Today was quite a blessing to all of us involved in the Hyaets mission this week.

In the morning, we continued all of our home repair work including fixing bathrooms, priming windows, and replacing a sidewalk.  Others picked vegetables from the Hyaets garden, made flyers for the cookout, prepared food to freeze, and went grocery shopping for the cookout.  The afternoon was full of more of the same.  By late afternoon, we had our bouncy castle up, popcorn machine going, and grillers preparing hot dogs and burgers.  Neighbors joined us from all around and together we shared food and fun.  The evening ended with silly songs on the front porch.

That’s the list of accomplishments for the day, but that doesn’t completely tell our story.  We are proud and grateful for the tasks we were able to achieve this weekend.  However, our story is also told in the relationships built over a basketball game, a “Simon Says” game, sitting on the porch talking about videos, a surprise hug from a mother grateful someone cared about her child, working alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ, and other countless moments along the way.

We hope that in many ways we reflected God’s love this weekend, but we are humbled and grateful for the ways we saw God this weekend.

See photos below from today’s events and follow this link for more pics from our adventure:  http://www.hrbcrichmond.org/mod/gallery/view-gallery.php?gallery_id=250

This Thursday at Hyaets, we took a group of children to ImaginOn, an interactive children’s library. It was their last field trip for the week, and in some of the HRBCers opinions, it was a relief not to go somewhere that involved getting wet! One thing that caught many of the Hyaets children’s attention was that on the sides of a building near ImaginOn, there were pillars that if you smacked them made a noise like drums, laughter, or a piano note. Then, later at Kids Club, the bible story was “Fishers of Men”, and many of the activities had to do with fish, such as decorating a cut-out fish, fishing – such as “fishing” for magnetic fish, and water – such,  as playing with water toys in a bucket of water. The simplicity of the activities and how much the children enjoyed them made the activities the best out of the whole week. After story time, we handed out bibles to the children and said our goodbyes. About that time, the second group of HRBCers had arrived. When the children had gone home, all the HRBCers and Hyaets people gathered for prayer, and then the first group of HRBCers stayed inside to reflect on the week while the second group went outside to get the 411 about what Hyaets was and what they’d be doing for the next few days. During our reflection time, we discussed our highs and lows of the week and what lessons or experiences we would bring back home. Some of the high moments, or favorite moments, had to do with the Kids Club activities, like playing football, the field trips, interacting the children, such as doing devotions with the older children, and just getting to know children and making them happy. One person said that just being able to minister to those children while doing such a simple thing like serving snack, made him realize how he can be one of God’s many shining lights. Some of the low moments, or least favorite moments, had to do a lot with what we saw. One person said that just seeing so many scars, physical and emotional, was hard to comprehend. Another person said that seeing how they lived made her want to cry sometimes. And one person said that just the knowledge that there was so much left to do, and here we were going home was a low for him. That was one lesson we went home with: there was so much we could give the children in Charlotte like fun activities, art projects to take home, or even just a hug , but there was also so much that we couldn’t give them, and that made us all remember how blessed we all are. On the way home, we also learned a few lessons we learned on the van, such as don’t leave fries from dinner in your pocket, remember to bring cup holders, and use the bathroom twice before going back in the van and on the highway! We all arrived at church around 11:20, all of us groggy and sleepy-eyed from sleeping in the van. The week at Hyaets was a success. Many new children from the neighborhood started coming for Kids Club, and one parent said to us that our group was a real blessing to her and her child.

by Carrie

After a long day, day 4 is finally over! In my opinion, I felt touched by all of the events that occurred today. We all took two bus connections to our destination: a set of water fountains! (not like the ones yesterday because these were bigger.) The children really enjoyed getting wet and making new friends, I think. I also think that they got closer to God. Especially one, because I ate my lunch with a boy and asked him if he would like to pray with me before I ate my lunch.

After that long morning and bus ride, I was exhausted! I even nodded off once or twice on the bus back. But I couldn’t let that stop me because we all still had a full day ahead of us. At the kid’s club, my station was with snacks. Luckily, not a lot of people went crazy for them today (probably because it didn’t involve peanut butter.) Usually when I get the snacks ready for a child, I try to tell them the story of this day’s lesson. I didn’t do a lot of that today because I’m a shy person and there were a lot more teens than kids around.

Today was Devotions day. What we all did was tell about Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan and went in depth with the older kids. I hope the kids are thinking about caring and loving everyone. It even gave me some things to think about. I wish that someday I will help someone without fear getting in my way. And so, this is what basically happened on day 4 of touching others lives. As we get closer to leaving, I pray that we will make a big impact – changing their lives with hope in the name of Jesus Christ. 

