Hey, I'm Katie Baker. Today is our last day in Kentucky. We started off the morning with some good breakfast and a seed thought. Afterwards, we broke up into our chore groups so that we could go to our first activity. I am in chore group 3, so we went to the Thompson-Hood Veterans home in Wilmore. I was super excited to talk to veterans . When we got there, we found out that we were playing Bingo with them. When we entered the room, I felt guided to sit with this older man who had been looking and smiling at me since I arrived. Ian and I pulled up two chairs to the table he was sitting at and we met everyone else sitting with him. There was ED, Doug and John. His name was Bobby. Bobby told us all about his time in the military. He was hilarious and a funny storyteller. He is 95 years young and fought in WW2 in the army. He told stories about his time in Papua New Guinea and talked about how much he loves the food at the Veterans home. After winning Bingo FIVE TIMES, I had some time to chat with him more. He kept telling me that I was a special person and I could do great things. It meant a lot coming from him. After talking for a while, it was finally time to go. As he was saying goodbye to Ian and I, he started to cry. He said that even though he is 95, he isn't scared of dying because knows he's going to heaven. Then he kissed my hand and said he would miss me. Ian and I walked away from his table with an impact and a memory that will last forever. After that, we met up with the rest of the groups at a park for lunch. We had a lot of food leftover from the week and we planned to give that food to the people of Lexington through RAGS. But before that, we went to a food pantry named God's Pantry and packed 1,728 pounds of dark chocolate into boxes for the people in the city of Lexington who need food. This was a great team bonding experience because we learned how to assembly line the labeling of bags. When we left Gods Pantry, we got into vans and headed to Downtown Lexington for RAGS. RAGS means Random Acts of Grace and Service. We gave out the food until dinner time. For dinner, we went to a different park near the University of Kentucky and had hotdogs. We also had worship at the park!
~Katie Baker
Hi my name is Dan. I have been in the youth group for a while and this is my first time doing the blog. So today besides what Katie said, we split up into two groups. Katie and her crew went to the veteran center. My group went to the senior citizen center and I loved it so much. It reminded me of my grandparents because my mom mom lives in a nursing home as well as my grandfather on my dad's side. The elders in the home were so kind and funny. It's good to see caring hearts takin care of the older people in the homes. I met a women who asked to play rummy. It was hard to play because the one old lady there couldn't hear very well so it was hard to communicate so she didn't really want to play so she joined my team and I used context clues to communicate. At the end she shared a story with on how she didn't know how to play cards because her mom was very religious and card were gambling so there were never cards in the house. I was cracking up and the only reason I loved in rummy was because he first and last time Lauren shuffled she got 3 aces and 3 kings on her first turn I'm just saying she never shuffled again let's just say that. Once she see this she will be mad be she knows we all love her like her children. But truly the hardest part was leaving them because I felt like we were only there for like 2 hours I wish we could be there for longer but it's ok. I have had a great week and can't wait until next year.
~Daniel Tapken