Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Monday

Rise and shine at 7:00am! Breakfast upstairs.
Another great breakfast by Chef Priest.

Our first stop of the morning, only an hour away, was to the Virginia Drive Thru Safari. Being so close to nature and the beautiful, wild animals that God created was just awe inspiring. We had the joy of taking a wagon ride through the safari then exploring the rest of the zoo. Here are some snapshots.
                                                      Petting zoo area
                                                   Not all wild animals were in cages. hehe
                                                 Armed with bowls of food, we are off
                                                   llama llama
                                                    The elks were beautiful
                                                    Tracy has her new friend eating our of her hand
                                                   Sam wasn't too sure about petting the snake
                                                    Landon didn't mind TOO much
                                                   This is how you pet a snake without getting too close
                                                   Jensen needed encouragement.....4 times! :-)
                                                    The aviary was really cool too
                                                   The birds loved Hannah
                                                     Jenny found new friends too
                                                   Yes, Sam put her feeding sticks on her head
                                                  While Tracy refused to pet the snake, the birds flocked to her


After this fun filled morning, we headed to Westminster Canterbury Retirement facility. This place is BEYOND amazing! After a dinner of pizza, we entertained almost a room full of lovely residents. These places always touch the children's hearts. I wish you could see how comfortable they are mingling and talking with these older people. A few years ago, most of them were scared to even approach residents. Now, they are laughing and joking and learning with these amazing people. I had the joy of playing a Steinway that had been donated by a resident that used to teach piano. She just recently had to move to the assisted living portion of the facility and could not take the piano with her. She is now 104 years old. The residents praised how there are still youth that are not only Christians but are willing to travel and share God's message. We are truly blessed to have the youth that we do in our church and families. 



Back to the dorms for Bible Study, God moment sharing, Tribal Council voting and the nightly challenge. Tonight, the kids were BEANBOOZLED! For those of you that may not know what bean boozled is, it's a collection of jelly beans that have flavors such as lime or grass clippings, coconut or spoiled milk, and other delicious flavors. The goal was to find the one that could outlast the others in eating the jelly beans. Ethan, Mason and Jenny did not give up. Lindsey didn't quite make it.









Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

 What a blessed day it was. We began our morning with breakfast by Frank.
Pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes and other goodies

Our first performance of the day was at Bethany UMC. It was such a cozy church. There were several of their youth there. We were thrilled to have Mr. & Mrs. Santiago to join us again for this concert.
After the service, the youth director feed us grilled burgers and dogs. Several of the youth hung out and chatted. They sent us away with COOKIES! We stayed for a while just enjoying the beautiful day before we headed to our next performance.


Our next performance for the day was at Timberlake UMC. Most of the kids (and adults) took this opportunity to nap. I would post some cute pictures of this but Mr. Izzo threatened to make me ride UNDER the bus if I did. :-)

We arrived and set up then were fed an amazing pot luck style dinner. We had the joy of eating with many of the congregants and made many new friends.

We had a very good concert to a fairly large congregation. I apologize for not having pictures from this concert but I left my phone on the bus. 

Once we returned to the dorm, we had our Bible study time, Tribal counsel voting and our nightly challenge. Tonight's challenge was a little easier to stomach. They family groups had to put together identical jigsaw puzzles....without the picture to go by.



The candy bar family group won once again.