The Challenge Diaries- Day 8
July 4th 2008. Happy independence day! I know Challenge was over by now, but the trip definitely wasn’t. We FINALLY got to sleep in for the first time in a week and we were sure happy. I woke up at about 9:30 or 10. We got dresses, packed up, and Laura offered to share some Starbucks coffee with me. I really do love her. But the best part was buying the coffee because the barista was like super enthusiastic and 10 times nicer than anyone I’ve met in Miami. She did not believe in saying anything else but, “Of course!”. I probably could have said, “Can I tell you that you’re creeping me out right now?” and she’d be like, “Of course!” Good stuff. The rest of the group was also in the lobby drinking Starbucks, just sitting around and eating cereal for breakfast. We weren’t really doing much else but watching some news footage of a hot dog eating contest. Pretty gross, let me tell you.
You thought the meetings were over, didn’t you? Well I lied. We had another meeting in the lobby. Nothing about Challenge, though, just about our plans for the day. We were going to pack everything into the van and check out of the hotel [I already felt like it was my home. I miss my bed!]. Then we would walk to the Gateway Mall that was just a couple blocks away to pass the time. Then at 2:30, we would drive over to a nearby park, where Alfred [from the Dream Center] was going to be having a carnival sort of thing for the 4th of July, where we would be helping out by manning booths and stuff for the whole day and then we would see fireworks there at night. We were actually ready on time for once [well except for Mark]. We loaded up the van and the guys drove while the girls walked to the mall. We’re just hardcore like that, is all.
We got to this train station thingy that served as an entrance to the mall and then headed straight for the food court. We each had 5 bucks to spend so I went to the taco place there and ordered a burrito, but had extra money to spend. I looked at the sides and noticed that there was an item called, “Mexi-Fries”. I had no clue what those were, so I asked and I almost laughed out loud when the guy said they were tater tots. And he said it as if it was totally normal for taco places to serve tater tots. Whatever, I ordered them. I sat down with my burrito and my tots and got ready to eat. Now if the plain fact that this place called Taco Time served tater tots wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that their burrito stunk and their tater tots were the most amazing tater tots I have ever tasted in my whole life. I mean, not many tater tots are picture worthy. I ended up not really eating my burrito, so I just took some of Brie’s nachos and took Mia’s breadstick. Yay for carbs.
We then headed walked around the mall for a bit more, but soon enough it was time to get going to the park. We were greeted by Alfred when we got there and he told us about the games he had set up and everything that was going on. I manned the ‘Krazy Kans’ [so incorrectly spelled, but whatever] and the ‘Ring Toss’ station. It turns out that a group from Iowa [by the way, like half of the people at Challenge were from there] was gonna help out, too, so this guy named….Uh this guy with a name I can’t remember [Trevor? Isaac? Jacob?] help me with my station. The rest of the day simply consisted of me talking to little kids there, handing out prizes, and getting squirted with little squirt rings. Wasn’t too bad. There was this one time, though, that this little girl just stood in front of my table with a ticket but said nothing and did nothing. I so I go up to her and ask her if she wanted to play, and she has no type of response whatsoever. I try English, I try Spanish [since most of these kids were refugees], I try hand motions, and nothing happens. I don’t know any other language, so I simply just gave up.
Some people from the Dream Center that help Alfred out, then came to relieve us from some of our duties. So after that, I gave out tickets, ate pizza, and played with my biffle Rani [remember her?]. Fireworks were gonna start at around 9-10, since in the West the sun sets at like 9 [how awesome]. We cleaned up and helped pack everything up then we headed over to a nice big patch of grass and situated ourselves to watch the fireworks. But before that, we faced a near-death experience. Some stupid lady was there throwing little fireworks like all the other lunatics that were there and didn’t notice we were right behind her. So she goes to throw it back and almost smacks us with the explosive in her hand. She then realizes that this not a very good situation, curses a bit, and throw it in back of us, missing me by about an inch. Thank you Lord for having mercy on me.
When we were all safe, we sat in the grass, working on impossible little puzzle things, taking pictures or playing with kazoos [Mark took mine. I never got it back]. Then we watched the fireworks for a while and left at around 10:30-11ish. We were originally planning to stay at the Dream Center, but Alfred said that he would take us to a church where he has people stay when they come. We went and it was pretty cool. They had an indoor gym and everything. So after the baby was in a room upstairs, we played some basketball and volleyball, both at which I thoroughly suck at. But it was still pretty fun. Then we went upstairs to our assigned rooms, girls got the children’s nursery. We got dressed and set up our makeshift beds on the floor and got ready to sleep. But then the other girls started flipping out and getting scared for any little sound, and as amusing as it was for them, I bet Nic and Laura didn’t really enjoy that. Eventually we did sleep, though, and got mentally prepared for the day ahead.
