Christ Church and Market Square Church, hosted by Trinity Presbyterian Church of El Paso, joined hands and traveled to Texas to work on three projects during the week of June 25, 2005.  The experiences strengthened our faith and renewed our love of Jesus.  Youth and adults worked, played, and prayed as part of our great and hard working group.  We divided into 3 groups and tackled one of these sites:

Project Vida:

This organization houses a daycare; education programs for GED, English, Art and Nutrition; a health clinic, a bank, a thrift shop, low-income housing  and after school and summer programs for kids.  We started our work by cleaning up the area: shoveling a sidewalk loaded with a pile of sand, rocks, and cement chunks and clearing trash from around the buildings.  Then the test of endurance came as we attempted to remove plants from the rock-hard, dried-out Texas dirt. Horrendous!  After 2 days we were asked to help decorate the day care center and paint a mural on the wall of the playground.  We barely scratched the surface at Project Vida but we felt so proud of our little part in making it a better place.

YWCA:

Recently refurbished with a new addition, the Young Women Christian Association's building was waiting for the hands to complete the tasks. We arrived with lots of energy.  Some of the many projects we worked on included assembling 30 sets of solar, landscaping lights, prepping a nursery for painting, refinishing a small kitchen table, and the biggest project: building cabinets and shelving. The time we spent measuring will never be forgotten nor will the feeling of reward that comes by giving to a group that needed us.

Habitat for Humanity:

Painting!  The nearly-finished three bedroom house was being built by Habitat and our job was to paint the exterior. The temperature was above 100 degrees shortly after 10 am each morning and the only shade was from the house that we were painting.  So we painted and painted for a total of 16 hours during our time in El Paso.  The beige exterior was completely done by our group and we were even able to start on the burgundy trim.  Though we left the work site extremely hot and sweaty, we also left with a huge feeling of accomplishment.