Eight Days of Hope

www.eightdaysofhope.com

3/13 - 8 Days of Hope IV will be announced March 26th!

1/10
News from Camp Gulfside
In December, Camp Gulfside was honored to host the group 8 Days of Hope. The Tupelo, Miss., group of volunteers started with one guy, Steve Tybor, who every Christmas went to Central America to do mission work.
After listening to a Christian Family radio station in Tupelo that sent out a call for help, he felt led to work at home in Mississippi this year.
The group rotates volunteers in and out every day and to date has sent a total of 600 people who have worked on approximately 141 homes, including nine for Camp Gulfside. This is their third trip to our area.
Our camp was to house 10 but as things progressed we gratefully ended up housing approximately 25 volunteers per night for the eight-day time frame.
The group was awesome; not only did they work jobs, they sent over people to clean the camp before they left and helped with every chore that needed to be done.
We are sincerely grateful to 8 Days of Hope for all they accomplished in such a short time and welcome them back to Camp Gulfside on their eight days of hope.
- Debbie Strickland
Strickland of Waveland is the Western Coast regional coordinator
.
11/7
The event is coming upon us quicker than we think. We are just five weeks away from our third missions trip to the gulf coast.

If you haven't volunteered yet I encourage you to do so. Logistically we need to plan for food, lodging and other items. As of today we have roughly 100 people signed up for this event.

In the flesh that is disappointing to me yet I know that America has heard and seen enough of Hurricane Katrina for quite some time. Most probably feel that the coast is doing great in its recovery.

Let me encourage you that the statement you just read is wrong. The need is still great and will be for years! 85% of all of the homeowners are still not in their homes. Many of these people are still living in trailers, fifteen months after the hurricane!

I urge you to please consider coming to the coast with us for at least three days. If you have been with us before you know how fulfilling it is for your soul to see people smile who haven't smiled in a long time. I know that God is going use us in a mighty way regardless if there is 100 or 500.

If you can't make it please consider using our brochures and flyers to promote this event in your church. Pleas email me back if you would like one of these tools.

Please reread 1st Peter 4:10. Let us all use the gifts God has given us to bless and serve the gulf coast!

May God bless you!

Stephen Tybor III
Update - 10/3
8 Days of Hope III will be December 15th - 22nd!
Yes, we are going back to the gulf coast!

http://www.eightdaysofhope.com/ has all of the information. Volunteers are being accepted!

Please take the time to look at the pictures posted on the site. If you have one or two pictures you would like to share please don't hesitate to forward them to us so we can possibly include them on the site. When sending the pictures please give us any information about the volunteers and the site they were working on. We would love to post a couple hundred pictures on the site!

Also, we are working on two videos for the website and are hoping that they will be on our site in the next two weeks. You will be able to download this for your use or to help promote 8 Days of Hope.

The leadership of 8 Days of Hope has been blessed by AFA/AFR once again. We recently have been given office space in Tupelo Ms. where we will be staffing with two part time people. One being Peggy Hodges. We will be setting up our own phone lines and equipping the office.

God has blessed us with so much. We have been good stewards of the dollars God has blessed us with. Any dollars donated to 8 Days of Hope I and 8 Days of Hope II paid for the logistics of the events with our main expense being the building materials. Yet we believe that God wants us to extend our ministry. We would like to build an organization that can respond to any national disaster in 30 days. Imagine an earthquake in California, a hurricane in Tampa or a forest fire in Colorado. We believe that God is calling us to be READY to use the gifts he has blessed us with in order to serve and love His people. We could be at any of those areas within a short time period with the network of people that God has brought together.

We are asking for your help. If you feel called to help us set up our office and add two part time staff people would you consider donating to 8 Days of Hope as we expand this ministry? We will not use any dollars donated to 8 Days of Hope I and II for these positions. If you can please send a donation to 8 Days of Hope PO 3208 Tupelo Ms., 38803. In the memo section of your check please write "office."

If you live locally we are looking for your help this Saturday (Oct. 7th) for four hours from 8-12 am. We will be painting and cleaning this office before we move our furniture, desks and other items over the next week. Please email me back if you can help. If you are in the furniture business we could use some desks and other miscellaneous furniture items. We also could use some lights. Please email me back for more information.

This email was meant to encourage you to do three things:

1.) Volunteer for 8 Days of Hope III
2.) Urge you to become a financial supporter of 8 Days of Hope as an ongoing ministry.
3.) To come and help this Saturday or to donate furniture and office furniture.

BUT.......The most important thing we ask is PLEASE continue to pray for this ministry. God continues to open huge doors for us. It is not an accident or a coincidence that this is happening. It is for HIS glory!

Bless you!

See you on the coast!

Stephen Tybor III
Update 6/29
In June of 2006, over 1,140 volunteers from 37 states and three countries descended upon the gulf coast of Mississippi with the intentions of aiding as many people as possible in rebuilding of their homes still damaged by Hurricane Katrina. An eight day trip that was meant to be a one time trip in December of 2005 had literally doubled in size and tripled in man hours!

Two hundred and sixty projects were completed in two hundred and two homes. These homes were located in Gulfport, Bay St. Louis, Waveland, Pass Christian and Pascagoula.

Some of the highlights of this project include the following:
*4,150 pieces of sheetrock/drywall were installed
*700 squares of roofing shingles were installed
*15 homes were completely rewired because of the flood damage
*25 additional homes had some type of electrical work done
*Hundreds of rolls of insulation were installed
*Over 80 homes had extensive carpentry work done
*Many homes were gutted and cleaned
*17 homes were primed and painted

As one can see the volunteers showed up to work! In fact over 30,000 man hours were used during 8 Days of Hope II.

The stories of tears being shed, lives being touched and homeowners praying with the volunteers were endless. We realized on June 3 when we left that we came to bless yet we were the ones who were truly blessed! We came to encourage these towns and when we left we were encouraged by the resiliency, the determination and the joy that many of these homeowners exhibited. A special thank you to American Family Association/AFR and TGI Fridays.

American Family Radio has once again helped us get the word out. Without their support we know our volunteer numbers would be 15% of what they are. They have been a proud sponsor of 8 Days of Hope since day one!

TGI Fridays was kind enough to bring us lunch every day we were on the coast. They provided lunch for all 1,140 volunteers! They also donated $75,000 to 8 Days of Hope II. Without these monies we would only have accomplished half as much!

Many have asked when we are going back. We will publish the dates for 8 Days of Hope III by the end of July. Please refer back to this website for those dates.

Please do not look to man and what we accomplished during this second trip to the coast. In the first book of Peter 4:10, he tells us to use the gifts God has given us to minister to one another. 8 Days of Hope II used these verse as our call. Some people did this with a hammer and a paint brush while others did it with a smile and a listening ear. We all used our gifts that God has blessed us with. 8 Days of Hope continues to be His project and His ministry.
May God bless you and may God bless the Gulf Coast!
Steve Tybor III

Update May 15
Greetings!

We are about two weeks away and our numbers are growing. As of yesterday we are approaching 700 volunteers. God is good! That is slightly more than our first trip but with the requirement of a volunteer staying for a minimum three days we will actually be able to do about 30% more work. Get ready! Your going to be blessed beyond any beach trip you have been on in the past!

We will be doing most of our work in the Waveland, Bay St. Louis and Gulfport Ms. areas. We will be emailing you directions on where to check in along with some last minute instructions on May 23rd.

EightDaysOfHope@aol.com