On the Road

Hey it's Aaron! For the past couple mission trips I have done the last blog so we thought that it was tradition and I should do it again.

About a half an hour ago we crossed into the US over the Rainbow Bridge with no complications. Praise the Lord!!! It was a really fun week for me and especially not what I thought it was going to be. The music was phenomenal, the food was great, and the sleeping arrangements were okay at best. The speaker, Joel, was the most passionate believer you would ever meet. His talks were so inspiring and I'm really glad I got to grow really close to him. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights were were very impactful as far as the worship went and brought many of us to tears, with great music and an awesome lesson. It is definitely one of my favorite mission trips I've been on so far and I hope to "Go Do Good" in my everyday life.

We will stop to get lunch and hopefully make it home safe. Our vague ETA is around 2:45-3:00 pm.

Saturday Plan

For all you parents out there, the plan is to hopefully leave between 9 and 10 in the morning after we finish packing up and cleaning up.  Provided there is not traffic or a long wait at the border, we will probably arrive at the church at around 3 or 4 pm.  We will text you when we have a better idea.  See you there!

Peace Out!

HEY EVERYONE we forgot to say that that was our last Natallayna blog post... so thank you for all of your love and support over the years. Love y'all. Natallayna out

Friday Continued...

What it do babyyyy! After we went to Niagara, my group and a couple others wanted to go swimming so one of our leaders looked us to a fun place to swim and we found one place called Deecew Falls. We got there and immediately I could tell that it was going to be interesting. The only way to get to the waterfall and swim area was to use a rope and climb down, which was a good 25 feet and a 90 degree drop. It took a while but we all got down to the swimming area safely. The water

was freezing but it was still extremely fun. The boys from the other group tried to stand under the waterfall but they couldn't,
they kept falling because it was so powerful. But I'm sure other people in our group have wrote about how close we are to the other people at SERVE. I've only known them for a week and they are my best friends. Some other people at Harvest and I seriously want to drive to their town sometime and visit because we're seriously gonna miss them a lot. And we actually kind of have a date set up for them to come out here and go to Cedar Point (Hey mom can they maybe stay at our house? hehe). Anyways but yeah I've never clicked so well with a group so fast. On past mission trips, especially toward the end, I kept waiting to go home and sleep in my own bed. But this is one of the first mission trips where I don't want to leave; I'd even suffer more nights of sleeping on the ground and zero sleep to be here longer.

Bye!

Brooklyn

Friday!

Hello. It’s been a while since I have had contact with the electronic world, so this is kinda funny. It’s Natalie by the way.  I want to start the blog with a little summary, just because. This week has been so interesting. I’m sure you can tell from the blogs so far that it hasn’t been a mission trip like any other I’ve ever been on. We have been able to help so many people through actions that may have seemed smaller than other work we’ve done in past years and it’s really awesome when you think about it. The food bank serves thousands of people in a month, and we were lucky enough to be a part of that this week. I’ve personally learned a lot about trusting God and learning to be flexible because we have absolutely no clue how God is working in us and in our lives, even though we absolutely feel like we do.  ANYWAY, today we went to Niagara Falls.  AND so NATALLAYNA is gonna blog about that. 

So, in the morning, we drove over to Niagara with our small groups. (My group finally got an aux cord so WOOHOO for that. No more mystery music (radio))  *enter Allayna* Hi so we went to Niagara like Natalie said and we went on the Maid of the Mist, which is a boat that takes you under the falls if you didn’t know. (It was my first time I’ve ever been to Niagara and it was BEAUTIFUL -Nat) They give you ponchos so you don’t get drenched but turns out I put my poncho inside out and backwards so my hood did not go on correctly, so yeah I got drenched. Then we split up and had free time at Niagara. Natalie and I went with a group of 10 people to lunch and the Hershey store. (I got some appetizers and they were YUMMY- Nat) My group went to this little hiking place and swam under a waterfall with one other group and it was so fun and pretty, but we didn’t get to shower because we got back at 5:45 and showers closed at 6:00 L

*enter Natalie*

Instead of going to the other little falls my group headed home, showered and took some naps because apparantly we are allowed to stay up late tonight and also I was dead tired. Then, I played some cards and ate some dinner and now we are here writing this and are going to write the list of slang terms we learned from the Canadian guys here this week.

Whatitdobaby = just a weird thing they yell sometimes, what’s up/how’s it going 

Tarps off = shirts off

What a Lad = nice guy, like calling someone a bro

Dankee = disgusting and repulsive 

Muck = when someone does a lot of one action 

            (example: They are mucking some food right now)

Huck it = Just do it 

Sauced = wild 

Cheesed = mad or upset

Give ‘er = Just do it 

Bucko = dude 

Boomer = old person, someone who doesn’t understand technology 

Chirp = make fun, tease 

Waste yute = person who is weird

Silky Mitts = great volleyball set

YERT! = Yo!

