Saturday, July 13, 2013

Chattanooga Recap

Hello everybody!

I am incredibly sorry for those of you who wanted to receive updates from our trip during the week while we were down in Chattanooga.

Free time was at an absolute premium, and I actually never had time to sit down and weed thru emails, write a blog, or even respond to some text messages.

I hope you all can forgive me.

Allow me to recap our week.

Sunday- We arrive Sunday evening around 6:30. We were 30 minutes late. Apparently middle school bladders are much smaller than anticipated, additionally we ran into a crazy amount of post 4th of July traffic which slowed us down. As we arrived we sat down ate dinner, and did some "Get-to-know-you" type of things while the leaders had a meeting.

Five other churches were present and in total we had about 74 people at this church all at one time.

We sat down as leaders, and got to know one another, while students played, and got some orientation type of stuff for the week.

After all of that we had "Club." Club is basically a mini "Youth Group" where all 74 of us crammed into a small room. Following Club which was games, songs, and a little short talk we broke up into church group time and debriefed the day.

Monday-Thursday Monday thru Thursday morning the days all looked similar.  UBC's group broke up into two different crews. In total there were five crews. Crews are a collection of students and leaders from all the different churches.  My crew was named the "Free" crew. Jake and Michelle led a crew called the "Seek" crew.

Free Crew: 
Nick
Elizabeth
Megan
Matthew
Parris

Seek Crew: 
Michelle
Jake
Bailey
Samantha
Caleb
Michaela
Cami

Each  morning we went out to a service site, ate lunch, then went to another service site.

Free crew
Monday: (AM) Kids club orientation (PM) Kids Club
Tuesday: (AM) Nursing home visits (PM) Kids Club)
Wednesday: (AM) Lookout Mountain clean up (PM) Nursing home visits
Thursday: (AM) YCap Youth Center (PM) Nursing home visits

Seek crew
Monday: (AM) Autobahn Acres clean up (PM) Nursing home visits
Tuesday: (AM) Autobahn Acres clean up (PM) Nursing home visits
Wednesday: (AM) Kids club orientation (PM) Kids Club
Thursday: (AM) Food Pantry (PM) Kids Club

After our PM service we would head back to the church for free time/shower time.

After showers we met up for dinner and then an evening activity.

Monday we went to a really cool place called Rock City.
Tuesday we went to a park with snow cones, a fountain, and some just played football or passed a frisbee.
Wednesday we went to a worship service at our host church called "Worship Out Loud."
Thursday night we grilled out at a park and the students swam in a lake, or other played in the sand.

After evening activity we had club and church group time then lights out by 10:30.



Thursday night was great where we had a footwashing service modeling the example laid out to us by Jesus. It was a very emotional night. Many students were crying as the Holy Spirit was moving in the room and was touching hearts.  Many students made commitments to follow Jesus or rededicate their lives to him. It was a very powerful night.

Friday- Friday morning we woke up super early, we cleaned up the church, then we hit the road!

It was a great trip! I want to again thank all of you who contributed financially or back home supporting us in prayer! We truly appreciated it. I know this was a life changing trip not only for all of our students, but also for many of our adult leaders.

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