| I went to a place in West Virginia this year, where I was to spend the week doing service. I thought, "Oh great! A place where I only get 3 showers the whole week. But I was dead wrong. When we got there the staff members were yelling and cheering and as soon as we got out from our van, they threw their arms around us and gave us huge hugs saying "Welcome Home!" I was a little weirded out. I didn't know who the heck these people were and why they were telling me welcome home since I had never been there before. When the other groups arrived, I figured out what they ment. This was to be my home for the next week. And I was to live with these people that I had never met before. There were two groups from Pennsylvania and two from Chicago, and then our little group from Ohio. I wanted to get to know as many people as i could. One of the first really cool things we did was chores the next morning. CHORES! Can you believe it? i thought.. "Ok this is stupid.. its a farm and we have to do all these chores before we go out to the work sites." We had to sign up for the chores, however, on the chalk board they were disguised. so we had no idea what we were signing up for.I signed up for "ridding the world of mad cow disease"and I ended up weeding and picking green beans and cucumbers from the garden. I had already started to get to know all the people in my chore group. And I liked them. The next cool thing we did was hike up this huge mountain! Well it probably was a hill, but it seemed to take forever so i'm calling it a mountain. What a hike! It took a while to reach the top, and I was talking with this guy I had just met named Carmon. We talked about the funny movies we had seen like "Blazing Saddles" and "Men in Tights" and "Space Balls". it was quite funny. Then when we reached to top, there were these rocks that we had to climb up. I got up the first rock, no problem. It was pretty high up as well as being on top of that hill, so I was pretty freaked out. Heights terrify me. Other people got brave and decided to jump to the other rock a little ways away. I laughed and said, "HA! Yeah right! not me!"... but i ended up jumping to the other rock and Carmon caught me. That was pretty scary for me.. totally not katie style. Thank God David got pictures otherwise my family wouldn't believe me. The walk back down the hill was REALLY steep. We practically slid down the mountain. Talking and laughing with the people, I started to get to know them even better. And everyone was so friendly. I was pretty wiped after the first day. So I went to bed and slept like a rock. Wake up call was at 6:30 am. We had prayer, and then chores.. which mine was to go with Nhoj and Jana to load the trucks with the supplies for the construction. And then BREAKFAST! YUM! Pancakes made by Jeff & Hopes group. After breakfast we went outside for parking lot prayer and then hugged everyone goodbye. It was good to hug people and to tell them to be careful and to have a great day. My group loaded up into the suburban, and then we headed off. Bruce was driving with Jessica sitting shotgun. Marcia, Gabe, and Candy were in the middle seat, and Tony and I were in the back. We had about a 45 minute drive to get to the site. I got to know the people in my work group a little better. When we got to the house, we ended up talking with the lady named Gaye inside for about a half hour, and she told us about how she used to have horses and how she had all these dolls that she made the dresses for. She asked me if I had ever had a porcealen doll, and I had said no, so she gave me a little one that kinda looked like me. After visiting, we went outside and looked up at the roof. Unlike me, I got right up on the roof. I ended up hammering some boards to the roof that were to support the rafters and then I hammered in some joists for the rafters. For lunch, I ate two (sorta) Naz Farm sandwiches... which is peanut butter, grape jelly, and cheese. You are supposed to put mustard on there too, but thats gross. After all the work that we needed to get done was finnished, we loaded up and went home. The home crew ran out of the house as soon as we honked our horn coming up the driveway. They threw their arms around us and asked us how our day was and told us how happy they were that we were home. It felt good that people who had time to take a shower was hugging us even though we were disgustingly dirty. The homecrew had made us pepperoni rolls for dinner which is really good! Then after dinner, we announced our names... ours was "Here, There, and Yonder". Another was "Stud Squad", "Sassy Underdogs", "Team Tar", "Bob the Builders", and "Snap Crackle Pop". After lights out, some people trooped up to the O'Conner room for a game of Moose. I had never played before, but i learned fast! |
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