Mission Trip

I am a middle school youth leader at our church, and I LOVE my middle school girls so much!  This past week, our youth group went on our summer mission trip to Rochester, MN.  We stayed at Camp Victory, and bussed to Oak Terrace, a trailer park, to put on VBS for the kids there.  Although it was hot, it was a fantastic week.  Here are some pictures:

Our group on the last day

Shayley and I spent a lot of time together this week

Nyah was my other buddy!

We found patches of sand around the parking lot and made sandcastles with cups!

One rainy day we stacked cups...

and made a giant tower!

Each day we had song time and chapel time as a large group, and devotional time with smaller age divided groups.

We were all so grateful for the community pool at the trailer park as it was soooo hot!  We spent a good chunk each day swimming with the kids!

One day we blew up a giant slide in the parking lot

We played a lot of GaGa ball, chalk, parachute, bean bags and more.

We left Oak Terrace (trailer park) around 3:15 each day and headed back to camp victory where we packed lunches for us/kids for the next day, and then got to do a camp activity with our youth group before dinner, like tubing....

and high ropes course (jumping off a tall pole to catch and hang on a trapeze)

After 6pm dinner our youth group especially enjoyed playing 9 square!

Evenings included chapel at the camp, and debrief time, as well as hang out time where we made lots of friendship bracelets, skidded on mattresses, and had great chat time.

Here the girls were attempting to teach me some dance moves (haha!) before we posed for a picture.  Lots of laughs ;).

Summer slipped this in my suitcase, and I was so grateful for the kids' sweet prayers every night for the girls that I told them about!  (The girls and I made matching headbands before I left and so we matched all week, even from afar, which is what the last part of the note was about :))

I was sooooo excited to get home and hug MY amazing three kiddos!

Meanwhile....

Grandma T came to stay with us for the week, and did an amazing job holding down the fort with our three kids during the day while Daddy was at work. She brought fun playdough tools and new games/puzzles and also took them all sorts of fun places including the zoo, children's museum, splash pad, and aquarium, and the school summer readers' club and helped take care of the excitement of Summer being allergic to a new type of sunscreen and breaking out in a rash from head to toe and cleaning up the bloody mess of Larkyn who randomly fell out of bed and smashed her face while sleeping.  Good thing she is a nurse, haha!  Grandpa T joined the crew on Thursday for more fun, and we celebrated Larkyn's 4th birthday too!  (If you haven't checked, I added pictures to the last post, Larkyn turns FOUR).  (They also did a bit of an early birthday surprise for Summer, but I'll share about that in Summer's birthday post!) Here are some pictures:

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa T for making our kiddos' week fantastic and for being such servants!  Love you!!!