Jun 18 2008
SOS Memphis Mission Trip–Recap
This post is mostly just to give a big plug to SOS (no, it doesn’t stand for “Save our ship”, it stands for Service Over Self!). Search Engines love text, so I’m hoping this will help a church group out there somewhere looking for a mission trip to find SOS Memphis.
Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Oak Park has done four mission trips with our youth (including youth from other churches), and I have been involved in three of them. Three years ago a group went to work with the Appalachia Service Project (ASP) in West Virginia. Two years ago (which was my first trip) we went to Gulfport, MS to help in rebuilding after Katrina. Last year the timing worked out for us to frame the next Habitat House that was being built in Rochelle, right here in Madison County. Both of those trips were great, but I have to say it’s going to be hard to beat the SOS experience! The place is just so darn organized, and the college kids who serve as team leaders are so friendly and outgoing and relate so well to the kids. Here’s a bit about SOS from their website:
From “Our Story” on the SOS website:
…our strategy for reaching the world for Christ begins in the Binghampton neighborhood of Memphis. It is from Binghampton that SOS operates workdays, weekend retreats, and weeklong mission camps. Many homeowners are physically or financially incapable of maintaining their home. SOS offers free home repair to these homeowners. Through volunteer labor, homes are made drier, warmer and safer. The volunteers and homeowners strip and shingle roofs, replace rotten floors and leaky plumbing, repair damaged sheetrock, scrape and paint, and clean, to list a few of our repairs. SOS volunteers have repaired more than 500 homes during these years. Our mission for Binghampton is that SOS seeks to meet the needs of the poor in the name of Christ and to encourage every family into a healthy church home.
Anyway, if you’re looking for a mission trip, I don’t think you’d go wrong by going to Memphis.
I’ve added a new link at the top of this page, “Mission Trip Photos“, with quite a few more photos from the trip. And here is a little slideshow with music from the trip:
