It was so quiet, so peaceful, and now you’re suddenly back asking me all these questions. How was Thanksgiving, how did the Gingerbread house competition go, what happened at the Christmas Dinner, how was Faith Christian Academy, how was Georgia, what did you do for Christmas break, how did you start the new year? Oh, my Galatians do I have a lot to catch you up on.
Thanksgiving
During Thanksgiving break which was from the 22nd to the 26th, I stayed between the dorm and my own house. My room back home is being cleaned so I sleep on the couch when I stay home. Other than that Thanksgiving was pretty normal, staying home with family on Thursday and running around doing anything I could on Friday with friends. This particular year a large group of friends and I went to the park and played Football. It was good to go back to the park I grew up at, remembering all the good times and broken bones I have accumulated over the years. Considering it very well could be one of the last few times we can all get together like that before our group may part ways and spread off hopefully into the areas God has called them into.
The Gingerbread Competition
As a fun little challenge for the dorm, some of the staff informed us that we would be constructing Gingerbread houses and the winner would get to choose dinner and a movie. I am not a cook, nor am I a baker so naturally I was extremely confident in my abilities (I had already accepted a loss). So for a week all of the students got off early from vocations around 4ish to start working on the Houses. After some experimenting and some long nights the Judgement day had come. We sat and watched the staff and their kids vote, I witnessed some very interesting thoughts on my cookies. “They taste great but whoever made these is a suckup”, to be fair I had a chocolate cross plastered at the top of a cookie hill. In the end, Aidan won the competition which meant something quite interesting for the rest of us.
Christmas Dinner
What I seemed to have left out of the details about the Gingerbread house competition is that the losers must create and participate in a play focused on the winner of the play. Luckily for us, Aidan was the best person to write a play for out of all the dorm. The 3 losers, Logan, Caleb, and I would meet at 3 every day for a week to write and practice our play. We decided the best way to tell stories of Aidan would be if it was about 20 years into the future and he was living on the side of the road in his broken-down car. See Aidan’s Archives for that story. This play had many of our inside jokes and dogged on Aidan for all the stories he has given us. The stage was set at the beginning of the Christmas Dinner. Once the play was over we wanted to take a picture with Aidan where we thought our trusted associate Hilda Sylva was going to pour water down his back. Little did we know we were going to be betrayed. Despite my best efforts to dodge the attack, Hannah splashed water in my face as Sandra and Hilda bested my castmates. Once we dried off and got out of character everyone ate and then we had a Christmas drawing contest, with a slight twist. We had to draw without looking at our plates. We all had a good time and ended the night with some pie shenanigans.
Faith Christian Academy
FCA is a school in the Allentown area that Aidan and I went to speak at and reach out to possible students for next year’s class of Equip. Started as a presentation from Joel and then Aidan and I got to speak for a little while. After the presentation which went very well, we went to a late breakfast before coming back to meet with some students during their lunch period. This is where I seemed to have thrived, God has given me the ability to walk up to people and just see what happens and where he takes the conversation. So I went around and talked with some of the students, either giving them pamphlets or taking them to the table we had set up. The entire morning went super well and it seemed that we had a lot of interested students for years to come.
Georgia Missions
For the past few months, we had been trying to figure out if God was calling us to Georgia instead of our domestic mission trip to Kentucky. After a few closed doors and many opened ones, God had provided our path to Georgia from December 10th to the 17th. We left for Georgia at 5 am Sunday, December 10th, And arrived around 8 that night. We went to Georgia initially so that we could help with some construction for Georgia missions. This house was going to house Missionaries and act as an office for their mission. However so much more than just construction happened that week.
Day 1
Monday, December 11th we started our trip with breakfast provided by a local church (they also provided every meal throughout the week ). Once we got to the site we spent some time praying over the building and the work. Our first task was to clean up any of the old materials left by past crews or anyone else into a large rented dumpster. We got done with that rather quickly considering the 18 helping hands we had were all willing to do their jobs. Lunch was brought to us at the site by the local church, while we worked. Next, we wanted to lay some plastic underneath the house in a crawl space so the moisture from the ground doesn’t rot the subflooring. We were able to get all of the plastic down underneath the house on the first day which provided us with a lot of time for our other jobs. We went back to the motel to clean up and then left for our dinner with the local church. Every night of the week, some of the students and then a good portion of the group would go on walks into town. The first night we went to O’Rielly’s and met an employee named Jason who we quickly made friends with and even got the chance to tell him what we were doing in Georgia.
