Childhaven 2006

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This is my first post for Kelly’s Show Us Your Life Friday. This week’s theme is Mission Trips. I decided to post pictures from my sophomore year Spring Break trip to Childhaven, a children’s home in Cullman, Alabama. Childhaven had children of all ages, as well as a program for teenage mothers. The year I went was my bible study group’s second year to go. My group went to help do yardwork, paint the cottages, and do other repairs on the grounds. During the trip, I worked probably harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, but had the most amazing experience.

The “Big House”- the Childhaven offices were in this building, as well as the room we had dinner in ever night.

Part of our group, the ones who actually got out of bed to go to the devo by the pond on our last morning at Childhaven.

Our first night, there was a tornado. We all piled in the basement of the big house until the storm passed. To pass the time, our group did what we did anytime we had free time-started singing! The kids looked at us a little funny at first, but eventually joined in.

Every night, we had dinner with the kids. It was so important to us to try to form relationships with the kids and show them that we were not only there to help out, but we truly cared about them and wanted to show God’s love to them. The first picture is of part of our group with a few of the kids. The second picture is me with one of the precious teen mom’s and her adorable baby boy. She and I had dinner together every night, and even though I haven’t seen her since that week, I still think about her and wonder how she’s doing.

Teddie and Lacey would probably kill me for posting this picture, but one of our last nights there, the daughter of one of the house parent’s begged us to come over and dance with her. In this picture, we are doing YMCA, and we also did Macarena and Cha-Cha Slide.

In the afternoons, we tried to stay out of sight so the kids could get their homework done without being distracted by us. We would hang out at the house…

make a Dairy Queen run…

or go exploring in town. One afternoon, we went to this spillway that the group found the year before. We climbed to the top and had so much fun!

We danced in the water like little kids, but had so much fun! It was beautiful!
The first picture is Kayla & Dan,
and the second one is me!
One afternoon we went exploring a cave. It was a bar during prohibition. There were all kinds of escape routes, and we had so much fun exploring!

When we made it to the back of the cave, we turned out all of our flashlights and started singing. It sounded so amazing! We sang for about an hour. Spending time as a group praising God in total darkness was so incredible, and something I will never forget!

Me & Regina, Me & Teddie
I could go on and on about the amazing time we had at Childhaven. Hearing the kids’ stories truly impacted my life, and I hope that we were able to touch their lives as well. Along with the work we did, we formed new friendships and strengthened old ones. Childhaven and the memories I have from my time there will always have a special place in my heart.

Comments

  2. says

    Awesome pictures and post! I work for the Arkansas Baptist Children’s Home at Promise House which is a maternity home. Thank you again for sharing!

    Reply

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