Sunday, October 17, 2010

X-Tending Hands

Pulling weeds
Trimming hedges
Cutting down trees
Pulling out tree stumps
Moving buckets and buckets and buckets of sand
Planting a flower garden
Using 12 bags of mulch
And after five hours of manual labor
We were able to minister to some people in Orlando 
With the little talents we are blessed with.

     At Harvest, our Student Leadership Team has been thriving and looking for MULTIPLE ways to get connected into our community. Whether it be Winter Garden, Windermere, Ocoee, Pine Hills, or even Orlando as a whole, one of our visions has a team is to minister in what little ways we can.

     One major thing that we're trying to do these days is to somehow find some kind of ministry or outreach to do, twice a month. Whether that be feeding the homeless, volunteering at a shelter, painting an apartment, etc., our main objective is to show the people of Orlando the love that God has for His children. So for our first project, we partnered with an organization called X-Tending Hands.

     Today's project was to go to a house over in Pine Hills and to do perform simple acts of kindness by cleaning up their yard. The house shelters women who are homeless, sick, etc. The house serves as a place of refuge and hopefully, hope for the residents there. Today's project included all that was stated above, along with many, many more. 

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So these are SOME of the tasks that we did.

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I honestly can say that I am so proud to be a part of this team. 
It was hot, it was hard, it was difficult,
And yet, not one complaint came from anybody.

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Although it can't be seen too clearly, 
we planted a small flower bed type thing to sort of, beautify the entrance. 
Although it also cannot be seen too clearly here either, 
overall, the whole land itself was much more clean and much more... 'presentable.'
AWESOME JOB SLT!

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So here are two pictures of the whole crew that helped out (top row)
Along with a picture of our SLT (bottom row)

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This is P. Chung and Jin from OCBC (left & middle),
Along with Carl who is Luis's wing man.
Luis is a member of the men's facility located about 5 min from this facility (women's)
Luis could have done everything on his own,
better than us in fact, but I think he enjoyed the help.
Carl was Luis's wing man for everything.
Carl is also like a mini-P.Chung (right)

     Overall, the day was DEFINITELY a success. Lots of people showed up, a lot was done, and God definitely used us to minister to the people of this shelter. I cannot praise/recognize the SLT enough for ALL that they did. I am SOOOO proud to be a fellow SLT member with them. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me.

*** Many props to Pastor Albert Young for taking a majority of the photos***

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Commissioning and Happy Birthday to Manny Kim!

So within Harvest, our adults are made up of cell churches. One of our cell churches, the Clara Kim Cell Church (college), grew to be too big so they had to be split up. With a new cell church comes the need for a new cell shepherd and by unanimous decision, Paul Kim was selected. Today, after the sermon and worship time, we took some time to commission Paul as a cell church leader by washing his feet.

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Some pictures of the leaders praying for Paul

After church, many of us moved over to the Stoneybrooke West Country Club to celebrate our very own head pastor's daughter's first birthday, Emmanuelle Kim. It was an awesome time of thanksgiving to God, fellowship, and celebration for a very beloved baby within Harvest.

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Some detail shots

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More detail shots

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A Korean tradition when a baby turns 1

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Some pictures of the guests [I have no idea why Yeari is in all of them]

And now, around 6 in the evening, my uncle and my cousin came down to Florida to visit and of course, my little cousin Audrey, being the model that she is, wanted to take some pictures. Here's two of my favorite.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Just A Small Update...

So I'm in my junior year of the IB program and supposedly this is supposed to be the hardest year. While I haven't experienced massive amounts of work, school definitely has not changed one bit. I'm still trying to get back into the routine of getting 5 hours of sleep, doing homework for many hours, struggling over chemistry, etc. This has however taken away any time for photography....

I was cleaning my room yesterday and found these rocks that I had taken from Ecuador. For those who are now tuning in, I went on a mission trip to Ecuador back in late July. I had found the rocks that I had taken for memories, one from each city we ministered in (minus Quito). There are so many things that remind me of Ecuador...

  • The song "Worthy is the Lamb"
  • The Salvation bracelet I have in my backpack
  • Every pick-up truck I see
  • Anything with cilantro
  • Fresh juices
  • Hair cuts
  • Many, many more...
Despite all the stress that school causes (IB, SATs, etc), these memories are what keep me sane. 

I definitely hope to get some photography in my schedule within the next couple months so be sure to stay tuned. ;-)