Add comment July 18, 2008
July 3rd, 2008. I actually woke up feeling really bummed. Not because the day before stunk and not because I thought this day was gonna suck but because this was the last official day of Challenge. Boo hoo. We went to our last breakfast [sad] and had the crappiest waffles of life. I still thought of it as special, nevertheless. We had our last Bible study meeting at 8, which was pretty sad as well. It seems that it’s only during summer when ‘last’ things are bad. But it was a good study, as usual and we prepared for our last day of ministry. We headed to the last morning rally where Starfield played their [second-to-last] set, which was great as usual. Then a great speaker came up named
July 2nd 2008. Now let me tell you now to get ready. If you thought all my other posts were long, this one is gonna be ginormous. Wednesday was an interesting day for me. So I started off with the usual. Woke up at around 7-ish, headed to breakfast, went to a meeting/bible study at 8. No biggie, right? I felt like the week had already gone by so quickly. And during this whole I week I kept on harrassing Nic about not letting me meet starfield because he always put me to work. I talked to him about it and he said that after the rally he would let me have free time to go meet them if I got back soon enough. I was super jazzed and hoping/praying that Starfield would be there after the rally. The rally was great and J.D. told the story of Rack, Shack, and Benny [Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Ah I love Veggie Tales]. It was cute how he gave King Nebuchadnezzar [ha I spelled that right on the first try] nicknames like ‘Neb-dog’, ‘The Nebster’, etc. But that wasn’t what was so great abotu the rally, actually. But I mean it’s always great when you can
July 1st 2008. I woke up a bit later today [30 minutes makes a difference!]. I put my Hawaiian shirt back on and went off to start another long, but great, day at Challenge. I tried to control myself more when it came to breakfast and it worked. Mostly. At around 8, our group met for a Bible study and after that I continued highlighting maps. Then we headed off to the 4th rally. Starfield sang more songs, mostly the same ones over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, though, they’re awesome.
June 30th, 2008. The first Challenge ministry day. We wake up at about 6:30 am [ew], get ready, and head to our first Challenge breakfast. I had some yummy eggs, hash browns, a danish, a croissant, AND bacon [which tasted like they had been nicely stacked
June 29th 2008. It’s the first official day of Challenge. Doesn’t really consists of working. Youth groups start pouring in from different parts of the country and begin to register. This day felt so long I won’t probably remember all of it, but I’ll try. We woke up and ate cereal for breakfast with some funky orange juice. I’m pretty sure we had a meeting that morning seeing as we had one like 3 or 4 times a day. We talked about more ministry stuff and how that day was crazy registration day. We set up our little registration table where all the churches who were serving that week would come and we would put them into the system and all that good stuff. It was lunch time before we knew it but we had to pay for it ourselves. I, not wanting to spend any money, starved myself, [just kidding. I had half of Laura's taco] but still walked to Carl’s Jr. with the group for the sake of going Carl’s Jr. because I had heard so much about it, and we don’t have those in Florida. We ran into some other groups from Challenge, some with very nice Southern accents and some with very nice skateboards.
June 28th 2008. I woke up at like 7 am with major jet lag. But this was good jet lag, I guess. I felt like I had slept for so long and was so sure it was like 10 but I had only gotten 5 hours of sleep. Weird. Whatever. Nic brought us some breakfast which included donuts and coffee from a place called Winchell’s. This place is apparently very popular in Vegas/Nevava/The West, but I had never heard of it. I didn’t really care, those donuts are freaking epic. SO good. Unfortunately the coffee was only for the people driving 5-6 hours up to Utah. Boo hoo. I settled for some OJ. We got dressed, packed up, and hung out for a bit. I talked on the phone with my mother [again], Christine, and Vanessa. Then Michael came back but it was sort of creepy. He came in without me noticing and left without me noticing. My friend Hannah didn’t notice either so I took advantage of the situation [and Hannah's extreme guillibility] and told her that he was just a mirage. She thought she was crazy…until he came back. It was funny while it lasted, though.
It was June 27th 2008. I woke up at about 8 in the morning and was getting ready to head to camp for the last time in the next 10 days. I sure was excited. I was even more anxious to go when I realized that the little kids were especially evil that day. The time seemed to be going by so slowly that day, I was going crazy. I’m surprised that the kids haven’t held that day against me and haven’t subsequently dubbed me ‘The Evil Coach’. As much as I wanted to leave I was also saddened by the fact that this was the last time I would see my Wisconsinite friends




