We're Here!

We made it to warm and sunny Cincinnati! W had a 'boys' car' and 'girls' car' on the way down, and we stopped for lunch at pizza hut about half way. The church we are staying at is full of hallways and little rooms, and while we got a tour when we first arrived, we're still trying to figure it all out. There are 63 (I think) people here. The sleeping rooms are full and warm!

We've already been challenged here. While we were hoping to be split up evenly, 2 groups of 4, each with an adult. God had other plans (or Youthworks did anyway.) We were challenged to split our group into 2 groups- one with 2 youth and one adult (along with another church) and one with 6 youth and one adult, and no other church. We also had the challenge that the group with 2 people had to have youth 13 or over (in order to work with kids at a boys and girls center. We've met our first challenge and created these groups: The Ones consists of Joshua, Nathan, Alex, Louie, TJ, Jessica and Nancy;  The Salts consists of Caitlin and Drew with Jeff.

The staff here is terrific! Our site director is Kati, who seems like she's got it all together and is very understanding. The service staff are Megan and Sean (by the way, any Washington DC mission trip alumni reading this-- they both know Shawn!) and the program staffer is Lestan. He gave an awesome message about Love tonight. I don't know how he's going to top it tomorrow!!

Another challenge is that our leader meetings aren't right before dinner, they are at 6:45 AM! Ideally this will give us more free time after our work day before dinner, but it means our youth have to be able to get up and get ready and make it to breakfast on their own!

We know that although this isn't the situation we'd hoped for, we will still be rewarded this week. We are all excited and anxious to start serving tomorrow and waiting to see what God has in store for us.

We appreciate all your prayers  as we work here in Cincinnati, we are blessed to have such a wonderfully supportive congregation that allows us to have these awesome opportunities of mission.