Day 2
It was pretty routine. Breakfast at 8 started working by 9 we started painting the outside of the house, had lunch somewhere in the middle, and then had dinner at 6. After dinner, we would go on another walk.
Day 3
We had a change in plans, A small group of us broke off after breakfast and went to a nursing home. Logan, Aidan, Danielle, Sandra, Frank, Carrie, and our contact in Georgia Annette went with us. We started with some worship music and then three of us (Frank, Carrie, And I) gave our short testimonies. Afterward, we had some crafts going with one person helping at each table. After that, we joined everyone else at the site for the rest of the day. After the workday, we were invited to a different Local Church than we had been working with a small group meeting. We all got the opportunity to speak and meet with the community. It was during this day I realized 2 things. Firstly, this mission trip truly was about more than just a building, And secondly, I learned how to listen to God’s voice.
Day 4
We started laying down the subflooring. Aidan and I once again had the opportunity to work together by screwing down each piece together while the others cut them to size and brought them in for us. And this is where we were for the rest of the day and then the next day as well.
Day 5
We kept laying subfloor but Aidan and I had started to get the hang of it and went into different rooms and different directions so we could cover more ground. Today was our last day working and happened to be my birthday. It was a pretty good birthday considering I got to serve the Lord and meet people who stopped by to see our progress and say Hi. Through the whole week, we got to meet a lot of great people and everyone within the community started to notice a change and notice what we were doing. Sometimes they would drive by real slow about 4 or 5 times a day to see what was going on.
Day 6
This was a rest day. We went to a wildlife preserve in search of gators. No gators were found but we all enjoyed the walk and had some time to evaluate how the week went and how God used each of us. That night we packed up and got ready to leave at 5 am the next morning.
Day 7
December 17th, we started our journey home. Between stops to eat, use the bathroom, and sightsee all in all it was around 10 at night when we finally made it home. This trip was so impactful and so much happened that I am still processing some of it. All I can say is praise God for how he is working, not just in Georgia but his hand is everywhere. He is working in all of us and we just need to be his servant.
Christmas Break
During Christmas break, I stayed between my couch and friends’ houses, had a couple of movie nights, and went on a ride along with my dad who drives a truck for Bashore. Every day was a new adventure but I managed to keep God a part of my life while I was away from the mission which is probably what I am most proud of. Finally watched all of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies which I had always been told were very good. For the first few days of Christmas break, I was in North Carolina visiting some family. I left on December 19th at around 7 in the evening and made it to where we stayed at around 3 am. While I was there, my family and I went to a festival of lights which was a cool experience and allowed me to enjoy the southern weather one last time before going back to PA.
The New Year
I picked Aidan up from the airport on New Year’s Eve and then we had a few friends over to the basement and watched the ball drop. Caleb came home on New Year’s Day, and I made another trip to Philly on January 2nd to pick Logan up. Just like that the dorm was back together and firing on all cylinders. That weekend on Friday night I went to a friend’s house just expecting to stop by and be back to the dorm later that night. Long story short, I stayed too late and then got snowed in and did not make it back to the dorm until Sunday night. It was quite the weekend but it felt good to be back with my roommates again. Since then we had the Equip movie night for the winner of the Gingerbread House Competition, at which we watched Ford vs Ferrari and enjoyed some Thai food that I am pretty sure we still have leftovers from in our fridge. Saturday, January 13th we had a Serve Day where volunteers were able to come and help us sort and pack 300+ bags from our clothing trailer which we will be able to give out to several missions and already gave 40 bags to One Luv in Reading. Yesterday we had some fun in the snow tubing behind ATVs. I started a program to read through the Bible in a year which has so far gone well.
My Relationship with God
I am growing closer to Him than ever before and I have been working on being still and hearing His voice. I have been seeking His voice and His direction as to where I can serve Him the best after Equip. I have also taken more service roles within my church. I am now serving in the nursery, as an usher, and as a greeter. Giving God full control of my life has been hard but I am getting closer to being fully submitted to Him.
Well, that should hold you over for a little while. Now don’t ask me any questions for at least a month.
Sincerely
Donovan Allen James Checket