Customer Story: Building a Bridge
March 30th, 2010 by Peggy in Customers
The group standing on the 80-foot bridge
built in one weekend.
In November 2009, New Hope and Purley Methodist Churches took a weekend mission trip to do repair work at Camp Don Lee on the coast of North Carolina. We had fourteen people, ages 6 to 68, including one helper from the Milton Presbyterian Church. We didn’t know what our job for the weekend would be, just that there would be some “carpentry and painting.”
Saturday morning during breakfast, camp director John Farmer told us he wanted us to build a bridge. We imagined a little ornamental arch bridge over a ditch. He showed us a pile of lumber about the size of a small car, and then walked us fifty yards into the woods and showed us a swampy gully with a collapsed foot bridge. We felt a bit like Noah with a pile of gopher wood and the vague notion of building a really big boat!
But… the Master Carpenter put our hands to work. Our team hand-carried the lumber into the woods and started cutting and nailing and digging post holes. Every time we thought we were about to run out of lumber, we’d find a few more boards. We worshipped Sunday morning and went back to work. By lunchtime we were able to complete an 80-foot walking bridge, four feet wide and deck planked… in just a day and a half! We accomplished far more than the camp expected or we hoped. God is amazing!
This was the most astonishing project most of us have ever worked on. The kids were especially excited about what we accomplished. I want to thank New Life for printing and shipping our mission trip shirts so quickly – we really felt like a team all dressed in red.
– Story and Photo from Park Hunter, Pastor of New Hope-Purley UMC