Western NC Youth Mission Journey 2026

 Today we finished up Mr. Marlin's backyard ramp so that he can bring in his boats and utility vehicles. We then adventured to Deep Time coffee roastery. We heard impactful stories of individuals who have been previously been incarcerated and now rehabilitating back into society.  Once back at home base, we enjoyed community with our new friends with Sedge Grove playing hide and seek in the church. We gathered for dinner which consisted of pizza and dancing. Our new friend, "DJ" Jerry, provided the music selection and we sang, played games, and danced to our hearts content with a guest appearance by Perry the Platypus. We ended our evening with worship led by our very own Jennifer Harrenstein. We had a love feast sharing grape juice and bread, telling one another that Jesus loves them and so do I. We ended the night with a late night snack of leftover bread from the feast.  Miles and Evan

 Hello! We had a great day today! We spent most of the day at Hayward St.! At Hayward St. we served baked ziti and chicken and also peach cobbler for dessert!! Before we served we got a tour of the fresco which was very cool to see the many details!! While we were serving we met a lot of new friends.  I learned a lot from Jonathan and “crow”. Those were the two new friends I learned the most from. While we were there we went to one of the worship services! That was a very cool experience!! We did a short debrief after all the new friends left.  After Hayward St. we stopped for some quick coffee break before heading back to Abernathy. When we got back to camp we showered and ate a yummy dinner! After that, we went up to the sanctuary to worship where we talked about how the day filled our cup! Now it’s time to close my eyes! We will see you tomorrow!!!  Ella Hello everybody! We have now completed day 4 of our Mission Journey here in Asheville. We spent most of today h...

(From Catherine)  Hello church family! We finished day 3 of our mission journey!! Today we started our day with some yummy cinnamon rolls where we got to ice them ourselves (along with bacon and eggs). After our normal morning activities our CMG’s headed out to help separate neighbors.  My CMG went to a neighbor Ms. Sandy. She is living with her son chad and they are getting ready to sell the house. We worked on fixing a platform for them and also redoing a whole staircase! We ran into a few hiccups along the way but were able to fix them with teamwork! We only have 1 hour left of work after today that we will take on Thursday monring!! After we got done our CMG got a treat at the local ice cream shop. Once we got back we did our normal evening activities.  Tonight worship was outside which was really cool! (From Parker) Hello! Today on the job site we helped Davonte with some yard work around his house. We spent about 5 hours mowing, weed eating, and cleaning up trash. T...

 Hi everyone it’s our second day and we had so much fun.  To start us off, for breakfast we ate frittata, sausage, fruit, and cereal. We also packed our lunches for our journey today. I made a ham and cheese sandwich and also got chips and a cookie! After eating a good breakfast we got to have a moment of silence and do our morning watch. One thing that stuck out to me was the finger prayer at the end. We had a different person for each finger to pray for.  Then we got on the bus to Hayward street for our awareness walk (over 13,800 steps or 6.5 miles) where we learned about all the places that our friends experiencing homelessness can go to get help in many ways like food, housing, and transportations. We also discovered that there are so many obstacles like rules that are directed towards people without homes and can limit the places where they receive shade, AC, and bathrooms. They also have to face high prices to get into libraries and onto buses. Once we learned all ...

 Hi everyone! Welcome to the first blog post of our July Mission Journey team.  We started our day off in worship together at FVUMC this morning before heading out to western NC. Our first stop on this journey included food (very important) and today’s blog authors had Moe’s, 10/10 review! A few hours later we arrived at Abernathy UMC with a warm greeting and some enthusiastic team building and camp songs. We learned many things about friends old and new, including what kitchen utensil they would be and their favorite ice cream flavor. Shortly after we gathered for some classic burger and dogs prepared by generous members of the church. We enjoyed free time filled with games and laughter before locking in to be educated on tool safety for our access work where we’ll be helping the community with construction and yard work later this week. Following that we had an impactful conversation on how to have meaningful conversations with our new neighbors, leading into a group discuss...

Editor Note: This post will be short and sweet.   Good afternoon, Framily,      Our team began the morning at 7am on this Shrek themed Saturday.       We packed, we ate bagels and leftovers for breakfast, we cleaned four main areas of the church (Showers, Guys Room, Girls Room, and the Fellowship/Dining Hall) and departed "the swamp" before 10am.  Below: Cross Connection Staff waving goodbye to us  Far Left: Lauren 2nd Left: Alumni Staff Member Ashleigh Middle: Jinnia 2nd Right: Alumni Staff Member Jake Far Right: Staff member at small Mazie and Alumni Staff Member Salem Not Pictured: Abby, Alumni Staff Member Editor Note: Morning watch was a prayer to send us on our way. It was a poem called Dazzling by Jan Richardson: A Blessing for Your Journey. It reminded us that this journey to Asheville was a blessing that has to stay there. It gave us a challenge to bring the blessing down the mountain, in other words be fishers of people....