The mission’s hectic summer season officially kicked off on Wednesday, June 3, with the arrival of our old friends at Fort Lone Tree. The New Mexico based camp has brought three teams so far this year and has plans to bring another in July; the kids spend a few weeks learning things like leadership and teamwork and then test drive their newfound skills by participating in a servant event. This time, the group was composed primarily of youth from South Dakota and Nebraska who all attend the same Christian boarding high school in South Dakota.
They concentrated their efforts on beginning a 14 x 48 foot build in Horizon City for a family of 5 whose trailer is going to be repossessed in a few weeks because they couldn’t make the payments. It was incredible to witness the bond that was formed between the 3Velasquez kids and the 20 group members in such a short period; aside from lots of reading, Frisbee, and soccer around the jobsite, they went to the oldest daughter’s soccer practice one evening, hosted an impromptu birthday party for one of the other kids, prayed with the family before they left for the last time, and invited the family to church with them on Sunday.
It is going to take several weeks to finish such an extensive undertaking, but the entire structure is framed, sided, roofed, and wired for electric. The group also hosted an afternoon of outreach on Sunday with hot dogs and soccer in Sparks’s tiny park. We had them try out a new, bolder method of publicizing the event—handing out flyers in the doorway of the Del Rey grocery store and canvassing the neighborhood—which appeared to work as they reported a turnout of around 120 people!