Oh my days = Oh my gosh

Thursday!

Welcome back to the blog!

Today Group three went to the food line. We started with prepping for everyone by making silverware and wrapped them. Then we made about 100 sandwiches for the people to take for their lunches. Once we had finished prepping we had about 20 minuets of downtime. After that it was two hours and forty-five minutes of four people handing out food to the many people in need. During the two hours we served around two hundred people and handed out all of the lunches. Once the rush was over we did a bit of cleaning and then we left.

Elise

Another thing my group did today was help at the thrift store which we move stuff from the old store into the new and bigger store. At the thrift store we also sorted clothes. My group also cut veggies for the men's center.

Noah

Worship!

Each night we meet for worship by an amazing band and speaker.  Below is a quick clip to give you a taste of it!

Wednesday!

Hello y'all it's Miranda here! And today was so much fun. I started the day out with an amazing night sleep. For breakfast we had eggs, tater tots and you could warm up pancakes or toast. The morning devotions was pretty good too.  I finished really early so I got some more sleep oops.  Anyways today I was in the men's center cleaning. It was the most relaxed all week. Me and my group then cleaned the walls, floors, and chairs at the men's center. We were there for 3 hours. Next was lunch--yummiest part of the day! We has salad, spaghetti, and garlic breed. That was soo so so so GOOOOOOOOOD! The last work of the day I was in the warehouse.  That was fun because one of the boys in the freezer got me a popsicle-- it was super yummy too. At the warehouse my group and another worked together to get the bedding taped, labeled, and sorted.  Ok now to backtrack to before we started working, we were given homework to do after work and we did. The homework was to get something at the store for the Good Shepherd store to give away and we did. They really needed size 6 diapers so we got some diapers and baby cereal.  Oh and by the way we only had 50 Canadian monies (dollars!).Then Andrew my small group leader drove us back to the church so we could drop the stuff off and get whatever we needed for the shower. After the shower we packed 7 people into a 6 person car and come back. I didn't do much when I got back--just watched some volleyball and played some card games. I also learned a new game named Slap.

Tuesday Continued...

Today I worked in the food bank and the Hamilton Victory Gardens. My team left the church earlier than any of the other groups in order to get to the food bank to get ready for the morning's work. The food bank is a shopping center for the homeless and poor people and families in Hamilton. Shoppers come in with a colored card which designates how much food they are allowed to get depending on the number of people in their family. They receive a shopping cart and can go around the shopping center, looking for items they need for the month. After they are done shopping, they come to the checkout line, where I was working. We unload their cart onto a conveyer belt you would see in any Walmart or big shopping center. We ask to see their card and make sure they didn't take too many items, then we put their items into plastic bags, or felt if they brought their own. The Good Shepherd Center, the organization SERVE Hamilton works with, has paid workers as well as volunteers. During the week of SERVE, most volunteers don't have to come in because we are working there. Two volunteers came in, forgetting the SERVE teams were there. The one man had Down Syndrome, and did not talk, but knew sign language, and the other man was his friend. They came to bag the produce on my line and kept working even after figuring out they did not even need to be there. It was very fun to talk to them. The man with Down Syndrome was very sweet and had worked there for nine years with the father of his friend that was with him. The other man had only worked there for a short time, but his father had owned the building before Good Shepherd bought it, when it was a car dealership. We had the chance to talk to them about what group we are with and why we're there. We talked about where we were from and why we liked volunteering at the food bank. It was very special to talk to people with such different backgrounds from us.  Also, it was fun to see the same clothes being taken by clients that we had sorted the day before!

     In the afternoon my group worked at the Hamilton Victory Gardens. Our job there was to weed the raised garden beds, which is what the whole garden consists of. We pulled weeds out of most of the beds you could see from the road. The produce from the gardens go toward the Food Bank and other people in need. I got to talk to the volunteer who was there as well, learning about her background and how long she has been volunteering with SERVE.
     
Jennifer

Tuesday!

Hi Harvest! Some of you probably know me and some of you probably don't, but this is Emilie, I started coming to church on and off with Natalie last summer and I'm super excited to be on this trip with the youth group!

Today my small group got to work in the Men's Center at Good Shepherd and help clean up the third floor. We washed all of the walls and mopped all of the floors on the third floor and in both of the stairwells. It was hard work and work that I'm not necessarily used to but my group made the most out of it!

After we finished we headed down to eat lunch with everyone else there for Hamilton Serve. We had pizza, pasta salad, and salad. Yesterday as part of working in the food line, I had to take slices of Little Caesar's pizza and put them on trays so they could be heated up and it turned out to be pizza we had for lunch today!

