Nashville - Children/Health

This is a story all about how our lives got flipped turned upside down…wait, wrong story. When you hear the words, "Monroe Harding," what do you think of? If you think of underprivileged adolescents that will teach you more about yourselves, you would be correct. Listening to a military style "merit" system and how some young adults have never learned the fundamentals of passion, respect, and nurturing for others really opens one's eyes to how we should never take our parents for granted.

After completely redoing the landscape in the vicinity (ie, pulling weeds, laughing, sharing stories, and talking about nerd-ing out), we made the long trek to Kindred Spirits to have our hearts warmed, even though the temperature was below freezing.

Kindred Spirits was designed to "reach special needs, terminally ill, and battered children through horse interaction." A young lady introduced us to all of her horses and we all bonded with her dog. Especially Emily. We met a real charming horse named Romeo. At least, we thought he was until he decided Yuliya's finger looks like a tasty treat. Luckily, Martine is a nurse and was able to patch her up.

Although our van temporarily turned into an ER vehicle, we decided to take a trip down to The Parthenon, which is a full-scale replica of the Parthenon built in Athens. Unfortunately, museums being museums, The Parthenon was closed on Mondays so we quickly took a photo in the frigid temperature and scurried back into our vans. Being in Nashville and all, we thought it would be good to do something other than stalk Taylor Swift so we drove to Vanderbilt University to check out our SEC rivals. Beautiful gardens and abstract sculptures surrounded the campus, but nothing compares to Mizzou. After exploring their Greek town and photobombing as many photos as we could, we returned to the bookstore and went home.

Tim and Rachel were tasked with cooking our dinner, which after going to a house named "Kroger's" instead of the grocery, prepared chicken fingers, mac and cheese, veggies, and baked potatoes. After our dinner, we spend the rest of the night learning about each other's opinions through diversity training and opening our eyes to how others feel on issues. We concluded this night by watching "The Perks of being a Wallflower" and falling asleep content.

Today, we were able to sleep in until around 9 before we began performing some routine maintenance around the church we were staying. Cleaning the basement to prepare for a yard sale, attempting to screw in shelves into drywall, and just cleaning the area describes our morning. After having some plans fall through because of the weather, our wonderful site leaders were able to find something for us to do. We went to Tennessee Baptist Children's Home and learned about some children who were orphans and were placed in the car of families. Unfortunately, we were unable to meet with the children (damn you background check waits), but we were able to clean up the entire lower level and learn more about the mission. We parted ways with our new friend and returned home to play miscellaneous games while the lovely Emily and Jo Marie prepared an exquisite Mexican meal. After dinner, the back massage circle ensued. After making inappropriate jokes and kneading knots out of each other, we began to watch "Looper." And, that, is where we leave off for tonight.