-- Kirsten Carter (Staff Writer)

On February 16 2008, the Ryerson Southern Wheeling Baptist Church Mission Group, which consisted of 13 members and then later on in the week a family came to make us 18, set off on a mission Trip to Orange Park, Florida.   We drove down and stayed on a camp ground that was 15 minutes away and traveled to and from the work site daily. We woke up everyday at about 7:00. and left for the church at about 7:45. 

There was another group there called the Campers on Mission who cooked most of our meals for us and were very enjoyable to have around. The breaks are for coffee and a snack, except noon which is for lunch, and 5:00 pm is for dinner. While we were down there we had to first sand the walls, which were brick and really hard to do because some of them were uneven. After we had sanded them, we had to prime them with white, and then paint them tan.

There were three of us, Mike Watson, Renee Creech, and me (Kirsten Carter). We had to sand, plaster, sand again, sweep off, prime, and paint. It took us almost three days to do it and the wall was colossal. When we plastered it, it was done with bonding cement that had fiberglass in it. We had to plaster 8 feet up the wall, after that there was still probably about 10 feet left of brick and drywall.

When we did all of this, we had to use scaffoldings to help us reach the higher places, and when we painted, Renee and I used a lift that went extremely high and the more you went up the more unstable it was. On one of the extremely nice days down there, we left early (right after lunch) and went to the beach, since I had never been to the beach. We went to Vilano Beach, Florida, which was very beautiful and we saw two dolphins and lots and lots of sea shells all over that place. There were three of us that adventured into the Atlantic Ocean; everyone else said it was too cold, especially the people that lived there. Those who went into the ocean were Belinda, Renee, and me.  We then walked along the beach searching for interesting sea shells to keep. After a few hours, once we had our fun, we headed back to camp so we could get ready to go out and eat. Even though we left early that day, we still managed to finish early the last day due to the fact that we completed everything we needed to.  

Life at camp was very interesting and fun.