We’re on the home stretch at our project at Faith Christian School, and Gary just asked if I’d mentioned the trains. The school (and our camp site) is located between two sets of railroad tracks – each about two blocks from the school. And these are very busy tracks – and since they go through town, they have to blow those whistles, loud and long. They say it takes about three weeks to get used to it.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks – as often happens, when we would go to work on a certain project, it just kind of funnels into another project. What started as Sharon and I organizing the bulletin board “stuff” turned into a revamp of the storage room and trying to make it into a “resource room.” It still has a way to go, but at least the teachers shouldn’t be quite so afraid to enter! The guys continue to busy with yard work and general maintenance/repairs and we managed to get a set of curtains made and hung. Hopefully one more set will get done before we head on our way. We wrap up our time here on Thursday, but will be staying in our little spot until Saturday, tying up loose ends and packing up to hit the road. It has been truly a blessing to be here – getting to know the teachers and students, working with our new friends Dick and Sharon Brittell, and being able to use some of our talents in furthering God’s Kingdom.

Gary and Dick taming the courtyard. The grass was high and the bushes were wild, but they set them straight!

OK, so it’s not THE Grand Canyon, but for Georgia it was pretty impressive. We took the 3 mile hike that went into the canyon itself and got to walk along the creek beds that formed these canyons.

Here are some shots from our Sower “home” for October-
View from the front – The school was built in 1934 and is on the Vienna Historic Tour.

Here are Gary and Dick working on some outside lighting.

And this is our campsite/home while we are here. It’s nice to be staying still for a little while!

Our Sower’s work week is only four days, so on Friday we left early to see some more of Georgia. We headed west – through Plains, (I think Jimmy and Roseanne were still sleeping), Americus (home of Habitat for Humanity) and on to Providence Canyon State Park just outside of Lumpkin, GA. This is home of the Little Grand Canyon of Georgia. Now we haven’t made it to the Grand Canyon yet, and I’m sure this is nothing really compared to that, but it’s pretty impressive for Georgia! Check out our photo’s page for some pictures of that beautiful park.
From there we went to Westville – an 1840’s village in Lumpkin. We’ve done historic villages in the north – this was the first one in the south. It was very interesting to see the differences – both in architecture and lifestyle. This Yankee is really getting an education!
Saturday night we saw a “Swamp Gravy” production – Georgia’s State Folk Life play. It was a great play – and if you’d like to know just what Swamp Gravy is – here’s a link to a recipe – http://www.wctv6.com/recipes/headlines/1022041.html !

We have finished our first week as active Sowers (and here’s the correct link to that ministry’s web site – http://sowerministry.org/)! Here was the job description that we got coming into the project –
“Faith Baptist Church/Chr School
204 E. Cotton St, Vienna, GA 31092
WORK: Men: Gen maint, &repair, carpentry, electrical, masonry, plumbing, yard work, computer set up, carpet installation, painting
Ladies: Sewing, cleaning, bulletin boards, organizational skills, laundry, computer, yard work, and cleaning.”

That job description pretty much sums up how we’ve spent our working time. We girls tackled “detailing” a refrigerator that had been badly neglected, but was in good running condition. Thank goodness for sturdy rubber gloves and heavy duty cleaners! We also rehabbed some donated restaurant chairs that the school wants to use in the dining hall. (The booths mentioned on an earlier post were too damaged to use. =( )The men worked on some plumbing and electrical “issues” along with doing some drywall. Next week we head to the yard work and some more – you guessed it, cleaning! It’s been a blessing to us to work on this project – it is very evident that God is blessing this ministry as it changes lives one at a time here in Southern Georgia.