Day 6 by Lauren, Mrs. Heath, Maddie, and Carson

Yesterday we spent most of our day helping to clean up the houses where we have been staying. We started at the house where the girls are staying.  Five of us put a second coat of paint on the fence that we started painting earlier in the week.  The rest of us started cleaning the inside of the house.  We found a lot of interesting things inside to clean.  First, we found some mold in the freezer, then we found some dead bugs that we don't usually see.   At the end of the day the house smelled great and the fence looked awesome.   The house where the guys are staying needed a LOT of TLC (Tender Loving Care).  We were confused about the smell coming from the freezer so we decided to clean it out.  Let's say that we left the area cleaner than we found it, which is one of the rules we try to live by on this trip.

After an incredible dinner that Maddie's parents delivered (thanks for the delicious cookies and chicken) we had another night of VBS.  Last night didn't run as smoothly as we would hope.  We had an incredible 97 kids last night!!  The younger kids had a mishap with a pool ball hitting a little girls eye!!  I (Maddie) had a great time helping all the kids with their craft.  Although, it can be hectic with the large numbers of kids we are working it out!!  I (Lauren) helped out with games tonight.  Games ran smoothly and all the kids had fun. We are praying that tonight runs smoothly.

We had worship with Mr. Hemming after VBS and Nick H. and Dave B. stopped by.  Nick and Dave entertained us with their stories from Italy.    We all shared in an awesome nacho dip that Becky prepared for the group.    We eat so early that we are usually starved for food after VBS so this treat was much appreciated.  Thanks Becky!!

OK. Now that Mrs. Heath (Jan Jan) is done boring you to death, I, Carson Hunter Scaccetti, will give you the real low down on yesterday.("SO RUDE" comments Jan Jan) We woke up as usual at our ridiculous wake up time of 7:30. We then preceded with our regular morning routines: shower, get dressed, brush our teeth etc.  We then followed that up with some breakfast grub, very acidic OJ, milk, and the other food.  Grace Point then did their devos, and then got ready for the day ahead. Nate, Mike, Speens, and I, dropped the girls off to finish painting the fence. Then we drove the big white creeper van, you know it looks like one of those vans that your parents told you to stay away from and not take candy from a stranger, to Home Depot and got some supplies. These supplies entailed utility knives for Prison Mike (he has a weird affinity for "shanking" (building a prison tool)). Then us guys were presented with the task of cutting up old, really ugly carpet.  Since Mike had some weird innate ability with the utility knife, I therefore renamed him Prison Mike Shankalot. Grace Point then went back to the Cafe and quenched their hunger and insatiable thirst with some blessed grub. We then had to clean up the guys house, but we all know that guys can't clean in the first place, so Jan Jan and some of the girls came and cleaned for us (Jan Jan comments for the guys stating: "THANK YOU LORD").  Jan Jan, I, and some others ventured to the Shoprite to pick up some very needed supplies. On our way back we did a Wawa run, per usual.  GP then all congregated back at the cafe for some great dinner made by Maddie's parental units.  It was delish, and Sam comments: "the chick parm was phenom!". GP then got prepared for VBS.  The kids at VBS must have been very enthusiastic to get some God in their life, because it got a little insane.  Well, it wasn't that bad everywhere, I mean games went well. But Sam had a little more than she could handle with the Pre-K. But we recovered and had all rejoiced in some good old worship and singing, led by Mr. Hemming. He shreds on the guitar. Then youth leader, and hopefully one day youth pastor, Nate, led us in a great lesson, which I think impacted many of us deeply. We then prayed and brought an end to our long day.  

