December 14, 2007
Thursday, September 27
Posted in ECMT Journal
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I took a 5 1/2 week mission trip with ACTION Impact Ministries (AIM) earlier this fall, and I'm going to start posting my journal entries for the trip. I'll include explanatory notes in [brackets], so hopefully you'll be able to kind of follow what's going on. Also, if you're interested in reading journal entries from my previous mission trip, check out CAMT Journal. Without further ado... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thursday, September 27, 2007 - 3:49 PM CT Somewhere east of Knoxville, TN Current Music: Stacie Orrico - "(There's Gotta Be) More to Life" We just picked Daniel Reyes up from the airport in our WONDERFUL 21-passenger bus. There's two seats on each side, with an aisle in the middle. The seats are comfy (no seatbelts - yay!) and high, so my backpack fits COMPLETELY under the seat in front of me. And right now there are only nine people in here, so I have two seats all to myself. It almost doesn't feel like a mission trip, it's so comfy! I guess I should introduce the nine. There's Daniel - about 20ish, assistant director. There's the Madrigals [Jorge and Kristi - the directors of the trip - and their three young children, from Branson], me, Jacob [another member of the Branson team], and Lauren Wolfenburger, from Kansas. She signed up less than two weeks ago, so she was finishing her application in the van! She and Jacob (and Kristi!) haven't been able to do much on their homework [assignments to be completed before the mission trip], but they've been working hard. So I'm a student leader, whatever that means.  All I know so far is that there are two - Ryan and I - and that Tess called as we were heading out the door and said for me to bring - are you ready? - a CELL PHONE! *gasp* Folks, we are witnessing a truly momentous occasion. [Cell phones are generally prohibited on AIM mission trips.]Mom and I got to Kristi's house at about 10:30, and I helped her with packing - especially reorganizing and inventorying shirts [AIM t-shirts to sell at workshops] - till we left at 1:30. Turns out I was supposed to bring a lunch, so Mom went to Country Mart and got me a lot of lunch food and junk food... including a Hershey bar! Since we were about to get in the van, that was breakfast. [Another mission trip rule: no chocolate in the van.]As I said, we left at 1:30. We arrived at the camp at 11:30, after sitting in a traffic jam for over an hour and making several wrong turns. We were all wiped. For a while, Jorge [the driver] and I were the only ones awake. We had fun though - rocked out to Veggie Tales. Good memories. Mission trip theme words: "discretionary" and "discriminatory." And maybe "spurt." Jorge is learning some new words. Jory and Tess [Rolf, directors of the national ministry, who were accompanying us for the first two weeks of the trip] didn't get in nearly as early as we did, sadly. They left Branson at - are you ready? - 10:00. Yes, that's PM. Evidently there were just a bunch of loose ends to tie up. I guess they pulled an all-nighter. I haven't heard the details yet, but they met us in Franklin to pick up the bus at 11:45 this morning, so unless they made REALLY good time (i.e. sped), they couldn't have had more than about four hours break, including gas/potty stops. I guess that's the highlights so far. I'm only writing the highlights - things I really want to remember, not just everything in chronological order. Oh, one more thing - I'm getting ahead on schoolwork. Done reading Module 5 (TOUGH!), and wrote an essay (I think it's really good) that I can use for both Wheaton and PHC [college applications]. This morning I had a really good prayer time. I'm really believing for a spiritual turnaround this trip. Signing off from the wilds of Tennessee, Katie |
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