My Mission Trip

Hi everybody! It's me, Rachel. My mom wanted me to write about my mission trip to Dallas. Well, here it goes.

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As some of you might know, this was my first time flying. I found it was just like riding in a car... only 3,200 feet in the air.

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Because of some of the flight delays, we didn't do much the first day. So I'll just skip to Day 2. We started making posters and working on skits for the VBS we were going to do on Days 3 and 4. In the afternoon, we went out and racked a couple widows lawns. However, my MIG (that was my mission group) went out and picked up trash along the curb. Then we went back to the white house (that was where we stayed) and had dinner and a church session.

Day 3 was the first day of VBS. WE got somewhere between 15-20 kids the first day. Some of the leaders where expecting a few more than that. You see, this church has so many outreaches, some thought it was a church with a couple thousand people in it. It turns out the maximum occupancy is 216 and the 60 people from our group took up about a third of the congregation that Sunday. But the kids that were there seemed to have a lot of fun. After the three hour program, we went back to the white house and had lunch. We went and cleaned up some yards again and then got showers.

I'm going to take a quick break and tell you about the house we stayed at. There were two bathrooms for 60 people. We had 20-30 minutes to get ready for bed. That did not work so well, but we managed. For showers we went to the "Clothing Closet" which had about 20 showers in it. They hadn't opened it to the public, but the purpose of it was for the homeless. They could get a shower then get a new set of clothes. We were the first people to use it. OK, back to the trip itself.

On Day 4, we continued with our VBS. We had a couple more kids that day. In the afternoon, we did more service projects. We cleaned up a yard that had a ton of leaves in it. As Day 4 was New Years Eve, we stayed up and went to Parks Manor. This is a local nursing home. we went and visited with the residents there. We then went back to the white house and had a little party.

On the fifth day of the trip, we met a woman named Judy. She had once owned the most popular club in that part of Dallas. There would be hundreds of people on her corner. Some where prostitutes, drug dealers, and others that were up to no good. In January of 2009, she became a Christian and she shut down her club. Well, when she had some money, she paid someone to paint her house blue and green. It was at that point pitch black. Long story short, the man ran away with her money. So that is what I did for Day 5 and Day 6.

Day 7 was our last day so we all said our goodbyes. We went to the airport in two shifts. The first shift was, if you left before 1 pm, you left for the airport at 2:30 am. The second shift was the one I went with. It had everyone that was left. We had to be at the airport at 6:00 am. So sitting in an airport for about eleven hours is a fairly long time.

Anyway, just a little side note before I finish up, everyday we had PB&J sandwiches. I have to say, I don't think I will have another for the next couple months. I hope everyone enjoyed this post. If you have any questions about anything we did down there or just the trip in general, you can leave it as a comment and I can answer it. Bye!