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Youth Servant Event
Camp Linn Haven
Linville, NC
"Bringing Hope to the High Country"
June 24-30, 2012
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Click below to download the registration packet!
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2011 Youth Servant Event
This past year, we joined with nine other churches to volunteer in Western North Carolina and share in God’s love. The other churches – Bethel in Claremont, NC, Holy Cross in Clayton, NC, Hope in Wake Forest, NC, St. John’s in Winston-Salem, NC, Holy Trinity in Statesville, NC, St. John’s in Conover, NC, St. Stephen’s in Hickory, NC, Our Savior in Nashville, TN, and Zion in Walburg, TX – sent high school and college age participants as well as adults to volunteer at seven different work sites, host a field day for people with physical and mental disabilities from Yellow Mountain Enterprises, and participate in worship services at Mountainside Lutheran Church.
Some of the participants stayed at Camp Linn Haven during the week to hold a Vacation Bible School for the children who live at The Crossnore School, a place for children who are no longer allowed for some reason or another to live at home, for the fifth year in a row. Crossnore only allows one church group to hold VBS for the children each year, and our group has held it for these children for the past five years. While the “Big Jungle Adventure” theme was the same as was taught here at church two weeks before, the children were drastically different. The students and adults from the churches performed skits and music, helped with crafts and games, and gave the fifty participating children use of the camp’s pool each day, and at the same time, creating strong relationships with the children and resulting in a tearful goodbye.
Other camp participants worked at East Yancey Middle School in Burnsville and Micaville Elementary School in Micaville, painting, weeding, and cleaning around the schools and parking lots. The volunteers have worked at these schools for the last four years and have become attached to the schools, exclaiming their “Panther Pride” – and showing off their Panther Pride sweatshirts – in reference to East Yancey.
We also worked a great deal with Habitat for Humanity. At the Mitchell-Yancey Habitat for Humanity ReStore, volunteers helped build shelves and storage bins, renovated the storage area on the second level, recycled materials, loaded customers’ purchases, and unloaded and cleaned donated materials. Other Habitat projects included working on houses in both Mitchell and Avery Counties. With the help of groups like the participants from our church and others, these houses can be put a couple months ahead of schedule. The participants in Avery County helped build a deck and put up siding on a house for a family who met the volunteers in order to express gratitude. They also cut down trees to stop potential ice buildups in the spring which would make driving in the area unsafe, as well as doing general grounds maintenance.
Another group of participants worked with Resort Area Ministries (RAM) in Watauga County. This was a new project, started to create more jobs for the volunteers, especially since this past year saw a growing number of college students who wanted to continue going to the camp. The volunteers at the RAM sites helped rebuild a deck, shingle a roof, wash and paint a house, and replace a gutter.
In the seven years we have had participants at the servant event, the projects and number of volunteers have grown, and the volunteers are more than willing to do anything they can to help. Pastor Bryan said it best when he said, “It’s not what we’re doing for other people; it’s what God’s doing through us.”
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