Immanuel thus far

A huge part of my experience here at the mission so far has been meeting the church groups that come in. Each group is different, and all the groups are very different from the California group. I’m much more thankful now for the program that VBC has for mission trip because there seems to be a lot more chances offered for participants to reflect on their own lives and engage in the growth of others in the group. But these other groups have been really fun too, and now I am making friends in all areas of the country.

Here’s a recap the groups so far:

Colorado: small group with older people. except for good ol' fourteen year old Kristen who loves Chris Tomlin. These people were super nice and Janice and Paul (not in the picture) are an older couple who recently drove up to Alaska and most of the time slept on the side of the road on a matress in their Astro Van. So awesome.

Then the Iowa people came. This group was fun because most of the poeple on the trip were around my age. Interesting church too, it broke from a larger church and recently combined with another church. It's a really young church. John Bloom's son Davey is one of the elders (he's 36 I think). Anyway by the end of the week I was super tired because on top of their work projects and staying up until midnight playing camp games and screaming ninjas, they did an activity like hiking to the dinosaur tracks, climbing up Seh-sa-uh (sp?) and going to the canyon almost every day they were here. I may decide to go to Iowa sometime next year on a road trip.

Finally last week's group was from Oregon. I don't have any pictures yet. They were a mixed group of family and youth. It was weird because two of the youth leaders who came were married to each other and another was getting married in a week (both were close to my age). It's not like I haven't seen a young married couple (I do go to Point Loma), but man so young. I've talked to a lot of people here who were married young. Those Brethern folk may be worse than Nazarenes! But they were fun. I ended up getting in a discussion with the youth pastor and found out that I was more Wesleyan than I thought. I still don't really know why, but I'll take his word for it. On the last day the group was here we went to the canyon and this kid cracked his head open on a rock. It was really fun to ask him the same questions every 5 minutes because he had a bit of short-term memory loss. He's fine now though, 12 staples later.

This week there's no church group, just one man from New Jersey who's helping out a little here and there. It's ok though, it's kind of exhausting living out mission trip every week of the summer. I'm really enjoying my time here. I think this week will be a good week of rest and reflection (after a full work day). But we'll see what the Lord brings.