Kentucky Missions, Day 4

Day 4 - August 13th: The day started earlier for me than I certainly wanted to. I awoke at 3:45am because, for some unknown reason, I had somewhat thrown up, but nothing came out, it just kinda went back down. Gross, I know. I was feeling wicked nauseaous, and I had that horrendous acidic puke taste in my mouth, so I made post-haste for the bathroom. I waited a bit in there for the nausea to wear off, then brushed my teeth and went back to bed. Woke up again at 7am for breakfast, then went back to sleep. Woke up at 10am and got ready for our day.

Our first venue was an elementary school up the road. It went from K-6th grade. Our goal going into the school wasn't to evangelize, because we were told that we really couldn't have anything overtly religious in our program. So we set our goal as to make the kids think we were so uber cool, that they would come see us on Friday night, when we are doing a program in the community park. We got ready, then all the kids filed in. There were about 212 kids there, plus teachers and faculty. The show started off amazingly. The kids were so attentive and active, and loved every bit of the juggling and skit and song we did. Then came the...THING...the crazy, insane ruiner of our program. We had just started the Pebbles skit, and I was wondering where my class was, when out of nowhere this BAT starts flying crazily all around the room! Of course, if you know anything about kids, you know that's there's nothing we could have done with a bat flying around the room. To the kids' credit, even though they were all excited and pointing and laughing, they listened well and stayed in their seats. Unfortunately, there was no way we could get the bat out, so we had to end the program early. We decided to drown our sorrows of an unfinished program with milkshakes at Hardee's. When we got back to the mission house, the construction team, who is working this week on a house down the road, told us the kids who were getting off the buses were so excited and talking about the bat at school and how cool everything was. So even though we had an unfinished program, we accomplished our goal: the kids thought we were uber cool. They actually thought, initially, that the bat was a part of our program, and were asking us how we got it to come out! It was quite entertaining, all in all.

This evening we did a service at a church. It went very well. There were only about 15 people of their congregation there, and then our team. It worked, though, because we have three different teams within our group, and the other two teams don't always get to see or hear what the performing arts team is doing, so it was a service for them as well as for the regular congregation. Afterwards, we had refreshments and such in the fellowship hall. For such a small group, there was enough there to feed a whole army!!!! It was very good. Then, on the way back, Katrina wrote a catchy little parody to Be Thou My Vision called Please Be My Grandma. Absolutely. Stinking. Hilarious. When we got back to the mission house, myself and three others began a two game stretch of partner cribbage. Charlie and I lost to Pat and Robin by three points the first game, but came back to kick their butts by beating them by 17 points the second game. Apparently tomorrow is supposed to be the game to end all games. We'll see...lol. Now I am getting ready to go to bed. I can't believe the week is almost done. I'm not sure how well I'm going to handle having to say goodbye to the Hagerstrom's and the rest of the team again. It's heartbreaking, really. God has a reason, though. I know He does.