Green Bay - Day 1

We arrived!

A long car ride. Good weather and traffic was great until we hit Chicago. I swear I don’t understand traffic. You’re stopped and slow and stopped and slow for miles and miles and all of a sudden you start driving at a normal speed again, with no explanation.. No accident or construction or anything. I can’t figure it out. I find it very frustrating. I think the part where you don’t know what’s going on is the worse. When is it going to start speeding up again? How long is this going to last? We ran into more traffic just before the Wisconsin border. This time, we were travelling along OK when I noticed traffic in the express lane, which was walled by guard rails had completely stopped. People had even gotten out of their vehicles to see what was going on. I had a bad feeling since I figured this lane had to merge with ours eventually. I was right. Our traffic started slowing down, too, but at least we didn’t stop. I started thinking about how we could try to take an alternate route when we saw the flashing lights ahead of us. We realized there had been an accident in the express lane. Our lanes were slowly crawling because of gawkers! As soon as we passed the accident site… no more traffic. Egads that was frustrating. Once we hit Wisconsin, it was smooth sailing. In my car, we were listening to the first Harry Potter book on tape and reading (not me, I was driving.) while Keith’s car had good conversation and good books.

We were the last church to arrive, so we had slim pickins on sleeping space. Note to self…. get here earlier next time. We hung out awhile, settling in and then ate dinner. They made us sit with people we didn’t know. Billy and Steven sat apart at tables with all new people. The girls were more shy, and all sat together, but with new people in it. I was afraid they wouldn’t socialize.

But…

By the end of the night , the girls were already becoming friends with some kids from the other churches. During our church group time, when we recap the day, the kids were saying they were surprised that the other kids were so much like them. They had already found common interests and even though they were from different areas, they were excited to be making new friends.

Our group is divided into two work groups for the week. Steven, Billy, Lauren and Madeline will be with me working at a place called Village Gardens, a senior citizen home. Amanda, Beth and Marilyn will join Keith and a few kids from another church working at Goodwill for 3 days, then spending time at a cerebral palsy center on Thursday.

I’ll try to keep you as updated as possible. Hopefully next time I can post some pictures. Pray for us….