This day started out almost exactly like the other. I woke up insanely early, was late for breakfast, ate the nasty breakfast, packed a nasty lunch, then proceeded to finish preparing for the day. Everyone then piled into the youth room to start devos with our special little zebra books. When devos were done, we didn't really need to meet up with anyone because majority of us were doing the exact same thing.
Team Jim piled into the van and drove over to Manor Care. We were playing Bingo today. There is nothing better than playing BINGO in and old age home. How excited they get, oh jeez, it's crazy. And that my friends, is sarcasm. Well a few of them are. There was one lady who kept accusing another of cheating so she kept yelling at her. It was funny because the lady she was yelling at was hard of hearing so she just didn't care because she couldn't hear anything. We didn't play Bingo right away though, while Sammy was getting different residents to come play, we all got Bored Games down off the shelf and played with the residents until we were ready to start the game. We were playing cards, checkers, pictionary, all sorts of terribly exciting things. But I didn't really play anything, but that was because of the piano they had there. Emily would play something and I would sing to it while everyone else was playing. It was fun, and we had random residents who would poke their heads in and ask who was playing and singing then tell us we were really good and they enjoyed listening. We tried to keep the songs okay, so we stuck to mostly Adele and Christina Perri.
When Sammy was back with everyone she could find, we started the game. We played a bunch of different games, taking turns between myself, Maddie, Addie and Emily calling out the numbers. And by calling out, I mean screaming them and repeating around 3 times each so the partially def residents can hear as well. It was fun. When I wasn't calling out, and playing. I was sitting at a table with 3 other residents and the lady across me had nothing on her card yet, so I tried to make a joke about her doing even worse than me, and that's bad because I suck. But she just smiled and said she can't hear the numbers. So I was her Bingo buddy for the remainder of the games. Which was really cool because she ended up winning some games too. I guess they have this system at Manor Care that when you come out to Activities or do things or win games, you get 'Funny Money' and then at the end of the month they can use it to buy little things for themselves.
In the middle of one of the games, Sammy asked if she could see me. Now I had no clue what this was about, so I was a bit puzzled but I said sure. So we were talking outside and she was telling me how Sandy, the lady I was talking with yesterday really enjoyed talking to me yesterday and she really wanted to see if it was at all possible that I could go talk with her again today just to say good bye before I left. Now I was shocked at this, because I couldn't understand how I could have made that much of an impact from the little time I spent talking to her yesterday but I agreed and said it would be no problem so I told Sammy I'd pop in and see her before we all left. Though I was confused my it, it made me smile. So I continued playing Bingo happily assisting my table. When Bingo finally came to a close, Sammy had us help her set up for lunch and then she treated us all to popsicles to thank us for our help. It was then that I went to go see Sandy.
I basically just went in and she was watching TV. So I said 'Hi Sandy. Sammy told me that you wanted to see me' And she said 'Yes.' So the fact she didn't really say anything after that was kind of awkward but not overly, so I flashed a big smile and asked how she was. She responded by telling me how she was up all night thinking about me. And how I had been in her mind all day. She asked me to tell her a little more about why I was here. So I told her about Youthworks and how we were staying at the church and going to different places everyday to help out. She just smiled. She told me how she so greatly enjoyed talking to me yesterday and how she thinks I'm a great person and how she's so blown away by how good I am. Then she started talking about all the cool stuff there is to see around Hershey and all the Amish stuff that they have. We kept talking for a bit and then she just kind of stopped. Then she asked me if she'll ever see me again. This is where my heart just sunk. Her eyes were s filled with hope, yet sad at the fact she already knew the answer. I told her 'I don't know.' And I don't because who knows, I might be in Harrisburg 2 years time, I have no clue where I'll be, but for now, I don't know. She looked down at the floor and then back up at me. That's when Sammy interjected saying that Sandy could write me. It was such a good idea, and one I'd never have thought of myself. So I wrote down my address and gave it to Sandy, who seemed really pleased to have this new form of communication in place now. She asked me for a hug and I gladly obliged then headed on my out. I couldn't stop smiling. It was probably the oddest friendship I've ever formed, but it's one I won't soon forget.
We went back to the church to eat lunch because we needed to get directions for our next work project. So we ate on the gym floor and when we were done, Erin and Alex took us to our next location. We were working on this lady's house. Her name was Anna. And Anna probably lives in the sketchiest of all the ghettos in Harrisburg. There was another group already there, but we had been requested to come and help them because there was so much to do. So Anna is disabled, not mentally, but physically. She has a terrible back problem and can't even make it down the stairs to her kitchen without collapsing because of the pain. In addition to painting the upstairs bathroom and the entire front of her house, we were also placed with the task of cleaning up the basement. I entered along with Emily, not really knowing what to expect. Now I swear to you that this was so custy, the nastiest thing I have ever experienced in my life. There was clothing and random object sprawled all over the floor. Mold growing everywhere. I can't explain only using my words how bad it was but let me put it this way: we had to wear face masks and rubber gloves to enter the area. It was gross. There were bags just filled with pee. Do you know how gross that it? And poo, just laying on the floor covered with a bucket. Not to mention the random switchblades we found randomly as we were cleaning up. I was in there for a bit helping throw stuff out and doing laundry but after a while I couldn't take it anymore, I went back upstairs to go help paint the porch and door way.
