Day 3

day 3 started out rough. fighting with someone close to me, just a lot of emotions being pushed right and left. lets just say i was ready to get to the school and feel the children's unconditional love.

but... there was one super important part of day 3. ashley's birthday! the night before I had gotten a group together and we planned on getting up a couple minutes earlier and pulling a prank on ashley since it was her birthday. our plan was simple; get her in her sleeping bag while she was still asleep, carrying her out of the trailer into the grass, and sing happy birthday as loud as we possibly could. i had all my girls and a few of my friends volunteer, and we were standing around her sleeping bag literally reaching down to pick her up when a near-by alarm went off, and up pops ashley, out of the sleeping bag. at first we all froze and werent sure what to do until i called ashley back over and sternly told her to get BACK in the sleeping bag. she seemed a little confused, but i told her one more time to get back in, and she listened. i really hope im the only one honored with 100% obedience [besides her family i mean] or that girl may be in trouble in the future. anyway, she got back in and we grabbed her and carried her outside. we were a little thrown off by ashley being awake, so we made it to the deck and thats as far as we got. set her down, and sang her happy birthday. i would say it went fairly well. i was pleased we had enough people to carry her outside without dropping her; that would have made me feel pretty bad

worked during the morning, and lunch break was great. we all piled into the van, blasted the air conditioning, and rocked out to Dennis' awesome worship CD. there were a few songs in particular we were attached to, and one song we made our theme song; Saved By Grace. everyone who went on teh trip has now heard it, because we've blasted it at the block party [which you will hear about later] as well as in the church parking lot as we pulled in. We all LOVE that song. its a catchy song, and its long, and we all danced and sang like crazy people everytime we heard it. which was a lot. this time in particular one of Trinity's church volunteers was sitting on the house steps with his son eating, so we turned the song up as loud as it could go, rolled down the windows, and proceeded to rock teh van. literally. Jack [the worker] loved it, asked who it was, and then told us we HAD to play that song at the block party the following day. we were happy to do so.

this day was the day Bollie really made an appearance. we met him teh first day we worked, bc he lived up teh street and also worked up the street from where we were. he was a kind of older guy, but fit as could be, with a huge smile and even bigger heart. he stopped by every day, and we saw him multiple times, always running out to say hi and give him a water bottle to drink. in return, he told us stories. on day 3 he spent a good half hour with us telling us some of the story of the hurricane. his story absolutely blew our minds.

the water was over ten feet tall; you couldnt drive anymore, all you could do is swim. people were being picked up by helicopters and dropped off on the highway, pretty much left there to die. people were drowning like crazy right on the street we were working on, and dead bodies and dead animals would be soon floating all around. he was with one older guy, which is the reason he was still there anyway. they couldnt sleep on beds, for the fear that they would be shot. they ran out of drinking water, so they had to drink the flood water, which held all kinds of germs and diseases, which was what eventually killed the older man he was with. he told us a story of a mother who had 4 little children; one of them fell in the water, and the poor mother had to sit there and watch the child drown, bc she had to stay and protect the other 3. taht story just broke my heart. the first thing that popped into my mind was my girls. if any of them had fallen in, and i had to sit back to protect teh rest, it would absolutely shatter my heart, and i would feel guilty for the rest of my life. i love each and every one of them too much! and they're my SISTERS, imagine if they were my KIDS. wow, cant even begin to understand how painful that would be.

after Bollie's stories and a little more work, we went to the school again, and the boys joined us. another great day with them. more games, more volleyball. a lot of the kids we were close to were missign that day, like Iona, Rayne, and Alexis. but there were plenty of other kids to keep us occupied.

after that day with the kids, I was really beginning to feel attached to them. our group started calling them "Our Kids" bc its realy what it felt like. i would leave jsut wanting to go right back in and give each and every one of them an extra hour of undivided attention. it was hard to say bye

we had teh regular evening activities, no frogs in the shower that night. which brings us to teh end of day 3