What a Week

Wow. What a week. Alaska was the most awesome experience of my life.

I’m about to give you a run down of how my week went (from my perspective… if you want to read about each day from everyone’s perspective, go to my Alaska blog). Prepare yourself, because you’re about to be taken on an 8-day rollercoaster condensed into 8 paragraphs. Also, there will be lots of photos. I can’t remember anything if I don’t take a picture, so if I wouldn’t have taken these pictures, I probably wouldn’t even remember going on this trip (just kidding about forgetting the trip… not kidding about having to take photos).

Okay. I woke up at 5:04 a.m. Sunday morning, put my left foot on the ground, then my right. I then walked to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, gasped at my appearance, then brushed my teeth for 1 minute and 34 seconds.

Just kidding, I’m not telling the story like that (you’re welcome).

But there is truth behind the whole 5 a.m. deal! The whole 32-person Alaska team met at the church around 6:00 Sunday morning, prayed, and loaded the buses. My dad told my mom and I right before we got on the bus that he had felt chills during the prayer, and he knew the Holy Spirit was going to do something awesome. MAN, WAS HE RIGHT. I have this weird thing where I’ll get sick if I ride in a car early in the morning, so I’m just going to add that I wasn’t feeling on top of my game on this fine morning. We got to the airport, checked our bags, made it through Atlanta security, and waited at our gate to board! After getting sick a few times, I felt great and I was ready to fly! (My body is so weird, I know.) The first time I had flown was in fourth grade, and I don’t remember it, so this was almost like my first time flying! I. LOVED. IT. It was so beautiful, and it just amazed me that it only took what seemed like ten minutes to fly all the way across Kansas. I just couldn’t believe we were on the opposite side of the United States, in only five hours, when we stepped into the Seattle airport. We grabbed a little snack, hopped on our next plane, and our next stop was Anchorage, Alaska!

We arrived in Anchorage to a BEAUTIFUL airport, BEAUTIFUL scenery, and BEAUTIFUL weather! It was about 65 degrees when we arrived, with no humidity. You could hear all 32 of us say “Ahhhhh...” out of pure happiness when we stepped outside. It was almost harmonic. A few GraceWorks leaders met us with the vans and took us to Calvary Baptist Church, our “home base” for the week. This is where we ate, slept, had chapel, hung out, and did EVERYTHING for the week- other than our park ministry, of course! It’s an older church with only about 20 members, and they have turned part of it into bunk rooms for volunteers to stay in! We got fed some yummy chicken as soon as we arrived, then a few of us went out to explore while the others caught up on their sleep after a long day of traveling!

We walked around the neighborhood, took a look at some scenery, and walked down the road a few blocks, where we found a playground! Little did we know at the time that this was the park we would be ministering at for the next five days… God works in amazing ways! There was a man outside his house cutting up fish, so we walked over to watch him and ask him some questions. We literally stood there and talked for at least 45 minutes, it was so neat! The greatest part was what happened next though. We dared Jared to eat one of the fish’s eyeballs… AND HE DID.

It was insane (and completely disgusting, but I still like him). We walked back to the church to hit the hay around 2:30 a.m., and it was still completely daylight! That was the thing about this week… it never got dark so we never knew what time it was. I loved it personally, because it felt like you had all the time in the world! It was precious on our walk back though, there were some little kids outside playing soccer (remember what time I said it was), and one little guy about five years old yelled, “HEY LOOK! IT’S THE CHURCH PEOPLE! ARE YOU COMING TO PLAY WITH US TOMORROW?!”

I knew it was going to be a fun week.

This is the view at 2:30 in the morning. That's right. 2:30.

On an average day:

Wake up

Eat breakfast at 8:00

Get everything ready for the park

Chapel at 11:00

Lunch at 12:00

Park Ministry from 1:15-4:00

Dinner at 5:00

Free time

Quiet hours after 10:00

That’s how our schedule played out most days! On Monday, we went to our park, Government Hill, and met our local kids for the first time! We quickly found out that they LOVED four-square, and once we had a long line I played nine-square for the first time! I was a fan, definitely! The kids were absolutely precious, and SO loving in their own ways. Whether it was asking for a piggy back ride, hugs, throwing frisbee with you, offering us one of their crackers, following the leader, or pushing us in the tire swing. We were blessed with awesome kids. We were also blessed with an awesome view from the park!

