Well I better get an April post in.

I think I will start out this one by reflecting a little on Easter. The last week has certainly been hectic, but it really made Easter different this year. Again we had both sides of the family over for lunch, though we were missing a few. A nice time to catch up and reflect. Then Meg and I headed over to her Uncle's house for their get-together. In each instance, it is amazing to see the family love. Not a lot of families are like ours, and I very happy and blessed for both.

Meg, got a job offer in Mishawaka. I am absolutely ecstatic! I am so happy for her and for us. She has worked very very hard, and I really hope this job pays her off. Wedding planning is moving a long, and though it is not absolutely concrete yet, the day we are planning for is September 19th.

Last week I took the week off of work to help "chaperon" for the youth group mission trip to Galveston, TX. I still have not quite been able to process all of what took place in the last week, but I will try and get some of my thoughts out there. Let me get some complaining out of the way first. 2400 miles round trip on a school bus sucks. There is no other way to describe it. Though there were lots of laughs and 'engineering' that took place on the trip, I'll save that for another time.

On the way down, we were planning on making a quick stop for a splash of diesel, and we weren't even letting the kids get off the bus. We had already lost so much time, we needed to keep going. Well some of the adults got off the bus to stretch and such, and we came across a man who asked us what we were doing/where we were going. We replied that we were on our way to Texas to help with hurricane relief and that the youth group were doing this for their spring break. The man informed us that he was/is a pastor at a church in the area where we had stopped and that he wanted all the kids off the bus to buy a snack. We asked if he was sure and he said of course. So as the kids were piling off we were telling them to respectful and of course thank the man for his generousity. The kids all went in a grabbed a small treat, and when the man went inside to pay told all the kids to go stuff their pockets full, and to not just get 1 piece of candy, to get handfuls! It was amazing that we were stopped at that very same time in the same place as that man. We were told to expect the unexpected on this trip, and we hadn't even made it to Texas yet. (sidenote: the man said if we stopped back again on the way home, we could do the same thing)

Well after what seemed like forever, we finally made it to the church/ TeamEffort headquarters. It actually was right across the road from Johnson Space Center, that was pretty neat. We were told before the trip that all of us would have a bunk bed to sleep in. Wrong. The girls all had bunk beds, and the guys got to sleep on the most uncomfortable cots ever made. The last night, I slept on the floor.

Tuesday morning rolls around. Surprisingly I was wide awake after not getting much sleep the past 2 nights. When we finally made it to the job-site it was decided that I along with about 14 others of our group would work at a Baptist church hanging drywall in their basement that had been flooded. Neat. I had never hung drywall, but I learned very quickly. It was a very neat experience. It was a lot of fun and very encouraging to see kids who had never done a job like that before take to it, and learn, and by the last day, actually become pretty good at what they were doing. My partner that was working with me, most likely had never seen a screw gun before the missions trip, and by the 2nd and 3rd day she was sinking screws perfectly into the drywall and hardly ever missing the studs. It was awesome. The first day it looked like we had hardly gotten anything done, and it was a little discouraging, but by the end of day 3, it was amazing to see how much a rag tag group of people could accomplish. I really think we wanted to stay to make sure what we had started got finished, but that just wasn't in the deck of cards.

It was a lot of fun getting to hang out with all the kids, and getting to know them. They are all so different, but so much fun. All of them were great, and very few problems!

Going into the week I had so much on my mind, and it all seemed to melt away during the trip. It was a true refresher, even though it was by no means a vacation. I guess I would say it was more of a mental and spiritual refresher as opposed to a physical refresher. Our last worship service on Thursday night was very filling. It really made me think more about the Easter Sunday that was approaching.

Overall it was an excellent week, and I definitely would like to go on another one if the opportunity arises. There is so much more that I could talk about, it is just so hard to remember it all and how to get it down into text.


I didn't get this proofread so excuse any mistypes...

Chuff