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it was quite an interesting experience lugging a ton of food down there and then also having to go grocery shopping while we were down there...we learned a few useful things...like always bring the correct utensils for the job--shredding cheese with knives and a potato pealer was not the funnest thing in the world, let me tell you...haha...but we did have success with most, if not all of our meals and we were well fed...we were split up into 3 teams, so we took turns making meals...one team got up early and made breakfast, another made sandwiches, and then the third came home early from our work site to make dinner...
another difference was that we had never roofed houses before...i myself didn't work on the teams that worked on the roofs (my team worked on painting a 2.5 story HUGE house), but i heard stories, and i did get to see the work, and of course the kids that came home covered in tar...
i think the biggest difference though, was in the kids we worked with in VBS...in the past, most of the kids we worked with were unchurched and new to most of what we were telling them about...but in WV, the kids had seen so many groups of teens that had come to do VBS with them that they knew the songs and stories almost better than we did...it was a challenge to figure out whether we should try to teach them deeper stuff about God, or just do the usual...we ended up challenging them to learn bible verses and recite them to us...it was an exciting time as we realized we were learning from them maybe as much as we were learning from us....
as usual we also found the overwhelming hospitality that is commonly found in the south...the man who owned the house that my team was painting was so grateful for what we were doing, that he took most of his welfare check and went out and bought us food so we could have a feast the last day we spent with him...it was amazing...he even pulled out jars of pickled eggs and franks that he had made...we fell in love with his two younger kids that were still living at home and i'll never forget the southern twang i could hear in those kids' voices...
since we were the only group that summer that was going to able to work on the roofs of the houses, we ended up not really having a "play day" like we usually plan because we used it to finish up the roofing jobs...but that's ok...we still had a lot of fun in our own diversions: there was a playground down the hill from where we were staying that we would go to and hang out at, and then there were the times when we'd sit around and sing with the guitars...we even invented stupid games that we played in the evenings including throwing a pop can across a fan...haha...
oddly enough, one of my favorite lessons learned is that guys really love it when girls wear modest dresses (at least christian guys)...we didn't really HAVE to wear dresses for anything, but us girls were so used to having to wear skirts for at least VBS on past trips, that we wore them to VBS anyway...and then, when we got back to our "home base", we would take a shower and put on a dress or skirt...the guys kept saying how much they loved us, and it was really neat 'cause even though they were simple, often kind of ugly dresses, we still felt pretty in them 'cause the guys liked it...
but i think one of the most important lessons we learned is that God can use so many ways to provide for needs, and he can bless our work so that it is above and beyond what we could have imagined accomplishing...