Mission Trip--part 1

On Sunday July 20th I left my cozy bed to spend 1 week with 10 teenagers (that I knew, and countless others I didn't) in Mahanoy City, PA. Three potty breaks, 1 gas stop, and 10 hours later we arrived. On the first night there, we do games with other church groups to get to know each other, eat supper, go over the rules, have an adult leader mtg, & settle in for the next 5 days. Seems mundane enough right? Well yes, unless you've got a group of people who hate you and will try anything to see how far they can push you. Here I will chroncile some of the happenings from those days.

So while I and the other AL (adult leader) are in our meeting the kids are also in a meeting getting the rules and rundown of the week. While we are in this meeting we have to split our group into two groups that will be integrated with other churches. AL and I are each heading up our own groups and so we split them with intentionality put towards who gets along with whom and so forth. These groups are then assigned their projects for the week. Each group gets to spend 2 days at Kids Club, which is like a daycamp for the local children. The other 2 days are broken up with work projects (like painting or yard clean-up), helping at a local non-profit (in this case the local library), and visiting the elderly at nursing homes.

Before I go any further I will outline the rules which are very simple and in place for safety reasons as well as giving the youth the best opportunity to encounter God.

1. Their clothing must be appropriate. This means no tank tops or short shorts, or offensive ads/logos.
2. No cell phones or MP3s, etc. I collected these as they exited the van upon arrival.
3. Stay in groups with a minimum of 3 with at least 1 AL.
4. Do not go anywhere w/o telling an AL.

Pretty simple right?

Within the first day I had problems with #2. There were several who would not give up their cells and I had to forcibly take them away. Now, I'm as much of a cell phone junkie as the rest and as an AL I got to keep mine for emergency situations but I was not using it at all. I later found out that as they were unloading the trailer (where I had stashed them for safe keeping) several of them retrieved their phones and kept them to themselves.

Day 1 is pretty uneventful. My group got to go to Kids Club while the other group painted a porch. It wasn't until we all gathered back together in the late afternoon when the fun started.