After an exhausting 6 hour drive, we arrived in Wisconsin on Sunday at around 4pm. We settled into the church, had dinner, and met the other groups we would be staying with. At our nightly church service, STAGE was divided into 2 groups and given our work projects. Group 1, led by Paul and Cydney, worked with an elementary school in the morning and with a library outreach program in a park in the afternoon. The other group, led by Matt, Stephany, and Kyle, weeded at a squash farm in the morning and did community outreach with kids from the Madison community.
In Group 1, I was a little bit hesitant at the beginning of the day because I learned we would all be split up. However, I was assigned to a classroom of kindergarten and first graders who struggle with reading and writing and fell in love with their energy and compassion immediately. Working through a reading packet with them, many of the kids were unsure and insecure in their reading abilities, but after some encouragement from not only me but their classmates, I saw their attitudes change and they actually started to volunteer to read for their peers. In the afternoon, we worked in a library outreach program with super energetic kids with so much joy. I worked water games. We set up a kiddie pool, two sponges, a sprinkler and some watering cans and the kids had so much fun. They ran around with me attacking me with sponges and watering cans full of water and I loved seeing their smiles all day. I also had a great conversation with our leader, Emma, and Lydia and Mandy where Emma told us her story about coming into her faith and continued to encourage us to reach out of our comfort zones and recognize God in our lives in the highs AND the lows. When we came home, we all broke into a rendition of a song we used to sing together and it was so fun to connect with each other in a way we hadn't connected in awhile and really just see God in the faces around us.
-Kira Hegdal
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