Spring Break

This past week we traveled with a group of Bryan students to Nashville to help out an organization there-- Community Servants operating in the Wherry Housing Community of Smyrna, TN.
The basic idea is this: Community Servants works with the Wherry Housing Community's Tenant Cooperative to renovate old rental units. Community Servants has some input into whom the unit is rented to and the cooperative has the additional income from a unit that would otherwise be uninhabitable. It is a win-win-win arrangement. Community Servants is able to minister to particular families practically and spiritually (many are refugees or the homeless) while coordinating newly-remodeled, affordable housing for them, and the cooperative is supported on the financial side. The neighborhood is a safe and clean one because of the personal investment of the tenants in the cooperative and the Community Servants ministry (many of those who have been helped in the past do the helping now). Volunteers within the Wherry community, from the Nashville area and from around the country provide the labor. Our team worked on two units, painting, sealing, cleaning, doing some tiling and flooring work. We met both of the families who will live in the units. Oh, so rewarding!
Henrik wasn't able to participate in the renovating, but he was a great cheerleader/court jester. He did an A+ job sleeping in an unfamiliar, noisy place, too! Good work, kid.
Now all three of us are pretty darn exhausted, plodding into another week. Whew. And that is that.