5 weeks into it...

5 weeks ago i was sitting at a wedding in cleveland. so crazy. 5 weeks later here i am sitting on a couch in a church in steubenville ohio in shock that 5 weeks have passesd already. we have 6 more weeks of programing and then its over and back to minnesota.

this past week was so great. we had 3 groups. one from pawnee, il; fort wayne, in; and bowling green, oh. total we had 52 people. here are some of the highlights from the week.

1. we got to do it all ourselves. my favorite part of this was club everynight. our skits were hilairous and a big hit. especially the dean martin show. since dean martin is from steubenville this is apart of our club time. it is when the participants can give shot outs to each other for just awesome things they did that day. mark is dean martin and his into and exit song is "that's amore" it is just classic. also just being able to give my talks and really get the youth thinking about their lives and the way they are living it.

2. kids club started. the kids are crazy and out of control. they mostly come the projects. there are two projects in steubenville: the north end and south end projects. the kids there are just brought up with out much influence or guidance and therefore are just out of control. this made kids club very difficult and hard, but it has been getting better and better each day. the fights are getting fewer and we are learning how to work with urban kids more on a daily basis.

3. i got to help out an old man named joe. i took two youth, CJ and Drew, to this man joe's house and we weed wacked his yard. it was really fun just to help this man out and hang out with CJ and Drew. Joe has cancer and has kemo everyday and just doesnt have the ability to do it himself so we were able to help him out.

4. getting everyone to go to howdy's. There is this amazing ice cream shop in west virgina called howdy's dari-owl. it is so good. it is just a dive shack but we are trying to support it. so we promote it through out the week and monday night we all went. a group even gave us money at the end of the week for a howdy's trip. it was awesome

5. seeing how much communitity was built here this week. these groups were so tight by the end of the week and did not want to leave. they really all came together and really grew so much closer to God. they really all went home different than they came and it was so amazing to see. God really does unbelievable things.

6. going to pittsburg and just hanging out friday night. it took as an hour and a half to get there because ben told me how to get to the resturant when he really didnt. but we finally got there and got to hang out with the mon valley team which was great. and relaxing.

7. having today off and being able to sleep in until noon :)