Written by the whole team. This is it. Our final day of work! We received an Emergency Alert Storm Surge Warning for the danger of life-threatening flooding in New Bern. Everyone has been asked to take emergency precautions. For us, that means it is time to pack up and head back to Gaithersburg early tomorrow […]

I highly recommend this book, Stolen Focus, and the accompanying podcast from author Johann Hari. In them, Mr. Hari lays out a very convincing argument for why people have a much harder time paying attention than we did even 20 years ago. He also presents some fairly simple strategies for correcting it. Most of them […]

Written by Lucille Baur Written by Lucille Baur  Sometimes folks refer to Wednesday as “Hump Day” because it is the middle of the week, but in our mission trip parlance it referred to fixing humps in floors at two of our homes. Of course we did plenty of other things as well.  One of the […]

“The Ears of God” Written by Lucille Baur There are twelve of us now on this mission trip. I arrived this morning. The first thing that came to Mary Beth’s mind was the twelve apostles. But after a hard day’s work, we are better described as the Dirty Dozen!  Yesterday all the site workers were […]

Written by: Laura Wilson The day began with Fletcher reading the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila:  “Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.  Yours are the eyes with which He looks with Compassion on this world.  Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good.  […]

Written by: Laura Wilson Sunday was calmly quiet from start to day’s end. The cloudy skies and gentle rain created a peaceful backdrop to the day. The drive from GPC to the church in New Bern went smoothly for most, and Mary Beth was already there, ready to greet everyone as they arrived. She and Yvonne arrived a day early, so […]

Patience is not a characteristic that we often associate with children, particularly not children in 2023. One of the reasons for this is that many of us no longer teach children HOW to be patient; probably because it takes a fair bit of time and patience on the part of the parents, both of which […]

Week 1 A few of Gaithersburg Presbyterian Preschool and Kindergarten and the GPC Young Families favorite stories to listen to online. Dinosaur Starts School, Edwards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTf48Pbq97Y Maisey Goes to Preschool, Cousins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygw4KWfi-jg Goodbye Brings Hello, White https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5k1wYRFmc0 All Are Welcome, Penfold https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwS3FOn4-Ow Our Class is a Family, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw9NstM1Q4E  Click, Clack Quack Go to School, Cronin […]

Chapter 21:1, I saw heaven and earth new created. Gone the first heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea.  The Message: God is all about patterns, symmetry and balance. We see it throughout God’s creation. We see it all around us as we also see, implicit in that creation, infinite love and a deep-seated […]

The last day of our mission trip. We had a large team this year, which allowed us to repair five different homes. The common theme was water damage. That damage had us ripping up ceilings, walls, floors, trim, etc. and replacing them and then repainting. For variety, we also replaced a leaking hot water heater, […]