The Bells of Christ Church Update Day Three

The Bells of Christ Church

Outreach Tour to Appalachia & the Carolinas

June 20-27, 2010

Day Three (June 22nd)

FUN DAY! FUN DAY! FUN DAY! 

This morning I began our wake up call at 7:00 am, and once again most of the youth were moving pretty quickly.  At 7:30 I made my rounds and knocked on each of our hotel room doors to make sure the youth were ready.  I found that youth were either about to walk out the door or did not answer because they were already downstairs eating breakfast... until I got to the boys room.  I knocked on the door, but no answer.  I went downstairs, but no boys there.  I again knocked on the door (for about 5 minutes), and no answer.  Finally I went to the front office and asked for a spare key to get the boys up.  The manager handed me two keys one was labeled "master" and the other was labeled "janitor."  I'm pretty sure I had a key that would have opened any room in the hotel.  It scared me a bit that they handed it over so easily, but I have to admit I felt pretty powerful.  I only used the key to open the boys room and they woke up and were dressed and ready to go in about 3 minutes.  The beauty of boys is that they don't worry about hair or makeup before walking out of the hotel room.

Soon we were all on the bus and heading to the rafting company.  We arrived at the rafting company about an hour later.  The next 45 minutes was filled with a 15 minutes seminar on rafting safety and getting our helmets and lifejackets.  We loaded up on an old school bus and headed to the river for about a four hour trip.  About half way through our trip we paddled over to bank and had a sandwich lunch.  During the trip we rafted through class 1-3 rapids.  Each raft has it's own inside jokes and stories, but I only know the ones from my raft.  My raft was most of the boys, or as we called ourselves "The Bros."  We called each other "Bro."  We ended our sentences with the word "Bro."  We call this speaking in Bro-eze.  We even said "bro" each time our paddles hit the water instead of "stroke."  Most of Heather's small group was in a rafting shouting out numbers for their strokes (1! 2! 3!).  The other portion of her small group and Heather attempted to compete, but counting strokes in German (Ein! Zwei!).

We were all wore out when we returned from rafting, but somehow we all mustered the energy to head across the street to the Fun Depot.  Our hotel gave us a sweet deal on tickets, which were good for the batting cage, putt putt, go carts, bumper cars, lazer tag, and all the video games we could play (ALOT).

After the fun depot we headed to downtown Ashville, NC for dinner at Mellow Mushroom and ice cream at the Marble Slab.  Back to work tomorrow!!