11:35 pm
MOOD: the best of moods
MUSIC: Garrett is strumming softly in the corner

It's Monday, we've gotten one day out of five.

let's recap, shall we?

put on some soft guitar music or at least think of some while you read this...

so off we go...

..Back to Saturday. (6728)

They woke me up that morning at about quarter to nine, hehe, and we were to leave by 9:30. Hah, that was so great. So the final roster for this trip came to be myself, Josh Birdsall, Nate Frazier, Garrett Walston, John Kangas, John Bohall, Tyler Ouillette, Robbie Stevens, Tom Sheesley, Andrew Roth, Kyle Caruso, Ben Pfistner, and Steve Byers. When we got out to John Cissel's Audi, it was stocked! We ate breakfast like kings, sort of. And he made us these awesome lunches, which we found a nice parking lot for eating them in. He made the best sandwiches, and threw in apples, pears, oranges, a few candy bars, some capri-sun.. yea baby, livin large!

So our Audi and Gordon Van made it, we got to Camden, and we found our church. We were two hours early, so what do a dozen white college guys do with their time? I don't know, but we found an open lot and cracked out the frisbee, and got a game of Ultimate going :D

The guy Matt met us there @ 7pm, dropped us off at our house, and set us loose. The 14 of us dug around thru all the stuff here, we rearranged the couches and set up all the mattresses here, then sometime we split up into cook groups, and went shopping, and had dinner, and generally staked out the house and goofed around before we wore ourselves out and fell asleep..

I suppose i should take this time to say, there is a set of three curtained windows, in a little alcove in our living room.. 2 of which actually have windows, one does not. It's just a wall with a curtain! I want one!!

Sunday (6729)

Then at one point we had breakfast.. It was a very good breakfast. Then we went to this Methodist Church in Haddonfield, which is a prety upscale part of Philly, on the New Jersey end of course; and they were a pretty cool bunch o' people, and this guy Tony Campollo spoke about being a whole person in Christ, with the yin and the yang, and how we as Christians are now whole people, and such.

So then we all came home and everyone hit the couches, we were all so beat, except every so often somebody would get up and jump on everybody else, or a few of us would start wrestling on the mats.. yea, we were pretty zonked out.. yes we had mats. Then, Garret, Tom, Josh and I went on a walk around our town, Audubon. It's a decent sized town, about maybe the size of Grove City or some bigger. Then we went straight back to sleep.

okay.. so out plan was, we were gonna go visit this Hispanic Pentacostal church. We had heard this: They were nuts, and wild, and went berserk in worship, we would not mentally be able to handle it. So we took a vote, Hispanic Pentacostal or the other one which i forget what it was, and yeah, it was unanimous Pentacostal. But we found out too late, they didnt have a Sunday PM service.. that's the way things work in Camden. No one goes to PM services. So we went home and had a few rounds of Couch of Power, and dinner, and Garrett decided to 'amuse' us all night long, and I was reading Lord of the Rings, I got to the Mines of Moria, but straight after the Balrog my eyes got way too heavy and i was out by 10:30.

Today, Monday (6730)

I crawled out of my sleeping bag and straightened out my hopeless bed head, and ate something and then we all rode over to the church to get our jobs assigned.

We got so much done, we cleaned out a basement, straightened up a sidewalk and a yard, cleaned up a jungle's worth of branble behind the house, and we had mad fun doing it! It was quick work, too. There was a rooster there. Weird, huh? Well.. about the stuff from the basement: there's this thing in Camden that if you don't want something, put it on the curb. So we put unwanted basement things in a pile on the curb, and within about an hour, people had taken most of it home.

Well, we felt like we needed a shower, so that's what we did next: we all went down to the Y, and we were told by Matt that they only let ten in the locker room at a time, so we tried various methods to disguise our numbers, like hiding behind Bohall, (hehe) or scrambling and moving in confusing random circles, and switching coats so they couldnt count us. But.. It just did the opposite effect: Instead of the 14 of us looking like less than ten, we looked like more :(

So after that fiasco, we went to play with the kids; our mission: help them with homework and play with them on the playground! So Birdsall, Tyler, Andrew, and I went upstairs to the 1st and 2nd graders, and they had their snacks and drinks going, and they were all asking us our names, hehe, one of 'em asked if Birdsall's name was Harry :D

I was teaming up with this kid Jode (pron. Jawed-ee) and he was in first grade doing his letters, he didnt seem too interested, but then he started coloring, and he draws a pretty mean bear! :D At the park, we set em loose, they were screamin and squealing and having such a good time, wow it was great! Jode and Tita were playing a boy and girl who were baing chased by Tylee, who was a tyrannosaurus, so i got out my Hula Hoop and oi was a Dinosaur Huntah, and i got out me Australian accent and i was chasing him, and he was chasing me, and biting my legs, and tearing out my heart, hehe, and Tyler was our doctor, he put everything back together when i called him, hehe.. sigh, good times :D

Then at one point, Robbie and the 3rd and 4th graders showed up, and he was playing catch-football with a few of the kids, and at one point Robbie and I got to picking up some of them and whirling them around, and this got to be a regular thing, where Xavier and Saul and, i think it was Becca, and every single other kid wanted swung around in circles; but then, we all started to get 'em up on our shoulders, and we were chasing each other around.. All this time they'd been playing tag, but we brought the game to 'whole new heights', hehe.. ok, bad joke... Anyway this was the whole last hour of our time there, we were zipping around with kids on our shoulders :D They had a blast i'm sure, and we did too, but in the end they had all this energy, and we were wiped out, done. But we wanna keep the same group of kids tomorrow.

Also today, we took the train into Philadelphia, with one goal in mind: Philly Cheese Steaks! :P So, we got there, and we found Jim's Steaks, this awesome place that's just classic, straight out of the fifties, it was on South Street. After eating our collective fill, except for me, we took a walk up and down South Street.. There were a few of those 'questionable' shops that you really wanna walk past kinda quickly, but there was a starbucks on the corner, and a neat chef shop, and a super awesome hat place: I found out today, I don't look bad in a cowboy hat :P

There was this awesome drunk guy on the train heading home, he gave me fair warning, about camden:

"That's a bad neighborhood,... Don't turn your back on a crowd... You guys keep safe."

so i think i will. :)

And as i write these words on a piece of paper... the time is now 11:30; everyone is asleep but me, and Nate, who is reading Cry, the Beloved Country. All who read this, thank you for your prayers, we have been in God's hands!

Goodnight.