When I got kicked off my painting duties, I already had the mindset of trying to avoid going into Anna's basement, so Team Jim, being the cool kids we are, decided to go above and beyond our required tasks and go check out the backyard. Now checking out the backyard would have been cool if we could have maybe seen the backyard. You could not see the ground. There was nasty all over and a fallen tree was just chilling the middle. We took an electric saw and cut the branches down to small, manageable pieces. These were then placed in a pile along with other leaves, branches, twig, and sticks covering the ground. Then another pile was formed for random miscellaneous objects including a headless teddy bear, a microwave, a doorknob, a metal gate, more knives and too many other bizarre items to remember. the third pile was one of bricks that we'd find just hanging out in random places. When these piles were established, we began to rake all of the left over yard waste/nasty into the tree pile, meanwhile being viciously barked at by the neighbours pit bulls. Since the ground was now somewhat visible, I found out that they had a path that ran through the middle of their yard. So I swept the path, and you could actually see the tiles. Upon discovering the path, I also noticed that there used to be garden beside the path, so we took all the bricks we had found and outlined the path so wonderfully, you could even see what was left of the garden. I was actually shocked at how different it looked when we were all done. It was a complete change from the way it was when we started. And that's the nice thing about physical service, you can literally watch the change happening in front of you. I was proud of the backyard, and even more so that it was something that wasn't required of us, but it was something that could make the most difference.
After that, we piled all the garbage out to the front of the house and emptied out the paint then headed off to the Y. It was a long day of service, but we were only at Anna's for half a day, the other group was only there for the whole week! The Y was chill and we reunited with our shower buds once more. Got wild cherry Pepsi once more. And ate cinnamon buns in the car ride back to the church. Free time was again spent going to Target, where Cameron decided to buy a thong. Very interesting. When we came back, we played a huge came of hide and go seek. Which then turned into a contest of who can roll down the hill the fastest. It was all good. Then we had another gross dinner. It was kind of weird having dinners so early, we ate at like 5:30 everyday. After dinner, there was CLUB in which we talked about acting different. And going from what you believe about God and how it affects what you do everyday, if it affects it. They did a really cool thing where Alex said that the first one to come up to the front would get a chocolate bar. And none of us really moved, everyone just sat and looked at him wondering whether we should take a chance and go up. Then Heidi jumped up and sprinted for Alex, and in return, Alex gave her a Snickers bar. And the overall message we took from this was that you need to act on what you believe. And it was a cool thought to be challenged with. They also did this really sick skit for us called Radio Romance and it was this play that was portrayed through lipsyncing al these mainstrem radio songs. It was kind of hilarious.
Tonight, we were supposed to have a city-wide scavenger hunt but instead we went to the Hershey Factory to make up for missing it on Monday, but we wouldn't have a make up for the scavenger hunt. In my opinion, that was totally fine because I wouldn't have minded either one. We drove down to the Factory which seemed vaguely familiar. I think I had been there before when I was really little with my parents driving back from Florida one year. But anyways, we got there and immediately upon arriving, we went for a little tour. In groups of 5 or 6 we all piled onto the little trolley cart things and went for a tour around the factory being instructed on how chocolate is made by our singing tour guide, Betsy the cow. It was all quite lovely. Then when we exited the ride, we were given samples of Hershey Drops which are kind of amazing. Then is was off to Chocolate World, the gift shop bigger than my house. Bigger than two of my houses actually. I have never seen so much chocolate in my life. They had the worlds largest chocolate bar, world's largest twizzlers, world's largest every-variation-of-candy. Almost everyone walked away with stacks of chocolate but I just bought some jolly ranchers because they're delicious. Katrina, Emily and I split a free milkshake and had just an overall dandy time. There was one point actually where we were all looking at plush tootsie pillows or something and I told Cameron he should plank on the stand, yeah I know, bad influence. Anyways, he did. In the process of doing so, he ended up pegging some little girl in the face! So he fell off because he was laughing so hard, and hit the floor. Then people proceeded to run up to him and ask him if he was okay. Meanwhile he's just laying there laughing saying 'I'm good. I'm good!' And people are just staring awkwardly saying how they thought he got knocked over or something. It was really really funny.
Back at the church we talked about our day and all the work we did and lives we impacted. Today I didn't feel worthless, today I felt like I accomplished something and that I was making a difference. I shared about Sandy and how it was finally starting to kick in that I was meant to be here, and I challenged everyone to keep in mind that even when you're feeling like you're not making any difference at all, you might actually be doing way more than you could have imagined. It was a good church group, like always and we were enjoying ourselves, like always. But there was a time when we actually had to sleep, and so we did. But before that, I went to go drop off 3 little letters. See, we had this thing going from day one where everyone on the trip had a brown paper bag and they were hung up on the wall in the dinning hall so people could drop encouraging messages in them. Like I normally do with situations like these, I wrote out 3 cards saying 'You're beautiful' and I dropped them into 3 random bags. Immediately after, I forgot what I did and decided to go down to the sleeping rooms. People kept coming up to us and saying how they were going to sneak into our church group because it was so much fun, but this gave us a bad reputation as just having fun, which was how most of them saw us, but they didn't see how serious we all are when we pray our how much we really take in. Street had all this stuff to talk about with us, all these verses to read for the whole week, but he didn't use any of them. We had real conversations every night. Not planned, not scripted; real. I fell asleep listening to worship music. And thus concluded day 2.