We did our first round of sightseeing and one of our ministry leaders, Travis, took us through some beautiful mountains! We also went to Earthquake Point to watch the sunset, it was GORGEOUS.

Tuesday morning, we went on a hike on part of the Iditarod Trail! Fun fact: There was a sign at the beginning of this hike that said, “BEAR ALERT!” It was warning us about all of the bears that had been around the trail lately. Three days later, they shut the trail down because there were too many bears!

At the park that day, Jared and I really clicked with this guy named Richard. He is going to sixth grade, and he is so funny! He would walk or ride his bike to the park everyday, then to the church to eat with us at night. Jared and I started walking with him back to the church, and on Wednesday he even came to the church BEFORE he went to Government Hill so we could all walk together He was so sweet, and he also loves frisbee! I took a cool panorama, too (with Richard and Jared playing frisbee on the right, of course)!

Oh, and I also found this atrocious bruise on my leg from who-knows-what on the back of my leg. I’m gonna say I fell too hard in love, since it’s shaped like a heart.

Most kids in the park are eligible for free lunch during the school year, so they don’t have to worry about where their meal is coming from from August-May. But during the summer, some aren’t so lucky. That’s another area where GraceWorks steps in… We get to take coolers filled with sack lunches to give out in the parks. A lot of times we have extras, so they may even end up taking two or three more home! On Wednesday morning, Jared, the Clevelands, and I stayed to pack up the lunches for the kids that day. We packed over three hundred lunches for all of the parks, it was crazy! After we finished, we had a lot of free time because everyone else was off on another hike! Claire wanted to play a trick on Jared, so she was sending him messages from my phone and we played a little game of hide-and-seek with him. She thought it was HILARIOUS, if you can’t tell from this picture!

It was a rainy day at the park, but surprisingly we had a lot more kids than normal! The tire swing was the main event...

We went to Beluga Point that night (it would have been safe to call it “Windy Point,” as well) and found a cute little waterfall on the side of the road!

Thursday was our big day, we had Community Outreach AND our Park Party! For our Community Outreach, we took doughnuts to the Anchorage Fire Department! They were so kind to us, they gave us a tour of the whole place! I also used my puppy dog eyes to slide down the fire pole, and it was the greatest moment of my life.

We went back to the church to get everything ready for the park, and for some of us… take a little rest break.

At the park, we had a TON of kids tell us they were coming to the Park Party that night, which made us 100x more excited than we already were! I also discovered that Divinity, one of my new best friends, knew the Cup Song! We sang it together, and her voice was beautiful! She also gives great hugs!

After supper, it was PARTY TIME! We put air in the bouncy house, got the hot dogs cooked, set up our nail painting/hair spraying/face painting tables, and got our music hooked up! Tons of families came out for this, it was so unexpected!

I painted nails, and all I can say is… I feel sorry for those children who wanted beautifully painted nails. I discovered that nail painting is not my calling. I passed the torch on to Taylor for that job, and I headed to the face painting station (where there were stencils to use). While I was there, one of the regulars at the park, a little girl named Katalina, wanted to paint MY face. I let it happen of course, and BOY, did my face get painted!

  Katalina’s brother, Brandon, even brought his violin to play for everyone. He is so talented, and everyone LOVED it! The party was awesome, and it made me and the rest of our team even more excited to come home and start something here in Georgia.

……...and then there was Friday. Friday was the most fun and the most difficult day, by far. It was our last day with the kids, so we had a water fight for our grand finale! We had buckets of water and sponges to throw, it was so much fun!

