August 16, 2007

A typical summer day at Gleanings

Each day starts with a time of worship music and a devotion at 7:45 am. This years summer theme is the armor of God, with each day going over each piece of armor. One of the staff members dresses in Roman armor and comes out and talks about the piece that is focused on that day. Then, another staff member does a devotion based on that piece of armor. Even though we are going through it a second week, it is still great and there are different speakers from last week. The teams that come in to volunteer each week usually provide the morning worship music. Some groups are not able to do that, so the staff musicians, like our son Josh(who is here as summer staff- his third summer here), will do the worship. And sometimes Josh will just fill in, since most of the groups do not have a bass player.

After worship and devotions the group heads out to the fields to lay out yesterdays processed peaches and cup them up and to pick up the dried fruit that is ready to be taken in to the dry fruit line for final inspection and packing in buckets. There is usually a short break at 10 am and lunch at 12 noon. Then, work starts up again at 1 pm, with a break at 2:30. Work for the day ends around 4 pm, so that there is time for cleaning up the plant (peaches are very messy!) before dinner. Everyone takes turns with cleaning up, from the bathrooms, to the kitchen to the peach plant.

After dinner is usually free time. On Mondays there is a mission night that the staff do. Tuesday nights some of the groups go bowling (we haven't done that). Wednesday are a half day of work and the teams go to a local water slide park (we haven't done that either). Thursday is open. Friday is the Love Feast. Saturday is a half day of work and deep cleaning the plant and time for the teams to clean up their rooms and pack and depart after lunch. Most of the staff do not get any half days, there is always work to do around here. We went swimming during the afternoon yesterday and had guests for dinner.

Below are some pics of hubby, the younger kids and I cupping up Wed. morning. The little ones don't last long, but we are trying to teach them how to keep working and keep trying. After about an hour they are ready to go home and clean house and do some school work. On the mornings we don't do cupping up we play at the playground for a while. First, we clean up any trash and then I have had a small playground project each day while they play. Sometimes it is sweeping up the sand, or raking the wood chips back under the swings and slides or pulling weeds. There is always something that can be done, even if it is a small thing in the grand scheme of what is going on here.





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