Travel Travel Travel

We spent our last day in NY going to museums, eating out, getting dessert, and walking around Times Square. Nothing too exciting. We got to be d and woke up and packed EVERYTHING back in the car. It was again very packed. The four hour drive turned into six and I got Stacey and the girls to drop me off at a metro in DC so I could meet mom and mallory! We went to dinner and then crashed! Today we woke up and I got football tickets yay!! Then we wandered around the zoo. I had to head back to VA to get with my group because we had to get to work. The only bad part was by the time I got there they were done :( SO we have just been hanging out. We moved in! yay we are here for five weeks!! Finally some sort of permanency :) We ate dinner (steaks, potatoes, and asparagus) YUM! Then of course ice cream....Now time for a movie and bed! Nothing too exciting these past few days!!

DC Here we come!

Today was a day of sleeping late. Well not too late...I slept until 8:30. Then got ready and hit the town. Sarah, Sofia, and I went to Kleinfelds and took a tour. Of course I fell in love with a wedding dress...too bad it only cost about $2,500. Then we went to this really great burger joint. We headed up to Canal St. to Chinatown to get the last of our souvenirs. Then we headed back to the church to get ready for the cookout. I cleaned up a bit then we had another successful cookout! We then finished cleaning up and watched this really great skit by a youth group staying here with us. I'll try to upload it on here.....Then our group went out to look around the streets and we went to get slurpees and a movie. Today was a relaxing day with no drama Sorry there isn't much to tell!! We needed that! Now we are watching a movie and just hanging out. We have to wake up at about 5:30 tomorrow ugh! But on Sunday we will be headed to DC!

Last Work Day in NY!

Today we woke up and had to go to the grocery store to pick up breakfast for the group. We ate and got started on work projects. We did sanding and prayer table today until lunch. Then we got the group headed out to the city. The guy that we have bought pizzas from in the past gave us free philly cheese steak sandwiches for the homeless, so we went and got the sandwiches and delivered them. We then ate lunch and I took a quick nap before we headed out to the city. We left for the city and headed to a jungle gym. Well it was really just those rings where you do the monkey bar deal. I don’t really think I explained that well, but oh well I might try to post a picture of it at a later date. I was actually not too shabby at it and Mark was impressed haha! Then we walked over to Tom’s Restaurant, which is the restaurant on Seinfeld. I ordered a great milkshake and we had a lady waitress from Greece be really mean. We then went to this great Catholic Church. It was beautiful!!! We then got back on the subway to head to China town, but never quite made it because we accidentally missed our stop and then ended up running out of time so we just had to head back to the church. We ate Thai food. It was my first time and I really enjoyed it! As we were heading back we got a call from our group and one of the girls had hurt her foot and they needed to take her to the hospital. We figured we would not be having worship so we decided to head back to the church and just hang out until they made it back. We were almost to the church and we got another phone call from our group. They were headed back, a couple of them stayed behind to cool down. I don’t have the whole story, but because of the girl with the hurt foot one of the chaperones and a student got into a fight….So the chaperone and his wife stayed behind and everyone else came back to the church. When they got back to the church all the girls had been crying and very upset. A couple of us hung out and calmed down the girls and they ended up taking the girl to the hospital near by. They stayed at the hospital until 4:30 am. She only had a slight sprain of that ankle….Then they all went to Good Morning America…This concludes today and I will write and the conclusion of tomorrow! 

Today has been a day to remember!

I will spare most of the gory details of this day, but here is the gist. We woke up and made breakfast for the group. During breakfast we got a phone call from the office. There were some problems with the group staying with us here. They didn't appreciate some things that were completely out of our control, so our office talked to them and tried to help them out as much as possible (which wasn't much). Well we headed off for the soup kitchen and because of missing a subway we were about ten minutes late. This did not make the guys at the soup kitchen happy...Well we got our jobs and everything was fine. While serving one member from the group got very angry with the soup kitchen and embarrassed me very much. We left with much fan fare. The group when to get lunch and Stacey and the rest met me and we left the restaurant. I am sitting on the side of 32nd street i think and crying as Stacey is praying over me. I'm sure we were quite a site! haha! Well I was then feeling better so we walked a bit until the group had lunch and then we took them to Times Square. The rest of the day has been fine. We came back to the church and grabbed dinner for the group from a great pizzeria down the street. While we were there the owner offered to make us free philly cheese steak sandwhiches to feed the homeless tomorrow!! So we were pretty excited about that. We ate then had Worship a bit early. During my skit Jamey called haha It kind of interrupted because without thinking I stopped right in the middle and said who is that? Is it Jamey? Then I was like oh yeah I'm in the middle of a skit and kept going! When I finished up a few minutes later I ran outside to talk to him a bit. Worship then ended and I moved my car back to the street with the church. I don't know if I mentioned this in my last blog, but Bruce Willis is filming a movie here where we are. It is great! SOme of the youth saw him and took pictures haha! The rest of the night we have just been hanging out and resting. :) It has been a pretty good end to a hectic day. Only a few more then off to DC!! 

