Posted by: Erika and Laura
What a day! It started off normally with our usual schedule and ended in the most spectacular, moving way.
Our service project for today was at Mountain View Ministries, a spiritual outreach for needy families. It is run by a missionary family who gives clothes, household items, and food to people in need. We were split up into several different small groups and spread throughout the storehouse and set to many different jobs, such as building a pantry, folding clothes, and organizing everything from shoes to food to paint. We enjoyed a small break for lunch during which we played the game Black Magic with the children of the family who runs Mountain View Ministries. After lunch, we went right back to work doing more organizing and also taping a large amount of clothes hangers together.
After we finished at Mountain View Ministries, we headed back to Long View Ranch, where we enjoyed a few hours of free time before dinner. We all enjoyed one of the trails down to the lake, where many of the guys took a dip in the chilly water! After they dried off, we spent the rest of the afternoon in the dining hall around the fireplace in which logs crackled in an orange inferno. Mrs. Widmaier also treated us to hot chocolate and marshmallows.
Our last (but definitely not least!) Long View supper consisted of a full Thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green beans, and carrots cooked in cinnamon and brown sugar! It was delicious, and one of our favorite meals! For dessert, we enjoyed a brownie topped with vanilla ice cream, a sweet ending to our meal.
Praise and worship and devotional time followed dinner, in which we reviewed all of our readings of I John. We each came up with titles for all of the five chapters as well as a title for the entire book. We then collaborated in our small groups to pick one title for each chapter and the whole book and voted on which one we thought fit best! Tonight's blog title is the title chosen for the whole book of I John.
After devotions, we had a time of affirmation (AKA the Love Bomb) around the camp fire, in which we each wrote something positive about our classmates. We shared our notes and then had another amazing time of worship around the fire with rain falling softly all around us. This time, filled with many tears of joy and laughter, was a fitting conclusion to our unbelievable time at Long View Ranch.
Sophomores signing off on the final night in Tennessee.
<< Home