Day 6 - December 18 2005

These last few days have been so incredibely amazing! There are a bunch of new groups in from ohio, north Carolina, and Missouri, they’re kinda clueless, but we can help them out, since we’ve become experts on the running of this camp. These last few days have been great for the bonding of our group and our bonding with the staff here. Ricky one of the cooks is coming to visit us, sean is planning on moving to bend and Kevin, oh, Kevin, he’s become our tenth member, we would like to take him home with us, but I don’t think that is going to happen. Every night we have a chill out bonding time and the last few have been so great. The night before last we had a dance party and last night we had a massage chain and cuddle/chat time. Its not all been fun and games though, cleaning out the after school facilities was definitely a hard thing to do for a lot of the team. Not just because of the three month old chicken in the fridge, but all the kids art work and books that was completely destroyed and had to be tossed out onto the curb side with the rest of the trash. But overall I can say I would not trade a single second of this week for anything in the world and I just thank god for giving me this amazing opportunity, because it truly unbelievable!

~Heather

Day 6 – December 18, 2005

The camp has a sound system but only has three CD’s, Kenny G Christmas, WOW Christmas Worship, and John Mayer. We were getting a little tired of the selection so I busted out my iPod a few nights ago. I listened to Shawn MacDonald and everyone got hooked. The cook here at the camp had been listening to the CD for three days straight now. We go to bed and wake up to Shawny Mac every day and it’s great. The music had definitely impacted some of the people here at this camp. Ok well back to Saturday we got a very nice break that we all desperately needed. We worked half a day around the camp sorting clothes, organizing the camp store, and tying tracts onto candy canes. We drove down to the French quarter and surprisingly it is the most untouched part of New Orleans that I have seen. It is a very beautiful place and somewhere that I would like to come back and visit. We wandered around and went into a lot of shops. The most incredible place we went into was an Old Catholic church. The inside was covered with amazing murals. We then got to eat out for the first time this week and it was amazing. We were the only ones in this restaurant at 5 o’clock on a Saturday evening. We went to an authentic Cajun restaurant and everyone had a mixture of creole, gumbo, and jambalaya but of course I had to stick with some BBQ ribs and they were delicious. After I scarfed them down along with some onion rings, French fries, and artichoke dip we had dessert. Of course I went with the chocolate dish called chocolate suicide and man was it suicide. We then called it a night and while I was in the bathroom the rest of the group thought that it would be hilarious to leave without me. Not only did my group leave me stranded but also the waitress locked me in the restaurant because she had thought everyone had left. Everyone got a good laugh out of that one. Overall the day was amazing. Our group has really bonded together and we have all been very humbled by everything that we have been part of down here. It’s difficulty to feel like we have made any kind of difference in a week but I truly believe that we have made a small impact. In him,

~Kyle