It doesn’t seem possible, but today was our final full day of work! Even though we are all tired because we’ve rushed to complete as much as possible today, everyone is taking a few minutes to share their final thoughts on Mission Trip #33!  Fletcher Tukes:  I made a commitment to the Lord 18 years […]

Written by Laura Wilson Have you ever wondered what survivor/thriver traits you might need for a Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) trip and how you could acquire them if you found yourself running short? Read on, because by Day 3, much has been revealed…  Do you have patience, flexibility, creativity, persistence, love of critters? Do you […]

Written by Bruce Andrews, Elisa McClelland, and Lucille Baur We were back to our home bases today, Miss T’s house and Darrin’s house. We’ll begin with the work at Darrin’s house and get an engineer’s perspective from Bruce Andrews about what they were up to.   Electrical work continued at Darrin’s house with the three engineers […]

Written by Lucille Baur Work begins! We always start off with a group meeting to learn a little about our homeowners and the type of work that needs to be done to their homes. During this trip we will be assigned to three homes. We’re calling them Miss T’s house, Darrin’s house, and the Boone […]

Written by Lucille Baur We came from Gaithersburg, MD; Rockville, MD; Alexandria, VA; St. Mary’s County, MD; North Potomac, MD; Youngstown, Ohio; Durham, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia…with the common goal of being a participant in our Rev. Mary Beth Lawrence’s last Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) Mission Trip with GPC! We all had […]

Written By: Lauren Geall, Stylist Struggling to keep your emotions in check? One recent study could offer some answers.  To say the last few years have been emotionally overwhelming would be a bit of an understatement. From anxiety and loneliness to frustration and sadness, the coronavirus pandemic has certainly been one hell of an emotional […]

Speaking of ways to practice resting:

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 […]