All is well on the Vermont front. We had a few chilly days but now it is warm and sunny again. This past week has been a combination of business in all of our preparation, meetings with service partners, and some awesome team bonding. I do really have a great team, which is going to make for a wonderful summer.
My group has been blessed with some time to relax and hang out with the community this weekend. Saturday we went hiking with Pastor Pete (the pastor at the church we are staying at, Roadside Chapel) at Pine Hill Park, which is a gorgeous area with hiking and biking trails. That is one of the sites where our youth will be working this year, and we will be going on weakly hikes there for the youth evening activity.
The rest of the afternoon we spent hanging out in Woodstock, Vermont - the shire town and capital of Windsor City. A cute, classic New England style village. The drive there was absolutely gorgeous: green and full of life and rolling hills. There were so many ski villages, bed and breakfasts, and quaint restaurants. We walked through the village, had a picnic lunch, and had coffee at the coffeeshop. We stopped at a covered bridge as we headed to New Hampshire to BJ's (the equivalent of a Sam's Club) to set up our account.
Sunday we attended the Calvary Bible Church, which is the church where our YouthWorks partner here is a youth pastor. Rob attended a YouthWorks mission in Chicago and fell in love with it. After having experienced one, he asked YouthWorks to come to Rutland, Vermont – and that's how we got here! This is the 5th year of YW in Rutland. He is a great asset to the program, and a wonderful friend. His wife picked us up Dunkin' Donuts coffee before the service – first time ever having coffee during a church service, normally we have to wait until after! It warmed me up though, as it was a little cold out this morning.
When we returned to the Roadside Chapel where we are currently staying, we were invited to the graduation party for the 5 youth who will be graduating from high school. That was a nice surprise, and some good food and fellowship. After some good mingling, we headed to a meeting room to start to work for the day. Sunday evening we performed our first Club, which is our equivalent to a youth group gathering that we will be facilitating every night for our participants. It consists of a skit, a fun mixer/game, worship songs, a talk, and a few other things. We were able to “practice” on Rob's youth group – it was great to get a practice round, they all enjoyed it.
No comments:
Post a Comment