Life in the Trenches

Sadly, I didn't ge tthe chance to leave an update yesterday, but I'll be sure to fill you all in this one. We woke up bright and early yesterday and watched Conan O'Brien at 7 in the morning (meaning it was midnight in PA). We got a pretty big kick out of that. We had a short orientation meeting with the pastor of the church and then we split up into groups to deviler newspapers across the entire town (which is no small task, I assure you). The girls (and Nate) delivered papers for hours on end while a few of us went back to help out the interns with their sports camps. It was a lot of fun to try and communicate with the young swedish kids and to see how some of the bilingual ones operated in the crowd. Later we organized and executed the first day of the VBS program. It went extemely well. We did some memory verse and name memorizing, played ''Duck, Duck, Goose'' and had an amazing Swedish meal prepared by some of the women in the church. We ended the day (the sunlight lasts about 20 hours over here!!) with a group meeting where we planned out the rest of the week.

Ok, now onto today's activities. We all woke up and spent a few hours leading the morning VBS program. We made some kites with the kids and ''Sheryl the Crow'' (played by the lvoely and talented Ariana Gubba) taught the chil'n all about the story of Joseph. A few of us (the lovely and talented Shaffer Brothers to be exact) helped out with the final day or sports camps and played some more football and tennis with the kids. Next Nate and Heather worked on building a roof for a billboard structure and the rest of the guys worked on renovated the baseball field and helping out with the little league practice going on there. The team that is assemlbed there is actually going to Poland to play in the National European Champships next week! The group is also hard at work at building a trench around the baseball field (guys) and doing some housework for the locals (gals).

So that brings me to the present, which means its about 10 AM, Thursday in PA right now. Tonight we'll be going to various people's houses to eat dinner and we're having a bonfire tonight to burn up all the brush we gathered around the baseball field today. Tomorrow will probably be our most labor intensive day, with a lot of labor and VBSing to be done. Unfortunately, due to some technical difficulties (mainly important cords that were in the lost luggage) we can't put up any pictures of the trip until tonight. The good news is is that luggage has finally come in and Nate, Eric, Arianna, and Jonathan finally smell like decent human beings again. We sgould lots of entertaining videos and pictures on this blog sometime within the next 24 hours!