Paint+20 youth group students = one wild and crazy event

About two months ago I met with some of my students to come up with ideas of how to serve in the community. We talked about wanting to do something at the children's hospital here in Jinja. Luckily enough we have an awesome lady named Janet who goes to our church who who works in the pharmacy there. She told us one big way we could serve them was by re-painting some of the areas making it look brighter and more kid friendly. I thought that was going to be an easy enough task... it actually turned out to be a lot bigger ordeal than originally planned.

A friend of mine, Davis who's an artist and actually knows what he's doing when it comes to painting kind of took the lead on this event as we got all the supplies together and made the plan of how we would pull this task off. On Saturday morning about 20 of my students came, we piled in vehicles and headed to the hospital. The first major task was to clean and sand everything to get it ready to paint.

Then we got started re-painting both the check in area and one of the wards the kids stay in. The check in area went fairly smoothly, the ward was another story as we had to figure out how to best deal with the kids who were there. We had some awesome help though because along with our students we had Jim and Joye helping out and they did an amazing job and were a huge blessing.


We finally wrapped things up for the day by around 3 and then it was time to do youth group. By then, I was honestly running on fumes (energy, not paint).

Sunday, we got together at 2 and headed back to paint pictures and get the entry area painting. The kids did a great job in their various creative displays and it was a lot of fun just getting to see them work. We also painted the walls in the check in area with different pictures, it was really a lot of fun!





In the midst of all that madness I ran over to see my friend, Kenna, as she was all dressed up for a formal event for some of the missionary kids. I couldn't help but share this picture because really it couldn't be a bigger contrast between the two of us. I think you can tell just how crazy things got for us in painting.



It really was such a privilege to serve along my students in this capacity. It was chaotic and stressful at times but really amazing to see them take time to do something for someone else. Some of them really amazed me with their work ethic and desire to serve. It was just more confirmation that I just really love what I get to be a part of here.