YOUTHWORKS MISSIONS TRIP 2

JULY 13 2009
(birthday in 5 days)

so...we finally got to Heart Butte. we're staying in the school in the old band room. at first we were like - how is everyone gonna fit in here, but somehow we managed. i was not feeling good at all so i took some Tylenol and tried to sleep for a bit but you know how girls are, loud and talking ALL THE TIME! i went over to wait for dinner to start and met a few people from Utah. oh yeah so the other groups here are from Florida(they didnt show up til way later cuz their flight got delayed), Utah and Washington, so yeah we're all from pretty different parts of the country. the camp staff are Molly, Ranger, Dillon and Heather and they introduced themselves to us, and asked for volunteers. no one really raised their hands so of course i did. basically it meant that we had to clean up after dinner but we also got to eat first! yay! kyle and i talked to Dillon for a bit. turns out he is an engineer and has some super nerd cheer at his college football games. ahhh engineers. lol anywho then there's Heather who i got to chat with while mopping the kitchen. she's a music ed major. jealous! and has an extreeeeeeme amount of energy all the time. lol after that we had some youth orientation thing with the staff and played a game like rock paper scissors but everytime you win you evolve so i got to be 2 of the most awesome things ever- seeing as i was actually imitating them both earlier at the park. a raccoon and a t-rex. hahahahaha. then we had our big group worship thing- and itw as funny cuz we did the Bugaloo but our church was the only one that really knew it! and yeahhh then we had to split off into churches and have some group time and say what we were most excited for and i put that i was most excited to have a purpose. so i was really looking forward to finding out what that would be.

getting to sleep was kind of a problem because who goes to bed at 11:30! haha and martha just kept saying hilarious things and so ya know how that goes. oh and so this morning we got woken up by Heather playing violin. way way way cool. best wake up call ever i think. then we had morning devos which really resulted in me writing witty one line responses and taking pictures of the Res. dogs. haha then we had breakfast. i had to cash in some favors with KP and Martha ..aka begged them to get me coffee cuz it was for "adult leaders only". or else no one would be having fun. we found out what groups we were in. mine was : me, martha, alyssa, derek, jacob, jerry and then some floridians: garcia, matthew, connor and mary charlotte (who i think looks like freaking Miley Cyrus hahah crazy) our crew's name is the Wandering Cattle. "uhhh where are we? ...mooo..." lol phrase of course coined by Derek Harvey himself. so we set off to do our work projects after i volunteered to be the Youth Foreman who gets to supervise and encourage and make sure everything is getting done. oh i forgot to say that i was made to change out of my favorite thrift store purchase--the "i'm 50!" shirt. sorry kellner!!! lol our first project was to paint the community center walls, right across from the trading post! i wanna see what kind of stuff they have there. so anyways it was all going very well.

i assigned everybody jobs and they did them! i dont know why i was so surprised, it was just cool. we got to share alot of stories and the Florida people were so funny cuz they were like shivering in 60 degree weather. ahh and of course...global warming...we got rained on. and it wasnt a light drizzle either. no this was cold-hard-rain. we were getting so much done! i didnt wanna just quit. but i took one look at the shivering, teeth chattering Floridians, meanwhile getting drenched myself, and finally made the executive decision to break for lunch. ahhhh i got so much paint all over the place! so we made a break for the van to wait out the rain. it cleared up after we went to the post office to send postcards to our families and finished our tiny lunches. when we got back to the site, we realized we didnt have that much left to do which was really uplifting.

12:30 rolled around and we were getting back into the van when i thought of something ridiculous. we had four adult leaders with us but the two older ones were named Jerry and Garcia. hahah which makes my group the coolest cuz we have a Grateful Dead reference! ah and i immediately had to text Zachy about it but irght as i turned my phone on i got a text from him saying something about the The Dead too..hahaha mmm sdo we moved on to our next site which was a family's house where their trailers in the backyard got wrecked. one was set on fire and the other was victim to a very intense storm. our job was to pick up all the debris. i really love Native American names. the guy who lived in the house was called Winford Running Crane. lol bomb! we didnt get much of a chance to talk to him really, but we did get alot of work done- of course with two injuries. Mary Charlotte had a piece of glass go through her work gloves and Martha got cut on the ankle by something unknown and is time by this time i was worrying like crazy and made them get those taken care of asap.

we decided to clean up kind of early and head back to clean the brushes- but the tool shed ended up being locked up with our first site supplies int here so that plan was a no-go. we broke for the showers and freetime instead. for dinner we got alfredo and all that good stuff and it was awesome cuz i'd pretty much been super hungry for the last couple days. i got to eat til i was full. yay! our night activity was supposed to be olympics but the weather didnt really permit that. so some of the natives came for culture night. a lady named Jolene Vance spoke to us about her life and beliefs and she burned some sage! which was awesome. and then her sons and brothers had a giant drum circle and they performed for us while teaching us some of their dances. it was alot of fun. durhing one we like aerobically Jeanercized...suffice to say it was alot of work. haha then we went to Club and split off into church groups and went to bed...or tried to anyways. the door kept opening and waking me up.... boo.