After we were all soaked, Jared, Richard, and I walked to Richard’s house so he could change clothes. As me and Jared were waiting outside, Jared reminded me what time it was, and we realized we had to go straight back to the church and not back to the park. I didn’t even get to say goodbye, I didn’t think about it before we left! Honestly though, I was somewhat thankful. I’m not good with goodbyes, and I don’t know how I could have said goodbye when I’d grown so close to them. I heard it was very, VERY sad. I was thankful for my happy little walk back to the church to eat. We actually had FOURTEEN people from Government Hill come eat dinner with us that night! It was a nice little “last meal” for us all, and we snagged a picture of the crew before they left! It was so sad giving our last hugs, a LOT of tears were shed throughout this day!

Later that night, a group of us walked downtown to visit a few shops, and we got ice cream! It was nice to get a distraction from all of the sadness earlier.

Saturday was a full day of SIGHTSEEING! We woke up a little earlier than usual, got breakfast, then all seven churches there loaded the buses. We first stopped at Bird Creek for some pictures, then we stopped for snacks at a little gas station, where they had a PUPPY in one of the gift shops!

Then, we headed to Portage Glacier! On the way, we stopped at a little oasis on the side of the road where water had flown from a glacier into a little pool-like area. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL (and Tammy cried). We headed to our little glacier cruise after that, where we cruised by Portage Glacier. It was pretty awesome, we even got to see some ice drop off into the water (which we later found out was because there was a small earthquake, which was a crazy discovery). After the cruise, we hiked a short trail to another glacier, and there were also TONS of rocks everywhere! It was pretty cool!

We headed to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, where we saw tons of Alaskan animals (including a moose, which I took a selfie with). There was also a bald eagle there, and the most patriotic event in my life took place… I was looking at the eagle, I quietly said “‘Merica,” and it looked me RIGHT IN THE EYE. It was a beautiful moment, right there in the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.

We went back to Calvary Baptist one more time, grabbed our bags, said goodbye to our leaders and thanked the staff, and loaded the vans to ride to our hotel for the night. It was bittersweet riding in the “Goose” van for the last time, we had really gotten acquainted and learned to love the no-air conditioning! The hotel had a pool, and more importantly: a hot tub. A few of us went down and had some relaxing fellowship putting our legs in the hot tub, while Bonnie Greer, Ella Grace, and Claire all swam in the pool! When Daddy came in and said the word “pizza,” the deal was done. It was now a pizza party. Fifteen minutes, fourteen towels, three two liters, and six pizzas later… It was a party in the dining room! We ate, talked, and laughed until we were all tuckered out, then we all went to bed. We knew we had a big day of traveling the next day!

Sunday was EXHAUSTING. We left the hotel around 11:00 a.m. to go to the airport, and our flight to Seattle departed at 4:05. We arrived in Seattle and had about a two hour layover, so we all headed to the food court to eat! I got Japanese, and oddly enough everyone else at my table had some sort of foreign food… not sure if that’s the best idea before we hop on a five hour flight, but it happened anyway. The flight back to Atlanta was… long. It was very long. There was also a very unhappy baby, who didn’t stop crying unless its mom was STANDING in the aisle. Sleep wasn’t exactly “easy,” so when we landed, I saw a whole lot of 6:00 a.m. smiles!

I, however, was sick again. It must be something about Hartsfield-Jackson, but I haven’t made very good memories there the past two times I’ve been! But oh man, I’ve never been so happy to see two church buses in my life! The ride home flew by for me, because I felt great and I was working on my blog. We arrived at the church to everyone’s family, and Papa Gayle picked us up. We went to get a chicken biscuit from McDonald’s, headed back home, and had a nice day of sleeping.

I still haven’t QUITE gotten back on Georgia time, but it’s getting there! All of the exhaustion was more than worth it though, this was truly a life changing experience. I can’t even begin to describe how much the kids, the staff, and the entire community in Alaska means to me. Thank you to everyone who helped us get there, it really does mean the world. God definitely worked in me and in these kids in the park. It is SO true that He can move mountains, I firmly believe that. It was a wonderful week… I’m blessed.