Street Level News

Street Level held its Spring Summit last weekend at UW-Stout. What a great weekend! We spent the evening together on Friday and all day Saturday with worship, teaching sessions, hanging out, lots of stories, lots of food, lots of laughing, etc.

This year’s Summit featured guest missionaries: Jesse & Chelsey from The Philippines, and Annemieke from Amsterdam, NL. On Friday evening, each of them spent time sharing about their lives, God’s call to missions, and the current happenings of their ministry efforts.

Today our team split up in the morning between helping in the school, painting a few rooms in the hospital, doing some yard work, and building a deck at one of the other Mission First locations.

We finished the yard work and building the deck. Some of us helped out with the after school programs in both locations (we are getting really good at helping the kids learn to read!). In the evening we got to hang out with the high school group again and play some games with them. Thanks for keeping us in prayer!

The team continued our time in Jackson by spending Wednesday split between a few different locations, again working with the kids in the school and on various projects like painting and construction.

In the evening, we stopped at a local grocery store to pick up snacks and meal supplies and headed to a local college church service! We had great conversations with the students and leaders there and it felt very similar to our own Street Level campus church. It was a great midweek boost, and we are ready to finish the week strong. Thanks for all your prayers!

Day two of work! The team in the school spent the morning with the students, working one-on-one on lessons. The team made more progress painting, completed the garden beds, and started into a few other projects. Our after dinner project was assembling gift bags for a fundraiser Mission First puts on each year. It was a fun time, and we got to bless the staff here who would have otherwise had to spend many hours doing them in their spare time. We feel like we’ve done assembly like this before…. Collating WOTS anyone? Thanks for your prayers…

Today the group started in the morning with half of us doing some painting and building a raised garden bed for the children to plant in, and the other half working in the school with the kids. After lunch we went to the school and colored, painted, and played in the indoor playground for the after school programs. We ended the day with four square volleyball and various other games with middle school and high school students. It was a great and tiring day, and it is amazing serving the Lord while serving the community!

Our first full day in Jackson, MS was started after a good night’s sleep in the Mission First dorms. The beautiful 70+ degree weather greeted us! We went to church and found some coffee in the morning. The next stop after that was crawfish, potatoes, corn, sausage, etc!! We found picnic tables in a park as many of us tried crawfish for the first time. It was a good day!

We chatted about all the ways God has already been moving while we’ve been down here in the people we’ve met. The southern sweetness is so fun to experience firsthand and we’re excited to work with the kids and people we meet tomorrow!

We arrived in Jackson, MS after travelling by train overnight – it’s great to be here! Tomorrow we will go to church, get settled in, and ready to start work on Monday!!