Day 5 by Becky

Hey guys! We are officially half way done our trip. After working so hard up until this point, we took today as our day off. Our whole group piled into the church van for a fun trip to Hurricane Harbor which is the water park at Six Flags. Hearing the weather forecast for the day was a little disappointing, but it turned out to be just about a perfect day for it. I think the weather made other people wimp out but we manned it up and ended up having an even better day since there were very little lines to wait in. Being completely wiped, most of us were passed out for the ride to the park besides a few bus games that gave everyone a laugh. We stayed in the park from about 10:30 to 3 and had a lot of fun together. Many of us enjoyed the water rides and many pools in the park. Even the little kid park was entertaining for Andrea, Meg and I (besides the water being a good bit warmer than the rest of the park, which was considerably uncomfortable to think about). All in all we had a fun time and ended it with an adventurous ride home all crammed back into the van, especially uncomfortable since we were wearing damp bathing suits. We all arrived back to the cafe with an amazing dinner awaiting us from the Johnson's and McCloskey's (thanks again!) Following stuffing ourselves with the delicious food, we headed back for showers and prep work for VBS. Unfortunately due to the inclement weather, VBS could not continue normally. Quickly we came up with an alternative to keep the kids active and having fun. We opened up like every other night but then played a Veggie Tales movie with an interactive discussion following the movie, done really well by Katie. Jason readily stepped in to get the kids moving with a game of Simon Says. The kids loved the snack, as usual, which brought our evening to an end. Now we are relaxing and taking the night easy as we are ending our relaxing but still successful day. Team bonding is definitely not a challenge for our group since we have such a fun group. Thank you very much for all of your thoughts and prayers! Please keep them up, especially for strength and encouragement to finish our time here in Bridesburg with as much energy and motivation as we started the week. Hope you all are having a great week and not missing us too much, since I know its hard not to. Thanks again!

Becky<333

Note: Not all pictures were taken today, today was the day we collected all the pictures from everyone's camera, so some are dated(by a day or two) but I hope this gives some more insight into what we are doing here.

Day 4 by Mike, Shawn, and Meg

Hey everyone! Yesterday was a very tiring, but successful day.  Half of the team went to the house where the girls were staying at and the rest of the group went to another part of Philly, to a church called Antioch. I went to the girls house to paint a fence along with Becky, Lindsay, Lauren, Carson, Andrea, Jason, because there is a missionary family moving in after our team leaves.  Ryan fixed a door, and Nate caulked a bathtub, while the rest of us painted the fence.  We got as much paint on each other as we did on the fence, so all in all we had a pretty successful day.

A small group of us also took an hour trip up to the Antioch Calvary Church. We folded clothes for hours so that the church could speed up the progress of their project to cloth the needy.  It was boring work but also very fun at the same time, but hey who's complaining we had air conditioning! We unloaded bag after bag of clothes and folded them while placing the folded clothes into piles. So all in all yesterday's service project at the Antioch church went great!

After working all day yesterday, we showered and got ready for VBS.  Mrs. Ely and Mrs. Nichols brought a delicious dinner and then we started.  We started in the group all together and introduced a new song to the kids, it was my personal favorite, Ride of Your Life!! Haha, it's great.  Then we split up into groups.  At games we played with the finger rockets, which also happens to be my favorite games activity.  The kids love it too.  I was teaching 3-6 graders and Katie taught the younger bunch.  The story of of the ten men with leprosy, and the theme of the day was choose to believe.  The kids really behave during the lesson, which is encouraging.  In crafts they decorated foam crosses.  When VBS finished we had the regular meeting at the cafe with the Realife staff.  We earned there that the attendance at VBS was an amazing 93 kids!!  For the second day that is completely unbelievable.  Later last night we sat with Jonas and Anthony, two guys from the church, and discussed our faith.  We talked about how to lengthen the affects of the "spiritual high" as Sam called it.  They shared with us a few passages from the Bible, and gave us some advice.  Then they questioned us about our feelings.  A lot of us shared our feelings, even though we were all pretty tired, I do think it helped the team to bond.  I'm holding us up from leaving for 6 flags, for our day off; so that's it.

Day 3 by Ryan and Moriah

Today was an eventful day, to say the least. We woke up bright and early this morning to the sound of all of the guys calling shower times("I call next! I call next!"). After breakfast, we grouped up real quick and got ready for some community service. Personally, I was surprised at the enthusiasm in the group. Normally the idea of working outside in the hot sun doing labor does not sound appealing, especially when the heat index is 104 degrees! (Bleagh.) But everyone was excited. We worked with Larry, the owner of the Rec center across the street. Larry was incredibly excited to have everyone helping out, and had a list of stuff for us to do. I was put with Mike, Shawn, and Jason and given the arduous task of leveling out the baseball fields. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's where you take a bunch of powdery clay sand stuff and spread it across the baseball diamond, filling in the holes and leveling everything out. The students jumped at the task with great vigor, and began shoveling away. Two and a half hours, and twenty water bottles later, we were done. With one of the diamonds. (Oh yeah, did I mention there were two?) We decided that we should take a lunch break, and came back in the afternoon with some more students and finished the job, filling in the second diamond and then painting the lines. Although it is only the first way, we are having a fantastic week. The group is working incredibly well together. (Ryan)

