Friday Afternoon at 5:15 Chris closes are staff meeting in prayer and 5 minutes later I am cranking up the 15 passenger van to start picking up my youth girls. (All girls in our youth group are my girls) First things first, I turn the air on full blast. We only have one setting on the air- off or full blast. Today I am thankful it is full blast because I have been in the van for 30 seconds and i can feel the sweat gathering behind me knees. For the next hour and a half I am driving through housing projects, down long driveways and onto dirt roads. Finally we have our crew and we arrive at the church building in just enough time to wash the truck and trailer for our float in the morning. The guys are already at work assembling the giant Mt. Adams that makes up our float. In a half hour we are out of day light and we gather around the fire pit to roast hotdogs and eat s'mores. Because it is Friday the 13th, the boys are coming up with creative ways to scare everyone. Chuck even bought color packets to casually throw into the fire to make it change colors. The boys are camping out at the building in tents, but the girls are all coming back to Veronica and my house. We load up in the van and I can hear whispers and the voice of a boy under the seats. I pretend I don't notice and pull away from the building, up the long driveway. The boy suddenly pops out from under the seats. "I'm in here! Let me out!" I keep driving, I hear the panic in his voice. I giggle to myself and keep driving until I am sure he has learned his lesson. I stop open the doors and let him run all the way back down the driveway to the safety of the other boys.
Back at my house the 12 girls find places to sleep. Then we pull out the nail polish and eat popcorn and red vines. No matter what age group is staying at our house, interns, high school, middle school or elementary age girls, they all love painting nails. So we had 14 of us ranging in age from 11-28 and everyone enjoys a new coat of polish on their toe nails and finger nails. At 10pm the hair straighteners come out, and half the girls straightened hair before bed. At 11 we start moving for bed. Half of the girls decided to move to a different bed than they had first chosen. At 12:30 I was fixing a curtain that had fallen down because of too much moving around in the room.
At a quarter to 8 I hear some of the girls beginning to wake. I almost have breakfast ready- blueberry muffins, bacon, peaches, and orange juice. As the girls begin to rise we eat breakfast in shifts, because there is not room for everyone at the table. They take turns rotating through our one bathroom. At 9:30 we are out the door and in 15 minutes we are on site assembling our float. As we hang streamers and attach balloons more and more kids from the youth group keeping arriving to help. Finally it is parade time and we are ready. Buckets of candy are in place. The walkers are ready to go and for the next 40 minutes we march down the main street in Harrah, tossing candy to those who came to watch. We won a trophy! After the parade there is a festival in the park. We take the youth over to get a bite to eat. Everyone is exhausted, so we don't stay long. We load up back into to steaming 15 passenger van and begin the drop off process.
Finally At 3:30 I am pulling back into my driveway still with one youth who is staying the weekend with me. We start to clean up the disaster in the house, but soon we collapse on the couch and watch High School Musical. Another youth comes over to join us. She has not been involved in youth ministry for the past year and we have missed her. I am so happy she is with us. At dinner she grabs my arm arm and lays her head on my shoulder. I smile. I am so glad she is coming back to us again. We venture out a few hours later to find some ice cream. We take it over the the Granberrys for a little ice cream party. They have a few extra little ones staying with them as well. The party doesn't last long because we are all tired and ready for bed.
Sunday morning is calm and relaxing. We eat a late breakfast and before we know it we were eating lunch. After lunch we head over the the Granberrys to get ready for Sunday night church. They have other youth from the community already there. Most of them spend the afternoon having a water balloon war. Mary and I are cooking with some help from one of the youth. Before long we are on our way to the long house to set up for church. We arrive and as we are unloading we have the excitement of getting a squirrel out of the long house. You never know what might be awaiting you when you open the doors of the long house. There have been many surprises over the years, dead and alive. Soon the buses start coming and people start arriving. It was a relatively normal night of church. besides the thunder and lightning storm that was going on outside during church. After church, clean up goes fast with the help of the youth. I say farewell to the youth and remind them of the game night we are having on Tuesday.
I get home at 10pm almost ready to crash. I eat a late snack, because I don't rarely eat any dinner on Sundays. I think through the weekend. I am so thankful for what I get to do.
