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Saturday, May 22, 2004
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The First Three Days of the Oklahoma Trip
Well Guys... I think I'm going to go ahead and post the first few days tonight. Rather then do it all at once I will post the trip in segments. That way it will give you guys an opportunity to comment on the trip more. Plus I realized that nobody would want to sit and read through the entire week in one day, so breaking it up in segments will help the boredom some. So with that said... DAYS 1,2 & 3:
Friday May 7th
I ended up taking the whole day off on friday and getting in my last efforts of moving everything out of my dorm room. I didn't have all that much to move out but I still had to go through the check out procedure with my RA. I would provide more details about the whole thing, but I can't really remember that much since its been two weeks since then. But anyway I was able to get everything moved out and dropped off in my apartment. I wasn't able to do any organzing at all when I dropped it off though I just had to throw in in the bedroom practically and then leave. We were planning on leaving around 1:00 to go to Oklahoma. So I locked up the apartment for the week and grabbed my bags and headed over to the Donneberg's house. We packed up the van there with just about everybodys stuff. We still had to meet Mike at the church though so his stuff came later. But Since Brittany was going to be gone all summer she had quite a bit of things to load up. Next we all headed over to the chuch and met up with Mike. There was a sending off group that was there for us too, so after getting the Van loaded we had a group prayer time and then Brittany had to say her goodbyes to the first half of her family. Then I think for the first time in history a church missions trip group actually left when they planned on leaving. We were up and out on the road by 1:00 just as planned... (almost unheard of but we did it). The first leg of the trip was pretty good. We watched a couple movies (I brought a TV along with the power adapter to plug it into the cigarette lighter). And we also listended to a music and we all did a lot of reading as well. For about an hour or so we did some things out of a MadLib book that Allie gave me for my birthday. We got some that turned out pretty funny. But anyway over all the first segment was fairly straight forward and Chuck ended up driving until around 1:30 in the morning when we stopped at a Super8 Motel for the night. We pretty much headed right to bed after getting settled in for the night. Well.. thats it for Friday.. moving on....
Saturday May 8th
Saturday was the last leg of our trip. I woke up early and had devotions outside sitting in the grass outside our hotel. It was cool because while I was sitting out there reading the bible a women walked by and asked what I was reading. So I was able to share with her what I was reading and a little bit about it. It was cool how that worked out. After awhile everybody else started waking up and they came out of thier rooms. So we repacked the van and headed over to Waffle House (Waffle Use) for breakfast. It was jam packed with lots of people though. Nashville sure is a busy place at 9:00 in the morning. We all had to wait in line for a table to open up. But anyway it was still fun. Chuck decided to treat us all to breakfast too so that was an added bonus. After finishing up there we hit the road again off to Anadarko Oklahoma. During this saturdays segment of the drive we didn't really watch too many movies. We mostly just watched movies and read. But to tell you the truth I don't really know what else was going on in the van that day. I'm ashamed to say it but.. I was in a slightly bad mood. Thats the first bad mood I remember being in for a really long time too. And it was over something so stupid too. While I was in my bad mood I remember thinking that it was a really stupid reason tooo. But I just couldn't get over it, I think maybe the devil tried to play me a bit. And now looking back at it all.. he may have attempted to do that multiple times through the week. If so, I know at least this first attempt worked. The others he didn't have that much luck at. But I'll get into those later probably. So anyway.. since I was in my "Mood" I just tried to seclude myself as best I could in a small van. I slept for most of the time, and when I was awake, I submersed myself in the book I was reading "Wild at Heart" Which was a very good book by the way. But I do regret that stupid mood of mine though.. I'm sure I missed some good times with the rest of the group there in the van. But later we stopped for dinner at this really different restarant. It was like part buffet part order. I forget what it was called though. Then after dinner we were off on our final segment of driving before reaching our destination. We pulled into the camp when it was still light outside. We were able to unload everything into our rooms and then mostly just relax the rest of the evening. We met some of the staff that works there at the camp that night too. Brian also showed us around the kitchen so we could get things to eat/drink if we needed to. They have a pretty big walk in freezer and that was fun to just stand in. SO anyway after things calmed down it was just our group there in the building for the latter half of the night. So we played a couple games of pool and then we got ready for bed. But after getting ready for bed we didn't actually go to bed.. we just sat in the hallway for a couple hours and talked. I think I have a picture of that. But anyway.. we all finally headed to our rooms and got to sleep sometime around 2:00ish I think it was. We needed our rest for the following day at church.
