Month: June 2009

So the sleep last night… the room is decent, but the bed quality leaves something to be desired. I slept… most of the night. I opted to not bring a pillow and instead a quilt that folds into a pillow. Well, that worked out fine for a bit, but then it started getting colder. Sometime in the middle of the night, I got my clean clothes and piled them up into a pillow. I slept most of the rest of the night, waking up around 6:15, 15 minutes before my alarm.

I knocked on the door of the boys at exactly 7:15 am. They were all sleeping in the same room. They stayed up till 1:00 in the morning. We all got ready and walked over to the cafeteria. I was excited to get some breakfast, and to have it in buffet style. We got there a little late, and the lines were long. But other wise, breakfast was decent. It wasn’t great, but good. I also weirded everyone out because I put ketchup on my eggs. Sherri was not aware that I am a northerner.

We got moving again and went to morning worship. There wasn’t anything too crazy this time. Just a lot of songs and a few announcements. We then broke off into our mission groups to get our day of “missions” going. We traveled out to an older woman’s house in a very poor neighborhood. Our “mission” is to repaint the house. This involves scraping the old paint, taking down a few things, trimming the bushes, cleaning the mildew, and finally, paint. Our Passport staff member however does not appear to be the leadership type. The entire time I was there, I was “assigned” to four children, but I didn’t feel like there was much direction. We’d finish one project, and then ask him what to do next. He’d stammer about and try to find something else for us to do. It eventually got to almost everyone doing the scraping with a few milling about aimlessly. Of course, these are all children, and most of them only go through the motions on this type of work. However, we did get more done in one day than I thought. We finished up with about half of the house scraped, and it is claimed that tomorrow we will be painting. After being there for several hours, we got ready to leave to finish up the rest of the day back at camp.

Once we arrived back at camp, we had an hour or two of “free” time. My time was spent dealing with an irate customer and talking to Danielle. Then I hopped into the shower and took a walk around campus in search for more soap. I did not anticipate taking as many showers as I have so far. I found the bookstore, but I got there right as it was closing. I asked one of the two old ladies walking out if there was soap in there, and she handed me an apple. I don’t think she heard me. I waited around outside the cafeteria for Sherri and the rest of the gang. As I sat there an waited, people kept piling in, and only a handful came back out. Once we got in, it was packed. I waited about 15 minutes to get a cheeseburger.

We then had a few more minutes before we got ready for the “Rec Party”. The Rec Party consists of the missions teams competing against each other in an outdoor game extravaganza. I sat on the sidelines and watched for a bit, then Sherri (who was helping with the games) handed me the camera. I took some good action shots of the boys. We then got a little bit more free time, and then walked over to worship for the night. It was mostly songs, and a botch up of a video that I think the Passport staff were so embarrassed that they couldn’t get it to play, that they just ignored it, said nothing, and moved on.

We concluded our night with a devotion time back at our rooms, and I after waiting for Sherri to check her Facebook, and then me calling Danielle cause I miss her (I see her every night, so it’s in my mind for that to happen), I finally am going to bed. Goodnight.

For those of you that don’t know, I signed up at my church to chaperon at a summer youth camp. It’s centered around missions projects in the local Macon area. I’ve never done anything like this before, so this is all new to me. I’ve never even been to “summer camp” that I can remember.

We arrived at camp and hung around outside the bus while we went to get checked in here at Mercer University. Once we got all that, we rode over to our dorm rooms that we were staying in. Me and Sherri are watching four boys. They separated into pairs and each pair got a room. Then me and Sherri both got our own rooms. Of course, the key for mine, did not work. So I had to wait just a bit to see what lies ahead. After finally getting the key to my room, I stepped in and was amazed. This place is huge. I have a complete kitchen, a huge living area and a decent bathroom.

After we settled in, we walked over to the cafeteria to get some dinner. Once again, I was amazed. The cafeteria is basically a buffet, and you get whatever you want. Everything is included, and they even hand make tacos, and special order burgers. I have to give a hand to the employees of the Mercer University cafeteria for an excellent experience. I really look forward to breakfast in the morning.

