Sending Out From Hibben to Alabama

Greetings to readers of this Alabama Mission Trip Blog!

Our time of preparation and planning for this trip is ended, and we set out Sunday morning on our journey to Alabama.

We need to recognize and thank many people at Hibben Methodist and Northwest District Alabama Methodist Relief for getting us equipped and ready for this mission opportunity.

‘Thank You’ to the entire church family for supporting and nurturing the vision of ‘equipping the saints for ministry’ (saints with a small  ‘s’).   It is a simple truth that without your prayers, your encouragement, and your financial and material support, this trip would not be possible.  Because of your gracious response to Jesus’ call to serve our neighbors, there are some families in rural Alabama who will be reminded that God indeed loves them and cares for them.  And that’s a great thing.  Worthy of an Amen?  I thought so.

Thanks to all the church staff and volunteers who took care of important details over the past couple of months.  Jennifer Roberts and Candace Dellinger gave vital support to the team since early May when some folks began to pray about putting together a Hibben trip to Alabama.

A special thanks to all mission team members’ families for making it possible to have your loved one away from home for the week.

And we must also say thanks to Sean Kilpatrick for organizing and leading the trip.  Sean has put in a large amount of time and effort to coordinate the trip and keep in constant touch with the missions staff in northwest Alabama.  He has done a great job seeing to the team’s needs and plans (His heart is close to Alabama).

As the team proceeded into Alabama, we had a chance to settle in and talk.  Dudley Patrick gave us the particulars about barbeque restaurants between Charleston and the Georgia state line.  Kathie James led us in some stretching when we reached our first rest stop in Denmark, SC.  Kim Brown shared her delicious homemade chocolate cookies.  Sean Dolan challenged some of us to games of electronic Scrabble.

On a reflective note, I find my thoughts still drifting to the ‘busy-ness’ of the past few weeks, along with some recent worries and concerns.  Sometimes in the midst of all that’s going on, it seems as though the world is just so messed up.  But for me, that usually happens when I am allowing my focus to slip to negative things.  The true picture is that God’s goodness outweighs and easily overcomes whatever messes we humans get ourselves into.  After all, Jesus promises his followers that he will be with us “always, until the end of the age.”

So as we begin our trip in Alabama, we are mindful of the many good things that God has given us.

We’ll have much more to say.  Thanks for reading this, and thanks for your prayers.

Yours in Christ’s service,

Michael and

Your mission team in Alabama

Kathryn
Cheryl
Kathie
Kim
Sean
Shawn
Dudley
Carlson
Michael