By Parker

Whoo!!! Another day at Hyaets complete! Time to reflect and relax–with a 2 liter bottle of Cheerwine, that is! We had an amazing day starting with yummy pancakes cooked by our “master chef”, Wilton Johns. Though some of us were late-risers, we were psyched and ready for fun! First on our schedule was to get to Jennifer (aka, Helms) & Greg’s house to meet up with the Hyaets kids going on a “field trip” with us. We had about 20-some people in our party (including all of our HRBC group, Helms, John Tyson, and the Hyaets kids) as we climbed aboard public transit into inner-city Charlotte. Our destination: a (free) public park with a sculpture fountain (geyser-fountain) for us to play in and cool off, grassy fields, and mosaic toadstool seats! The Hyaets kids (ranging from ages 4-9) loved the fountain–especially the 8-foot fish sculptures that spat water at you! Parker Smith and Wil Johns enjoyed throwing Carrie Johns and Valerie Lott into the spray of the fish and geysers! After we were all soaked to the skin, Helms led our group on a Scavenger Hunt in the park. For example, “Find the brick statue of the book and tell me how many children are climbing on it. Go!” The answer? Four! The park was extremely cultural and fun, and reminds me of how much I ADORE Charlotte! After we dried off as best we could from the fountain, we escaped the heat of the day and lunched at FUEL, a local pizzaria. From there, we got back in the bus and headed back to Hyaets for our “Kids Club” activities. We had Tye-Dye in the back, and snacks, watercolor painting, foam airplanes (huge hit!), and marble painting (marbles + paint + paper + moving box = beautiful work of art!). The Tye-Dye t-shirts turned out great, and are outside of the church drying. the entire Tye-Dye project was carried out by Hyaets teens that needed to do the volunteer work so they could go to a camp (Unidiversity), and were motivated and led by Jessica Torres, Tye-Dye extrordinaire. In the front, Parker Smith was once again the snacks extrordinaire and was being a star example, telling our bible story to the snckers and mingling wonderfully! Carrie Johns started off her craft station with origami, but when it posed as a challenge to the littler kids, she started the foam airplane craft. The little boys loved them and threw them around the rest of the time. Miss Rose (aka, Rose Browning) was wooing the kids with watercolors and fancy paintbrushes. Valerie Lott rowdied them up with marble art and even MORE paint (it got quite messy). Miss Rose closed us up with a puppet show, starring Zacchaeus as he told his story of meeting Jesus. Then she played her guitar and sang “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he…” and so on and so worth. The day came to a close as or HRBC team returned “home” (with a scenic route home, courtacy of Wilton Johns, our chauffer), ate a meal consisting of pasta, salad, bread and the all-so-important, cookies! Now we’re killing time before bed and just relaxing and planning for tomorow. See you on Thursday!

by Jessica

PS- HI JON!!!

Our Hyaets adventure is turning out to be an amazing trip. We are spending our days taking children from the Hyaets neighborhood on morning field trips and providing an outdoor Bible adventure in the afternoon. Some of you know that I was feeling a little apprehensive about this endeavor. (Translation: Rose was having a major panic attack before we left.) Part of my apprehension stemmed from the fact that we didn’t really know how many kids we would be working with or their ages or where we’d be working or how well the activities we planned would work or whether we had enough people who were gifted in the areas we needed or…I guess you get the picture. This week is just another example of how God knows in advance what we need and provides so wonderfully for our needs. The team God called to go on this trip is amazing. HRBC can be incredibly proud of its members, both youth and adult, who are here in Charlotte. Everyone has taken his or her responsibility so seriously. Each person has done everything he or she has been asked to do and more. The initiative shown by the youth in building relationships with the children and stepping in to fill a need is simply incredible. What a wonderful opportunity this is turning out to be for us to build community with each other and with our Hyaets friends. We are thankful to the church for making this opportunity possible and to our God who has called us together for this purpose!

by Rose

Yay! We’ve accomplished one of our biggest missions, and we’re finished with our first full day on mission at Hyaets! A lot of our team members were anxious about what would happen upon our arrival at Hyaets. We all made it back to the church that we’re staying at in one piece at the end of a tiring day. Yes, because it was our first night last night, we almost had some all nighters, but thankfully everyone was asleep by 2:30 AM (I know this was true of the “girls room” anyways)!!! I’m sure that tonight we’ll be out by 11 though! This morning we prepared with the Hyaets leaders before the children arrived, but there were some anxious little children! We were able to take a look around the Hyaets neighborhood, and experience some different types of things that most of us had never thought existed, or problems that many people from our group might not have thought were obstacles for others. We then were able to fellowship with all of the children, and some of us have already started to build relationships with these children. After a somewhat exhausting and eye opening day, we were invited to a pool party and a cook-out hosted by one of the supporting families of Hyaets. However, the pool party didn’t only consist of HRBCer’s there were also Hyaets leaders and some of the boys from Hyaets. This was an amazing way to end our first full day at Hyaets, and without being able to look forward to this, I don’t think some of our members….could’ve made it through this first day!!!

By Valerie

Our team has arrived in Charlotte.  We appreciated the “Music Man” send-off inspired by Greg Carr and Craig Lott – “Good-Bye Ladies” sung to the tune of “Good Night Ladies”.

We drove through some serious rain, thunder, lightning and even a little hail along the way, but had no trouble.  Once we got to the church, we were greeted by the Hyaets team and even had time for a little orientation and planning.  Good stuff to come…