mission in going south was to help change the lives of people in need.
We DID that! Dramatically! And in the process, of course, OUR lives were changed as well. I can guarantee you that NOT ONE OF US has come back the same as when we went. And that too, is the power of this kind of experience.
But we also came back with a MISSION for HERE as well! And our mission in returning to you today, is to tell you that the extraordinary needs CONTINUE along the Gulf Coast. They haven’t disappeared, and they haven’t been solved.
They’ve just slipped from page 1 of our newspapers and they have been eclipsed by other lead-in stories on the 6:00 news. And because our nation has such a pathetically short attention span we have essentially FORGOTTEN our brothers and sisters down there. We focus instead on the latest TV winner on “American Idol,” or on the most recent exploits of Paris Hilton. God help us!
The need in many areas in the South, is the same now as it was nine months ago. And THAT is the message with which we return today, on a Sunday less than 4 weeks away from the beginning of THIS year’s Hurricane Season.
Okay, if that is the BIG PICTURE, then what do we say about the PERSONAL PORTRAITS?
Well, let me first describe to you a man named NICK. Nicholas LeBeouf. He told everyone he was in his 70’s. I was told by the social services people that he was actually in his later 80’s.
Nick has a face like a sea captain - perfect for photos or paintings. His Cajun accent is so thick, that he’s sometimes hard to understand, but he has a smile that is translatable into any language.
He has lived for months, alone, in a tiny FEMA trailer, right next to his little home, which is about 400 square feet in size. Yes, I said 400 square feet. That’s not the trailer, that’s his home.
It is elevated on pilings, as are almost all of the structures in this region. But the floodwaters were so high, they still damaged his little house.
We had one of our three teams work all week at Nick’s home. People were lying on their backs under the crawlspace there for three days, redoing the plumbing for the entire house. Inside, were new appliances, new doors, newly painted walls, a new kitchen sink, and a new ceramic tile floor throughout. The exterior siding was all painted, and trimmed in bright blue.
And when we were done there, he said that he was happy, because now he wouldn’t have to be ashamed when he had visitors.
People cried when we left there.
About three miles away at another site, there was the Thibodeaux Family:
Peggy and Gary, and their two children, Travis and Rachael. There is a third child - another son - in the Marine Corps - in Iraq. And Rachel is a special needs child, a VERY special needs child. After the waters receded, their home was destroyed, so this family and their pets lived in a pop-up camper for several months. Then they got their FEMA trailer and they’ve lived in that ever since.
Gary, the husband, is a welder. He used every bit of his free time to build a NEW home up on stilts, about the size of a single-wide trailer. On his own, he had constructed a shell with windows and siding, but now, they too had exhausted all their resources.
Our second of three teams worked with this family for most of the week. When we were finished, all the new interior walls were built and framed in. All the wiring for the house was completed, and the outside was painted, trim and all.
Little Rachael, with some help from team members, wrote a thank-you note to all of us from Michigan. It was read that night at our meeting back at camp. In her childish scrawl, the note thanked us for helping to fix up her house, and for making it pretty again.
People cried when we left there too.
About half a block from the Thibodeaux home, was Mrs. Henry’s place. She is a recent widow. She had just buried her husband three weeks earlier. Although her home was also built on stilts, the 12 feet of water that raced up that part of the bayou brought the flood halfway up the inside of her living room windows.
She and her married son, Kevin, had redone the inside of the house. It was the outside that needed to be totally replaced, with new siding, new insulation, new porches and stairways.
But they too had run out of resources and had nowhere to turn. She told me that they had pretty much given up all hope and so they just started praying - praying that somehow, God would help them. And then suddenly, on Monday morning, she heard all this noise, looked outside, and saw 10 vehicles and 50 people standing in her front yard.
She said we were her answer to prayer. I have been called many things in my lifetime. An “answer to prayer” has never been one of them. Especially by a woman. But I cannot shake the mental image in my head, of this woman on her knees, in her damaged house, praying for help, while at the same time, over a thousand miles away, a convoy pulls out of a parking lot at a place called Rosedale Gardens. And 48 hours later, we all come together on her front lawn. And now she’s shedding tears, but they are tears of inexpressible joy.
And yes, when we left THERE, people cried.
It is AMAZING how attached you can become to people who, only five days earlier, were complete strangers. This is powerful stuff. And we were ALL moved by that sort of thing.
I cannot tell you how enormously PROUD I am of this team - all 49 of them. They were relentless, never fatigued, never defeated. Tough jobs, hard work, hot sun, violent storms, very little rest, but NOBODY stopped. Nobody batted an eye.
The only frustration that I ever heard expressed, was that there were not enough work sites for us, and our Team Michigan always wanted more to do, even taking on projects around our base camp after dinner, sometimes until dark.
Once again, the social service agencies, the disaster assistance folks, the homeowners whom we served, their neighbors, friends, relatives, and all sorts of passersby – ALL of them were overwhelmed with our work ethic and with our relentless stamina. All of them were stunned when they’d watch us pull up, get out, tool up, and literally ATTACK the work that needed to be done.
It was a beautiful thing. And it was done BY beautiful people, FOR beautiful people - ALL of us GOD’S people - brought together despite great distance and devastating destruction.
You know, anytime we talk about helping other people we run directly into that classic passage of Matthew 25, where Jesus is telling the parable about the King who returns to his people and begins to divide them, as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, in some form of final judgment.
And the people who are blessed, the people who are applauded, the people who are accepted and thanked, the people who are welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven, are those who in some way or another, HELPED OTHERS!
They are the ones who fed the hungry and gave drink to those with thirst. They are the ones who clothed the naked and visited the lonely. They are the ones who assisted others with their basic human needs.
Now the interesting thing to me about Jesus’ words in Matthew 25, is that the single great criterion for judgment didn’t have anything to do with where you went to church, or how much money you had, or what set of doctrines you accepted.
Entrance to the Kingdom had nothing to do with how successful you were in the material realm of life or even what it was that you believed!
In that parable, the single criterion for entry into the Kingdom of Heaven had ONLY to do with how you treated other people who were in distress; had ONLY to do with how you responded to other people in need.
From April 22nd through April 30th in a place called Houma, Louisiana you were ALL part of reaching out to others in need. You ALL stretched out your hands to help, with your participation, or with your prayers, or with your financial under girding, or with your concerns, or with your support.
Those of us who actually went, went to change the lives of others. And in the process, we DID find that OUR lives were changed as well.
So, on behalf of the 49 of us who made that trip, those of us who went out in the name of Jesus Christ, carrying the banner of Rosedale Gardens Presbyterian Church, I offer YOU ALL our heartfelt thanks. For without you, NONE of this would have ever happened. God bless you all. Amen.
