Day 4 - Rock on.

Day 4: 

The day started long, but with a dinner of waffles, applesauce, juice, and cereal everyone quickly found enough energy to start the day off officially with Devotionals. We read and answered questions about how God pursues us even though we are broken. Then after our Youth Leader revealed that several small sheep figures had been hidden around the church. On that note we headed out to our missions. Being in the ‘Strong’ group, I returned to the home of a woman named Nancy with her husband; Stan and daughter; Claudia. We set out to finish what we had started the day before: weeding Nancy’s garden and painting the siding and porch of their over 100 year old home. While the sun was working its way in to the sky Jackie, Madeline, and I ripped out invasive weeds and mint plants that had rooted themselves in the garden. I was hard work, and very sweaty once the sun had gotten higher, but it was nice to see how good it looked when we had ripped it out. Once we had gotten what we could in the garden I went to help with the porch painting. I painted the spokes of the porch railing until lunch with the company of Madi, Megan, and Madeline. Then at 12 we beaked for lunch. Nancy was kind enough to bake us cookies and we all were very hungry. After lunch our work was resumed; double time! We knew we weren’t going to be coming back to Nancy’s house and wanted to get everything done. I finished the railing and swept up while the other guys finished up other walls. And then we bid Stan, Nancy, and Claudia a fond farewell, we got hugs and watermelon and Stan gave us 2 beautiful walking sticks.

After all that work we were glad to get showered and back to the church. We had about 20 minutes for a quick cat-nap before we had to head down stairs and help prep dinner: Pizza, salad, and watermelon. It was delicious! Then we went to one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my whole life: A park filled with natural rock caves and bridges. Completely all natural no blasting or anything, just paths made of wood and stone. I can’t express how gorgeous it was; the water rushing down over the rocks, and through several underground caves that you could go into, to just look at the water rushing around you. It was such a great time; you could just sit on a rock by the river and take in God’s great earth. Now it’s off to bed and hopefully another great time tomorrow!

   Written by: Connie Huseltine