Sunday May 9th
Sunday morning I woke up nice and early we were all supposed to meet at a certain time so we could get to church a little early. So I woke up and went downstairs and had breakfast and waited for people to come down. Mike ended up coming down a little later but nobody else was to be seen. So I went up stairs and knocked on the girls' door and I ended up waking them up. Thier Alarm clock didn't go off or something. So they had to rush and get ready that morning. We all managed to get to church on time though and still have time to talk and meet some of the people too. On the drive to church I had to give my mom a call and wish her a Happy Mothers Day. I wasn't able to talk too much though because the signal was cutting in and out. BUt I was glad I was able to catch her before they left for church too. The Oakridge church they have there is kind of lopsided age group wise. About 60% of the congregation is children under age 12. The church is also a daycare so that is mostly part of the reason but it was just funny as they let the children go to the childrens service almost the entire chuch left. Before the kids left though they all had a mothers day dedication thing and the kids came up and sang a song too. Rather then give the mothers little flowers for the day though they gave all the mothers a potted plant. I thought that was a pretty different but cool idea. One of the kids ended up spilling the pot and getting dirt on the carpet though. AFter the kids left to thier thing the rest of the service went ok. I will say however that I thought over all the service was a little weird for me. It was good and God was in it and all but I think that if I was a resident there in Anadarko I don't think I would choose to go to that church. But It may just be mostly due to the fact that it is like a chruch plant. They are largely understaffed. The member numbers are low and they don't have the man power to do all the things I'm used to. The sermon was a little wierd for my taste too. But it may have just been a wierd week or something. But anyway after the service was over we had a potluck lunch downstairs. We all helped them get setup for it and then chowed down. After eating I found all the kids and played. (you don't thing I would miss that opportunity do you). But after most everybody left we went outside and got in the Van waiting for Brian to come out so he could take us to the Native American Museum and then over to Mt. Scott. But after waiting and waiting we come to find out that he was inside witnessing to a little boy. So we had no problem waiting for him. He ended up leading him to Christ Praise the Lord! After he came out he still hadn't done all the things he needed to though so he told us we could just head over to the museum without him and meet him back at the camp when we finished. The museum was alright but there wasn't really anything there that was super cool or anything. Normally on any other day except for sunday you would have to pay $5 to get in and see everything. In my opinion that would have not been worth it. But It was cool for free. =). Chuck ended up buying two of the bracelets that were on display there for Jo and BJ for when we got back home. Those were pretty cool looking. So anyway after the museum stop we returned to the camp to pick up Brian and then head over to Mt. Scott. On the way there we did some sight seeing and stuff. There was a really cool town called "Medicine City" all the buildings were made out of cobble stone (I never knew what a cobble stone was before going there). But it was amazing and a beautiful little town. It also had a cool swiming hole/river right along side the road. Brian said he takes his staff up to swim there some weekends. So Brittany will probably have her chance to go there again sometime this summer. After our trip through Medicine City we continued on and soon came to Mt. Scott. It was a very cool place to be at the peak. You could see for miles. It was super windy up there though. According to what I'm used to back in Washington however Mt Scott was more like a hill to me. The peak wasn't really a peak either.. it was kind of just a jagged bunch of rocks. But still that doesn't take away from the magnificence of the whole thing. I have video and pictures of that and I'm sure you will get to see those soon. But we all hung out there and explored for about 45 minutes or so. After leaving the "mountain/hill" we did some more sight seeing We went around and looked at some Buffalo and then we went to another museum and then went to a place called "Prairie Dog Village". I think that was my favorite place of the entire trip. It was almost like the Prairie Dogs built themselfs a village. And 100's of them came and started to live there. It was a huge open field with little praire dog holes all over the place. Almost like every 10 feet. We were able to get pretty close to some and feed some too. Again we got lots of pictures of them. Allie even stuck her camera down one of the holes and took a picture. Its really funny because that picture is of the Prairie dog with his eyes buggin out and stuff because he was in his deep dark hole and then there is this huge flash of light all of a sudden. Its kind of funny. You gotta see that one. They make really cool sounds too and then there was this one that hopped around on his back feet while making noise. He was a funny one. I want a pet Prairie Dog. LOL. After leaving the village we decided to head over to a place called Meers Restaraunt for Dinner. Brian was under the Impression that they sold Buffalo Burgers there. But after getting in there we came to find out that they didn't do that. They did have Longhorn Beef Burgers though. The restaurant was interesting. The setting was a little wierd with some of the posters they had hangning around and also so of the people that were there. But the food was Good. Allie got a postcard with a picture of the restarunt on it. SO it was famous enough to be on an Oklahoma Postcard so that was cool so now we can say we were there. After dinner we just went ahead and drove back to the camp and were there for the rest of the evening. While it was still Light outside though Brian went and showed us around and told us all the things we would have to be working on while were were there. Mike took some video of the Before Projects so we could get some before and after pictures of the work we did. After it got dark we went inside and started our first project. Doing mailing lables and labeling brochures for shippment. We worked on it for about an hour and a half.. maybe 2 and we had that project finished. After getting that done Brian showed me around some of the computer work that would need to be done and I started on it a little bit. I just did the computer that he said didn't really need that much work done on it that night because I wanted to start out slow.. but it turns out that computer that "didn't need much work" ended up being about a three hour job. He had lots of viruses, lots of things called Adware that was on there. And then he also didn't have a single update done. He also had quite a few things on the computer that were just taking up space and causing other problems. I was able to get it finished after much work. I ended up working on that one till around 1:oo that night (or should I say morning). But anyway everybody else just kind of hung out and played pool and stuff. After getting done with that machine I stopped for the night and got ready for bed. We kind of sat in the hallway again that night for awhile but not as long. I think most everybody was exauhsted. We got to bed around 2:00ish again I think. That night
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posted by Jeremy Dillinger @ 1:06 AM
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