Curious about what our high school youth and adults have been up to since they left last Friday for their accompaniment trip to Florida? Here are daily snippets from some of them about their experience so far!
Friday
During the road trip what I did was sleep because I was exhausted from packing the night before and waking up at 4:30 in the morning. Halfway on the road trip I had lunch with Dakota and some of the other First Lutheran kids and we had great conversations! Finally, Aden, Vin, Dakota and I played a card game that really brought all of us closer and brought much laughter and fun. ~Hannah T.
Saturday
Today we woke up at 6 am and did a lot of driving. We started in Kentucky and went to Lake City, Florida, which totaled around 10 hours. There were a few stops. We thought the bus broke and wasted an hour trying to figure out what was wrong even though after that we had no problems. Otherwise, all we really did besides that was stop to eat lunch, dinner, and get gas. We had fun on the big bus and played games and got to know other people from the other church. ~Owen P.
Today was very monotone. I ate some pickles and had lunch at a Chinese place and pizza in a park. The bus only broke once so far and we’ll probably make it. You should let us fly next time. ~Bennett B.
Sunday
This was our final trek to Sarasota Florida. We went to Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Gainesville that morning to sit in on their service. I felt that it was pretty similar to ours and I enjoyed listening to their message. Later we continued driving to Sarasota and saw a lot of Firework stand signs which sadly we couldn’t stop at. We had also experienced a quick storm and we could barely see where we were going, but it ended not too long after it had started. Shortly after that, we had arrived at Faith Lutheran in Sarasota. We had gotten acquainted with all of the Fremont youth before the trip and got to meet two other youth from Florida. We started with icebreakers and get to know you games which were pretty fun. Shortly after we had dinner and Vespers and DEVOS. For those who aren’t familiar with those terms, Vespers are our night worships and DEVOS are essentially where we decompress about our day and talk about our highs and lows, along with a little prayer and bible verse to end the night. That was Day “1” of the trip. ~Dakota F.
Monday
We started the day by visiting the Ringling Art Museum in Sarasota, Florida. The architecture there was so beautiful, even though it was really hot. We walked through a rice garden filled with statues, visited a lot of exhibits, and took a quick lunch in the park. Our service project that day was to do a trash clean up at Siesta Beach in Sarasota. When we were done we made time to swim in the ocean and enjoy the beach. The best part of my day was seeing how soft the sand was and how clear the water was. ~Aden N.
Tuesday
The work projects for the day were cancelled last minute so we enjoyed team building activities and learned about disaster relief and the 4 C’s – Communication, Cooperation, Collaboration and Coordination. The kids had to build a tower that would hold a marshmallow with spaghetti and tape. We were also treated to a boat cruise in the afternoon where we saw dolphins and manatee and got to swim at a sand bar. We have also done Bible study in small groups and worship each day. ~Sharon H.
