- Friday, April 11: The trip begans as we board a bus at the McDonald's parking lot in West Lebanon, NH early in the morning. We will travel all day and spend the night at Christ Congregational Church in Silver Spring, MD.
- Saturday, April 12: We will drive to Washington, North Carolina. Since it is not a very long drive from DC, we will probably make a stop at a beach on the Outer Banks during the afternoon (maybe have a cookout there), and then drive on to Washington, NC in the evening. The First Baptist Church there will host us for the week in their fellowship hall.
- We will spend the first night in Washington, NC at a motel to avoid disrupting First Baptist's Sunday morning activities.
- Sunday, April 13 (morning) we will worship with the congregation of Cedar Grove AME Zion Church in Aurora, NC. As guests, we should dress nicely and participate in a friendly way in worship, though it may be quite different from our own traditions. Usually at least one offering is taken during the service, so you might want to have $1-5 with you for that. I hope to get a chance to socialize with them that day and maybe get a look at the work site. This church has begun major renovations and can use the help of volunteers. I believe that this will involve sheetrock and carpentry. We will have some experienced workers with us, who can teach and direct the work for the rest.
- Monday, April 14: Our work week begins! We will divide ourselves into teams (probably six or seven of them, with an adult on each one), each with a mixture of talents and abilities. That way we can all learn and help each other as we go along. These teams will also do a rotation of housekeeping and cooking jobs at our lodgings. We will work four full days and maybe a half day on Friday. We will still have plenty of time for recreation. Also, the church where we will be staying has some facilities for fun. We will be cooking our own meals for the most part, with teams rotating through the week. We expect that our host churches will also provide us with some meals.
- One of the traditions of this trip is that we start each day, after breakfast, with a circle time. We pull the chairs from breakfast into a circle and listen to a brief reading or other words of wisdom from one of the trip leaders. Then we have ten minutes of silence (something like a Quaker meeting). Some people use this time to pray or meditate, others journal, others look at the trees and think. When the silence is finished, we have time to discuss community concerns having to do with scheduling, work, and how we live together.
- Saturday, April 19: We will leave North Carolina. We should have some time for some Washington, DC sightseeing that day. We will stay at Christ Congregational again, then we will head home on Sunday, arriving back to West Lebanon at the end of the day. We will be in touch about pick up time; we will have plenty of phones on the buss to alert folks as we approach.
Many of the participants have been on these work trips before. They know that we have fun, are challenged, and see a new part of the world. If you have no experience in building, you will learn new skills. We are always warmly welcomed by our host churches and always make new friends there. And the music is always great! We hope to include new fellow workers, both from the Norwich Congregational Church and others.
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