Wow What a full day!

Today was an incredibly awesome but full day! We woke up and ate a quick breakfast and packed sack lunches. We headed out and made our wonderful subway adventure with our new group. They were great at it! We met The Journey church and passed out granola bars on the street in Union Square. People were really sweet and I handed out about 5 boxes of bars! I had a great time!! Then we headed over to Verdi Park to eat lunch. We ate lunch then went to this frozen yogurt place called Pinkberry. It was so so so incredible! I put oreos and strawberries on top! Pinkberry is this really trendy and really cute yogurt places so we of course had to go. Anything dessert in NY we have to try! Then we passed out more granola bars. My group was finished rather early so they showed us to this great bakery where we could get awesome cookies. It was a bakery that was on Food Network and in a cookie contest against Bobby Flay (sp?) they won! I got a chocolate cookie with peanut butter on the inside (of course). I saved it for later since I had already had dessert. We headed over to Bryant park which is near Times Square. This was a bit more interesting then the other places. People were way more rude and would go from person to person just getting bars.....and they would ask for like four at a time...I had a taxi driver pull over on the side of the road with a passenger in the car and stopped the meter to get five bars!! At the other places we went people were nothing like that they were so super nice and grateful! Well, the group wanted to check out Central Park so we walked over there and got them dinner from a famous hot dog stand in the area. We had dinner in the park and then had worship! It was so fun and people would stop and watch us! I spoke tonight and it went well :) Then we headed back to the church. When we got back to the church we found out we had to move our car for the hundredth time for a filming of a movie!! The extras our staying in the church with us during the day :) It is a Bruce Willis (sp?) movie! We moved our car then went to Blockbuster to rent a movie. We rented Confessions of a Shopaholic because Beth our worship leader is in it!! YAY! We are watching that now and I am eating my wonderful cookie! Bed as soon as it is over. We have another full day tomorrow!!!

Pray Pray Pray!

Today was our first work day with our new group. We have a bit of a situation….We have another group similar to ours called AIM. Which means that we must work around each other for breakfast, dinner and all kinds of other things. For breakfast we must eat in the community room, which isn’t a huge deal, but not ideal. We are fine though and after breakfast we got started on missions around the church. I was in charge of the prayer table again for this group. It was different than last week because this group adults included were VERY nervous about praying and talking with people. They are Lutheran (which I have no clue what that means…..) but they told me that in their church no one prays out loud or tries to talk with people they don’t know. Well from a Baptist church this is so foreign to me!! I worked with them though and although they never prayed by themselves with people they did get to where they would talk to the people. They had a great time also! I was very happy with their progress I couldn’t even describe the change they made. We took a break for lunch then back out there for the afternoon! We quit for the day about 3:00 and Stacey and Sarah gave us freeze pops! I had a horrible headache all day because the night before Mark decided it would be funny to pull my feet out from under me. Well the result was I hit my head and had a headache from then until this afternoon about 9! So I took a nap for about an hour and a half before dinner. We ate dinner with AIM and then cleaned up before Worship. Worship was great! Sofia gave her talk and we had amazing praise. Then the praise team and our staff ate ice cream and socialized while the group had devotion time. We had a meeting with some of the adults from the group because they were having some issues with the kids with AIM, so we resolved those and then ate ice cream again with the youth group. Now it is lights out time for them and I’m also heading to bed soon to get some more sleep!! We will be having Worship tomorrow in Central Park YAY! Pray for me as always it is my time to speak!! 

Sunday brings in new campers!

Today we had to wake up pretty early for church. We traveled into Manhattan to go to The Journey church with Beth our worship leader. It was a great church and we had a lot of fun! They were talking about relationships and dating and such. It was funny because with us all being girls and everyone being single except me we talk about dating A LOT! It was great! Oh and I bet no one has ever sang Sweet Child of Mine in church have you?? Well we did this morning! haha Aimee if you are reading this I thought of you and how you find God in all kinds of songs! After church we went to lunch and a little shopping around town. I had an amazing waffle with all kinds of fruit! We came back to the church and I napped! I slept for about an hour then woke up to go to the grocery store. The new youth group got here and we hung out for a while. We went to this deli to grab supper then headed back to get worship together. We had a nice intimate worship because there are only nine people this week! It is going to be fun because we never have to split up this week!! After worship we gave them group time and then they headed straight to bed. They left Michigan at 2:00 am and they hadn't been to sleep since! None of the girls slept on the way here! So now we are watching a movie.....Bed will come soon!!