An overcast and rainy day didn’t stop more than 200 high school students from around the state who came to Suffolk last weekend to do missions projects.

“We were so pleased,” said Pastor Matt Winters of Bethlehem Christian Church, which hosted the students for meals and worship while they were in town. “The kids worked through the rain. They didn’t let it slow them down.”

The students were slated to accomplish a variety of missions projects on Saturday, including building a wheelchair ramp, painting houses and cleaning up yards for families in need, cooking lunch at the Salvation Army, helping with a clean-up effort with the Nansemond River Preservation Alliance, and working in the Suffolk Partnership for a Healthy Community’s community gardens.

“I would say 95 percent of the work we needed to do, we were able to do even through the rain,” Winters said. “I think the blessing was it wasn’t those torrential downpours we sometimes get.”

At Bethlehem Christian Church, a group from three different churches from Hampton, Haymarket and Mechanicsville planted the community garden under the supervision of partnership volunteers and their own chaperones, even though they worked in a steady drizzle most of the day.

“These were kids that had never met each other,” Winters said, noting most every project had students from at least two churches. “I was really encouraged just to see these churches working together.”

At other outdoor job sites, students worked under shelters to do exterior painting and covered the more-exposed spots when it stopped raining.

Winters said he heard good reports from everyone who encountered the students.

“Everybody was just so ecstatic that the kids were representative of Christ,” Winters said. “Everybody said they were so loving, so patient, so gracious in their work, and the kids really had a good time. This was a lot of the kids’ first introduction to Suffolk, and they wanted to come back.”

The students paid their own way for the trip, including the hotel stay and supplies for the jobs.

Winters said many of the students also got the chance to learn new skills, such as painting or ramp building, at their job sites.

“I think that is one of the most exciting things, good life-lesson types of experiences for these kids,” Winters said.

He said he appreciated the support from the community and from his own church.

“We were really appreciative of all the support we got from around the city,” he said. “It was really a community endeavor. I am really thankful as a pastor to work with so many good people at our church family.”