Then we finally got to the worship part. Now initially, we were told we had to “remix” a song to introduce our group. Since we were one of the last groups to check in, our song choice was limited to “Jesus Loves Me” and “Thriller”. We went with “Jesus Loves Me”. The four boys remixed the song and were very nervous about singing. More on this later.

During worship, we were all forced to play multiple games where we had to get up and switch around the seating. For example, find everyone with your shoe size or born in the same month. It was really a great time. Something I have never experience before. Back to the song. So, the idea was that each church would get up and sing their song to introduce themselves. We were the second to last group. We were a group of six people. Every other group except one was 20 to 40 people. The boys were getting more nervous. So we finally piled up there after a group of about 30 people (the ones we rode with). We sang our remixed rap version of Jesus Loves Me which went something like:

We are the Lakeland Fellowship
We rock out and we are hip
If you see us please don’t trip
We’re so cool that you might slip
Yes, we are the Lakeland Fellowship
Yes, we are the Lakeland Fellowship
Yes, we are the Lakeland Fellowship
We rock out cause we are hip
Word

They had nothing to be nervous about. We got the loudest applause of any other group. There were a few more skits about the rules and such, then a meeting with just the youth leaders (the chaperons).

Be right back… the boys locked themselves out. Sigh.

Tragedy averted. Sherri has extras. Sherri by the way is the youth leader at Lakeland Fellowship, and the one I am here with. Anyway, our days here are packed with things to do, and I want to get my sleep now.

Danielle is missing me a lot, and I her. This will be the longest I have been away from her. I do miss home a bit. I’ll be busy during the day to keep my mind off of it for a little bit though. By the way, if you want to keep up to date with me during the day, read my Twitter.

So I am on my way to Macon, GA. I am chaperoning for the youth at my church. We are taking four 6 and 7 graders. I’ll be gone from Sunday morning to Friday night. We hopped on the bus in Lakeland which is being chartered by the church that we will be traveling with. They are bring 30+ children themselves. It’s been three hours now. During the first three hours we playing a get to know you game. We hopped around different seats and asked a series of questions to the person sitting in the other seat. We stopped at Wendy’s and McDonalds for lunch. I opted for McDonalds. We walked in with about 30 people already in line and added another 20 or so. But McDonald’s ran efficiently and piled through everyone in 10 to 20 minutes. Go McDonald’s! Well, we are back on the road for another three hours, but I don’t know if there will be any projects. So I decided to blog instead. Anyway, I feel that at times, it may get a little slow, so I’ll try to blog.

For 6 years now, I’ve looked at my sliding door when walking into my house. Before that, my grandmother looked at the same door. During all that time, the door was made out of plexiglass. When the house was purchased, there had been a small fire, and my father fixed it up before we settled in. Since it was a sliding glass door, the firemen just made their own door. For all those years, I’ve looked at plexiglass. The plexiglass had become very hard to see through with all the constant scraping as it would not stay perfect verticle (there was always a bump). It was hard to clean. Recently, I had hit the plexiglass with my hand and made a hole in it. The constant sun had made it brittle. Just a few days ago, Noah bumped his head into the door, and the plexiglass came out on the edges. I knew something had to be done. So I decided to use another sliding glass door in the house and switch doors (the other one goes to a screened porch, ain’t no big deal). Well, the door handles didn’t match. So I did the unthinkable. I took the glass out of the one door, and transferred it to the other. I slid it from one to the other inch by inch on the kitchen floor. During all this time, it was raining out and I had two huge holes in my walls (I had to take out both doors to each set). I finally got it all back together and installed the new door. What a difference. Each time I come up to the door, I almost want to walk through it. I’ve not seen glass in this door before.

On another note, I’ve finally finished the floor in my house. I replaced the kitchen and dining room floor with a fake wood panel look, and it looks fantastic!