Summer Mission Project - Intro

For the past 16 years, the church of which I have recently become a member, Lewinsville Presbyterian Church, has sponsored a Summer Mission Project (SMP). What's a Summer Mission Project you ask? Well, it typically involves somewhere between 30 and as many as 50 youth and adults taking a week out of their Summer vacation to support a Habitat for Humanity chapter somewhere within arm's reach of the D.C. area.

Habitat for Humanity (HFH) is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry that seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world. (Yes, I stole this directly from their website.) So basically, we are trying to build homes for those who are a little less fortunate than the rest of us.

I started going on these trips in 2001 and have visited Garrett County, MD, Marion and Lynchburg, VA and last year Charleston, SC.

This year was a little different as 43 of us headed south to Ft. Myers, FL in the hopes of assisting those still feeling the affects of the four hurricanes that hit Florida last year. Instead of partnering with HFH as we have in years past, we hooked up with the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. The goal of our work was to prepare homes still damaged from the storms for the coming rainy season. In the next post or two, I'll try to give you just a little idea of what went on during the week and the good times that were had.