Team 1: July 10, 2011

To kick off the ninth summer of HBBC’s mission involvement in Helena, Arkansas our small group of five has been working hard during pre-camp to prepare for the highly anticipated week ahead of us. Kate Hall, Charles Wheless, and David Hawkins arrived on Friday and hit the ground running in preparation for the first of two weeks of camp, which will begin tomorrow.

Charles has been working hard on a computer program that will help Kate run the swim camp and registration more smoothly. We are excited to see the results of his hard work! Saturday afternoon (after an unexpected 4 hour travel delay) my mom (Elsie) and I (McCauley) arrived in Memphis. David picked us up from the airport and fortunately for us, his keen nose for good food brought us to Hollywood Café, a small restaurant in Robbinsonville, Mississippi that has also been featured on the travel channel. We sure did feel like we were in Hollywood as we enjoyed a full meal of fried pickles, onion rings, fried okra, and best of all, fried green tomatoes. After arriving in Helena at the Edwardian Inn, the five of us moseyed downtown to enjoy “Helena’s Second Saturdays” with live music and authentic art.

This morning we started off the day with a delicious breakfast of homemade French toast, sausage, and fresh fruit. We then ventured for the first time to West Helena Baptist Church, which we had been invited to personally by the pastor, Dusty Rhodes, the previous evening over a country cooked meal at Kelly’s restaurant. Pastor Rhodes gave a wonderful and inspirational sermon on Daniel chapter 6 and the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. The congregation was especially welcoming to us as visitors and even gave Kate an opportunity to speak about HBBC’s involvement in Helena and encourage them to participate and volunteer in the ACC (All Church Challenge). We also made a special connection with one of the church members, Francis; who is the sister of our previous minster Dr. George Ballentine’s wife, Sue.

After the service we headed over to Helena Country Club to enjoy another delicious meal. Later this afternoon, we dispersed into group meetings in order to further prepare for the exciting week ahead of us. After that the five of us headed out for yet another meal, boy do we love to eat! Dinner was hosted by the Wells family as an expression of their sincere gratitude for all of the churches that helped rebuild their home. After about a 45 minute detour and driving almost 36 miles out of the way, we finally made it. Don’t worry though, Charles benefited from a nice, long nap. We were very blessed to be a part of that fellowship this evening and look forward to finding out what God has planned for us this week. We can’t wait to start our first day tomorrow and have been praying hard for the many families of this community in hopes that they will continue to spread the love of Christ as we share it with them this week.