Passing the half way mark of our week of service also meant getting past the cloudy weather this morning. All of us who don't wake up before the crack of dawn, which is everyone but Zach, woke up to beautiful weather this morning. The Palmetto state looks great in the gentle sunshine of the morning.
The beautiful weather also combined with a morning following a great session of reflection last night. We're having good insights of connecting our trip to MAB principles such as Communicate Love, and we are feeling comfortable together. When Cara complimented the way we don't have cliques, Radiance pointed out, "We are the clique." That means all twelve of us. 12 people out of 33,000 people getting along and interested in one another's own lives is something special.
But beautiful weather and coming off great reflection couldn't save us from complications that are out of our control. A cacophony of raw oysters and other fish of the sea didn't go down well for some of us. Our bellies reminded some of us of what we ate last night first thing in the morning.
With the entire fish population of the entire Atlantic Ocean in our bellies, we were then faced with morning traffic. Who would have guessed that Charleston traffic peaks on Thursday morning? But it did. Despite our efforts to find alternate routes with our not so savvy GPS skills, we arrived at the food bank close to an hour late.
But we didn't let this get us down. We applied another MAB principle, Be Gumby. We went to work on sorting food items with positive attitudes. Our positivity was further supplemented by getting to see Chris. He always brings a surplus of high spirits and gratefulness. He has shown compassion towards us the entire week and a positive attitude that keeps our mornings exciting.
At the conclusion of our visit to the food bank Cara pointed out the progress we had made. We went through an entire two stories of pallets all along the back wall of the room we work in. Maybe we should make ourselves sick with fried seafood before every morning! Before leaving the Food Bank, Clint continued to amaze us with his healthy eating habits by bringing a bag of frozen, expired peas that he managed to prepare in the Food Bank volunteer lounge.
After the food bank, we got to enjoy today's beautiful weather in a position other than the traffic jam we faced earlier. We returned once again to the park. Here we made some more friends, the mosquitos. There we enjoyed a calm lunch and played on a kick butt playground. Sami impressed us all by going all out on a spinning playground device that must have been infested with germs.
We arrived early to WINGS. This meant the opportunity to have a chat with the program's director, Ashley. Ashley expressed to us her sincere wish for us to have a great experience and wanted to know how WINGS compared to our expectations. She also let us know that living by the WINGS creed is a challenge even for her. Not only do the kid's strive to follow the creed's ideas of being emotionally aware and responsible, but the WINGS leaders themselves are constantly reminding themselves to stay on track. This is a great thing about WINGS. It's teaching both the kids and the WINGS leaders life lessons everyday. We all are starting to quote the WINGS creed outside of our afternoons at Chicora.
After this talk, the swarm of the 156 kids started coming in the door and the music started beating, and we began another day at WINGS. As usual, this meant a splitting up of our MAB group to accommodate the various WINGS nests. There, we once again had a joyous time of bonding with children and gaining experience to turn into insights during our nightly reflection. The afternoon concluded with a hoola hoop contest that even we, the "Mizzou visitors" got to take part in.
After WINGS, the two awesome site leaders, Cara and Kayla, planned a special dinner for us. We barely came back to the house for a quarter of an hour before booking it to a campsite to grill some burgers, hotdogs, and S'mores. This involved plenty more of our mosquito friends, painful smoke in our eyes, and Zach proving to us that his cooking skills extend from the kitchen to the outdoors as he is involved in Boy Scouts. We also learned an interesting thing about Sami. He goes through jeans in about four months because he also gets a rip in the crotch area that is due to the way he walks.
Once cooking a ball of lettuce seemed in vain and the embers of the fire dimmed off, we headed back to Folly beach and our cozy house that we're staying in. We are scrubbing the campfire smoke off and preparing for another night of reflection. Tomorrow will be our last day of service. It's hard to believe how fast time has flown by and how soon we will be on the road again. But this calls for us to apply another MAB principle, This Is It. Tomorrow we will top off the great time we're having with Chris and his mice friends at the food bank and the opportunity we had to meet all the WINGS kids and leaders.
No comments:
Post a Comment