July 19, 2011

July 19^th AKA Day 4

So I’m in a community group and we spend our days helpin’ out the community!!!! Today we went to this parsonage that was not taken care of very well in the past. The last lady who lived there recently lost her husband in April, and since he had been their pastor the people in the church decided she had to move out and make room for the new pastor. On top of this, the woman’s daughter went to visit her boyfriend in California and a couple days after she left she called her mother and told her that her and her boyfriend had gotten married and moved to France. So in a period of two months this woman lost her husband, home, and her daughter. That story made me un-excited to help clean out the house because of how they forced the woman out but then our leader told us that we should put that aside and think of how God is working through us. I wasn’t allowed to go in the house because it had also been the home of 11 cats and five dogs, and I’m allergic to both of those animals. I spent my days scraping paint off a porch so it could be re-painted. I really like my group because there are five of us from STAGE in it and the rest are Southern so we are always pointing out and teasing each other about our accents. According to them we say air, bag, and cat, weird among many other words. They also cringe every time we say pop and claim it’s called coke….all kinds of pop. This makes me really unsure how to just order plain old coke in the South. Let’s just hope this issue never comes up. And that has been my mission trip adventure thus far J

-Megan Seamans

Exactly one year ago I spent a week with an enormous group of impeccable kids. I learned to switch my attention from one kid to another and how to fit every kid I could into an activity. But so far my first days at my Big Creek mission site have consisted of only about 10 kids. The first kid I met I immediately bonded with and was looking forward to bonding with so many other great children. Then, I realized I only had the opportunity to connect with nine other little ones. This reality check saddened me at first but I quickly learned how to give my full attention to one special little kid. Spending hours talking and playing with one kid opened my eyes to the one on one attention I had been missing out on giving last year. After spending a few hours playing and teaching the children, I returned with my group to the elementary school we’re staying at. We experience group talks with the other children’s groups who go to different mission sites and we hear different stories about the kids we, unfortunately, don’t get to meet. After those meetings we go to a worship service filled with songs and “slightly” long sermons. Now that we’re on our second day and approaching our third we are getting used to praying, sermons, southern accents, and oh yeah a little more praying. This week is becoming more entertaining as we go on and it’s clear here in Big Creek, Kentucky how much we're teaching and mainly how much we’re learning.

-Miranda Hunt