TENNESSEE!

Hey everyone, I know I have been home for a week so far, but I haven't been able to post in a while! So sorry about that... well anyway, back to Tennessee! 

Going to Tennessee with my youth group was the best part of my summer! It was truly a life changing experience. We left on Friday morning around 10. And got back the next Thursday around 7 in the morning. When we arrived in Cleveland, Tennessee on Saturday around 1pm we unpacked and got settled in, we went to dinner then had orientation and group time with Kara (our youth pastor!) The next day on Sunday we all went to a Recreation Center about a mile or two from where we were staying. The kids that go there are from VERY bad homes, neighborhoods, and families. So, that day we cleaned the Rec Center and just helped around where was needed. The Rec Center does a football program so we all had to clean all the helmets and tear the stickers off the back of the helmets from the last season and we had to clean all of the shoulder pads. And Hannah had to tighten all of the screws in the helmets, which was a lot!!!! And let me just tell you... that was the most helmets and shoulder pads I have ever seen. Then we had lunch and got right back to work with other jobs. The next day we went back to the Rec Center and held/did a Vacation Bible School for the kids that attended the Rec Center daily. Most all of the kids have never heard of God or anything about the Bible... and so on. The kids that we worked with were 5-10 year olds and their was 16 of them!!! So we all got a kid, just to hang out with for two days! Mine was named NICO!!! Nico was the cutest, nicest, and well-mannered  5 year old I have ever met and the best basketball player too. At the Rec Center they had a gym so Nico was always asking me "can you play basketball with me," "will you go play basketball with me," "lets go play basketball," "I really want to play basketball!" So we played and played and played! So we just hung out with all the kids and did the VBS for them from about 10 in the morning till about 4 in the afternoon when they left! So the next day we went back to the Rec Center and held another day of the VBS! Each day of our VBS we did a skit or puppet show for them, worship songs, a bible verse with a game, a craft, the main lesson, parachute games, other games and other stuff! And our whole group led the whole thing without Kara's help. Well I mean, she helped us with the ideas, suggestions, and everything before we got to the Rec Center. But at the Rec Center we taught it all!!!!!!!  So that was really really fun and cool. Since this was the last day with the kids, it was really hard to say good bye! Our whole group and all of the kids were all sad and none of us wanted to leave the kids. One of the kids came up to one of us and sad "you guys are the best thing that has happened to this Rec Center!" And Hannah's girl Latanica told us that she was coming with us! When we were all saying good-bye to her, she was like, "why you all sad, and saying good bye to me, I'm coming with you!" I was like "well, that is a long ride back to Michigan, 17 hours!" "Oh, that's okay, I will come anyway, we will have loads of fun!" She was so cute and that just felt great that we all really reached the kids and made an impact on their little hearts. And all of us got really close with our kids. Ashley Ganton and her little boy Michael really created a great relationship between each other! They were probably the closest out of all of us!!! It was so cool to watch them together, they were literally like brother and sister. Ashley said "it really feels like I have another little brother!" And another reason why it was really hard to say good bye was because we didn't know what they were going home to, Tony's kid told him that he had no home and that he slept on the grass with his family! So it was really sad because we didn't want to send them off to their horrible life styles and we knew as well as some of the kids that we might never see them again!!!

I am really glad to be home and all but I miss Nico and all of the kids so much!!!!!! We all wish that we might be able to go back someday!!! 

There is also a slide show at the bottom of my blog of some of the pics from TN!