Hello wonderful world!
First off I want to apologize to all of you out there for not posting in over two months. My summer has been crazy busy. Hopefully I'll be posting more once school starts. Now, since I am on a time crunch I'm going to get to the rest of this blog post:
You're probably wondering about the title of this post, I'll clear that up for you. You see, I recently went on a missions trip to South Dakota with my youth group. We went to a little town called Martin, the population is about 1100 people, half of whom are Native American. The town was very run down. It was in need of some help, which we came to give.
The trip started with an eight hour van ride without air conditioning. It was hot! When we finally got there we pulled up in our old, discolored van and plywood trailer, blasting classic rock. The other youth groups, which were from Minnesota, and that we would be serving with stared at us with strange looks
on their faces. We were that weird, crazy, diverse group from Colorado, and that was fine.
The next day we were split up into groups, each group did different projects. My close friends were in other groups, which kind of scared me. I didn't want to have to meet new people on top of being in a new place and having new experiences, so the first couple of days I really didn't talk to anyone. I just did the work. Then, the day before we left, I started talking with one of the youth groups. They were awesome people. I made some best friends that day. Our youth group got really close as well, now my youth group is basically my second family.
In our groups we did projects. The first day I painted a house. It was a pretty small mobile house, but it took a lot of effort to get it done. My wrists were very sore at the end of the day, but I felt good that we helped someone out. The second day we visited a nursing home. We played bingo with the residents, who really enjoyed it. They told us stories and talked a lot with us. One of the men had lost both his legs in war. Another one laughed at everything you'd say and bragged about being the bowling champion. I enjoyed our time spent there. The third day I helped with their children's outreach. It was basically a disorganized VBS. The kids were so thirsty for the love and attention that they were deprived of at home. They loved sitting in your lap, and a piggy back ride was like a roller coaster for them. It was hard having to leave at the end of the day.
The next morning I painted a house. It sounded like a simple project, but when we got there we discovered that the house was infested with cockroaches. There were a lot of people living in that house, a two year old girl was walking around without clothes on. It was normal for her, but I felt like it wasn't safe to be in that house even for two minutes. It was a sad arrangement for those kids. That afternoon I went to visit the kids again. I gave so many piggy back rides that my back and hips hurt, but it was worth it for that look of pure joy on those children's faces.
Having to say goodbye the next morning was harder than anything I had to do that week. It was harder than the cockroaches and the piggy back rides. I cried. A lot. I had fallen in love with Martin, South Dakota and all of it's inhabitants. It was such an amazing week, definitely one of the best weeks of my life and I wouldn't have rather done anything else. God used me to do wonderful, simple things in order to further his kingdom, and that is an amazing and beautiful thought.
Arielle
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| Mount Rushmore |
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| The whole group that was serving in Martin |
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| We were cleaning paint brushes |
I am going on another trip with my youth group at the end of this month. We will be going to Waco, Texas to do a poverty simulation. Basically, we will be going three days without our luxuries of our everyday life. No phone, no showers, no shelter even. It will be very physically straining. We will learn what it's like to have nothing and know how much it means to people in poverty when we help them out. It will be a very exciting trip, and even though it will be hard I'm looking forward to it. I'll definitely be telling you all how it went. Your prayers would be very much appreciated.
