Last week, the south side of Powell had a little extra going on. 

Missionaries from First Baptist Lexington out of Lexington, Tennessee, could be seen around town leading kids’ camps and sprucing up the neighborhood through community service.

The seeds of the trip were first planted back in October, Minister of Missions Bob Hull said. He had been in Wyoming speaking at churches where he met Bill Harvison, the pastor of Victory Baptist Church in Powell. Harvison asked if Hull could return in the summer for a mission trip focused on skills camps for kids.

“We just plan to do this, and plan to come up and do the skill camps, because that’s a good way to serve a community. It provides a summer activity for children. It provides an opportunity for them to learn different things that they’re interested in,” Hull said, adding, “It … serves the community. It helps the church get to know different people. It’s been fun to see some of the kids that didn’t know each other have met each other, now they’re friends.”

The camp, which took place July 7-10 at Victory, Southside Park and Trinity Bible Church, featured volleyball, baseball, basketball, soccer, disc golf and crafts and music options, according to the camp website.

The units were led by people who were coaches or had performed at high levels of the field. Micah Milam, semi-pro disc golfer for a decade, and Mike Lowrance, a former coach and referee for everything from middle school teams to the semi-pro level, were two of the coaches.

The camps take place every summer in Lexington and have for just under a decade, Hull said. This summer they did a rocketry camp for the first time where they built model rockets. They do about one camp “at home and one away each summer,” on community or pastoral request, he said. 

The Powell camp saw somewhere around 50 kids over its four days with 45 kids attending on Tuesday.

Aside from overseeing kids camps, the missionaries of First Baptist Lexington also visited Scott’s Granite Park where they stained the mobile home park’s playground equipment, picnic tables and weeded the area. They then moved to the court area where they pulled out old fence boards, scraped and sanded them down and applied new stain. In a little bit of spare time they also helped a woman who lived near Victory pull her weeds. 

Harvison had asked Hull and his missionaries to come to the area so the church could “reach into the community and … get to know people better,” Harvison said.

Having the skills camp and missionary work, which ended with a block party that Thursday, lets the community know about the church, he added. 

“We just want to reach out to the community and love Jesus and love people and help our community any way we can,” Harvison said.