Hey everybody! (Mom, I know your reading this, thanks for the fan!) Tonight was the first night of VBS, and it was so exciting! Seeing all of the kids that had come last year and how they remembered all of the other kids that were here last year. I was in the lesson room today and all of the kids reacted really well, Meg and Katie are great teachers. I learned from one adult leaders that dinos live in the overgrown lot across the street from the cafe. He said something about how they stole his sons underwear, so if you plan on visiting bridesburg, hold onto those undies! We had a TON of kids, they estimated around 80 (this is a record high for the first night of VBS,) and I'm really excited for the rest of the week. Today was also Katies birthday, we had a midnight opening of the presents and blowing up of the balloons party in our house (the balloons decided to attack me throughout the night, thanks to the fan(thanks mom!)) and we just sang to her and had her blow out her candles on a piece of cake. So far this has been an amazing week, and im really excited to see how the rest of it unfolds. 

--Moriah

P.S. did i say thanks for the fan, yet?

By the way.. tonight Pastor Rob's wife Val went to the hospital to have a baby. Please pray for her and her family!

Day 2 by Sam and Wil

Hey hey heyyyyy

Today was a great day per usual. We started off our day with a unique way of talking with God called "Prayer Walking", but don't worry we kept our eyes open the whole time. As we walked the streets of Bridesburg we kept our eyes and hearts open for sights and people that we felt needed prayer. This was a great way for us to connect with each other by feeling comfortable enough to pray out loud as we walked through the community.  One group  (Meg, Andrea, Becky and Mike) had a cool experience while walking when they felt led by God to walk into a graveyard where they found a lonely man mediating on a lost loved one. The group then proceeded to converse with the man and felt a strong connection with him as he talked about how he feels happiest in the graveyard because he can reflect on his life in peace and talk with God.  Later in the day we went to the Bridesburg pool and spent some fun time in the sun playing sharks and minnows. Before dinner we walked around Bridesburg handing out flyers that promote the upcoming VBS. After dinner we got to sit in on a Realife church service where Rob gave a moving sermon about living out your faith. Right now we are all just hangin out in the cafe, bonding, cleaning, chilling, ya know, just being the crazy kids we are. We miss you all and thanks a billion for taking the time to read this. Keep us in your prayers and pray that God will not only change our hearts this week but that he will open the hearts of the people in this community to provide us with the opportunity to evangelize to them and impact their lives in an unforgettable way. God Bless. 

Hey it's Wil.  I'm new to this blogging thing so hang with me. Like Sam said, we prayer walked, which was awesome. It was a different experience but an awesome one. Well right now we are cleaning up the Cafe for the morning, which involves sweeping, mopping, moving furniture, eating cookies, fixing Pastor Rob's phone (Ryan), and Blogging. Our rooming isn't five star, but I wouldn't want them to be, IT'S BRIDESBURG. The guys are staying in the missions house on the same block as the Cafe. We have three different air mattresses and three couches to sleep on and it is HOT. Luckily there are fans so we don't die. Sam really summed this day up well...I don't have anything else too add... I'm just waiting for the week to start, doing VBS and working around the neighborhood is what I want to do. That's it I guess. Guten Nacht.

Arrival by Katie S.

Hey everybody! I'm glad to be in Bridesburg for a second year. The cafe is awesome! As it has always been. Andrea's really excited to be here. (She's never been here before.) I'm also glad to have Lindsay, Carson, Maddie, Becky, & Moriah who are new to Bridesburg and the cafe. We, the returning veterans, solemnly promise that we will play floor hockey at least once this week. (Shout out to Kurt- last year's champ) The members of RealLife are very excited to prepare and work the VBS with us this week. Please pray for all of the kids who will be attending the VBS, and that they will invite friends to come along as the week progresses. Please pray for our team as we get situated (the girls are staying a few blocks away; the guys are down the block) and as we prepare the cafe and the rec center for the kids. See you all later! In His service, Katie :)