The second task my small group had for today was working in the marketplace alongside Austin & Sam's small group. We chose to bag clothes that people picked out based on what they were allowed to according to their membership card.

So anyway, I had a great day and I think most people did so that is good! I hope you guys are all having a great week too!

Monday Continued... but better than Allayna's...

dear reader its sam and Austin. todAY was a great day. we saw a dog. then we crushed meat in a

bucket for a hour. I almost threw up (Austin) because of the smell. We did food preparation for a men's center. We cut up tomATOES AND CELERY AND opened packages of pork chops. after lunch we went to a thrift shop and helped them move into a new location. the new location is really big and nice. we went to the old location and packed up their moving truck. We put on a bunch of halloween hats. we moved a bunch of stuff and it only took two hours.  and after that we showered. also we played a lot of spike ball.

Greetings from Canada. LOvE,

Samanthan and Xavier

(Brett's note:  No grammar or spelling corrections were made in this blog post...I am publishing it exactly as typed by Austin and Sam!)

Monday!

Hi everybody! It's Allayna! So it is currently 4:40 pm and I am supposed to tell you what we have done today. We woke up, had breakfast, did our morning devotions, and were sent off in our small groups for a work day. My group is very fun and I am happy I have fun Canadian friends now. We also have a cool leader named Andrew. Anyway, we went to a warehouse, which is part of "The Good Shepherd" ministry that we are serving. At the warehouse we sorted probably 100+ garbage bags of donated clothes with one other group.

Who knew sorting old clothes could actually be a fun bonding experience??? Well then we had lunch with all of the other groups and I got very excited because I had a yummy veggie burger. After lunch my group went to The Good Shepherd's free food bank and I was one of the "cashiers." Basically the customer would show me their ID and their card for the market, which had a color on it. The color symbolized how many of each item they were allowed to take based on the size of their family, and as I bagged their groceries, I made sure they took the right amount of each item. It was actually so busy! (Sometimes I was too stressed and rushed to actually make sure they weren't stealing food, so I didn't count... sssshhh) The clients are allowed to use their card one time per month. I am thankful for the many different people I was able to meet and serve.

Then we left to shower and I wanted to be the first person to shower because yesterday I had to wait in line, so I walked to the showers with one other boy in my
group named Nolan. He is 15 years old and 4 foot 11. He's a little ball of energy. He was so confident he knew where we has going, and ended up taking me to the wrong building and by the time we realized and went to the correct building, my group was done showering. Long story short, I was mad at Nolan. Well now we are waiting for everyone to get back from their worksites and playing cards and stuff. Thanks for reading and thank you especially for your prayers!!!

-Allayna

Sunday!

We started our day by eating muffins and bagels and cereal for breakfast, and then we went outside and formed a big line to greet all of the Canadian churchgoers. We were throwing a football across the way over the cars and lots of people gave us high fives. We clapped for them, cheered as they came in. It was fun. This huge F-150 drove by and Sam Brandt yelled "now THAT is America's truck," proceeded to shake the drivers' hand, and therefore singled himself as the biggest baddest American that ever attended this church. 
The SERVE project is a thing that Meadowlands Fellowship Christian Reformed Church (or MFCRC for short. It's funny if you read it phonetically) has been putting on for the last 10 years. MFCRC and another church came together today to commission all 47 of us for the week. 15 of us came from America, and we're all scattered across different groups--a stratified sample of Americans in each group so the Canadians are equally entertained/annoyed. I'm in group #1, so even if we lose any games we can still say we're #1. I have to say that the Canadians at SERVE, and most people I've met outside of the church, are very friendly, and I wish people were this laid back in the United States. 
After church, where the sermon was about Titus, the whole group found out about what we're going to be doing this week. Up until now it has been a complete mystery. I'll leave it to tomorrow's blogger to unveil what we're up to. 

Everybody went to a lookout point at the top of a cliff that overlooks Hamilton to take a group picture. You could literally see the whole skyline of Toronto across the bay. It was like a postcard. From there we started a scavenger hunt. It was cool to spend a lot of time traveling around the city getting to know it. We visited landmarks like Tim Hortons Stadium and the very first Tim Hortons Coffee. We also got to go to a castle and an old battlefield. This scavenger hunt involved a lot of taking selfies with strangers--at one point I had to talk to the police because I got arrest------ had to take a selfie with them. 
After the scavenger hunt we hit the showers and as I'm typing this dinner is served. They have really good cooks here and we're very lucky to have that. I hope you're all having a wonderful week at home or work so far, and I highly recommend the Ice Capp at Tim Hortons if you get around to trying it. There's one that just opened up in Fairlawn, so give it a go if you want to experience the true Canadian cuisine with us this week.

God bless, and a happy birthday to Dad!
Micah

Saturday Night!

Hello blog readers!  This evening we played some games, and did an evening worship service.  We

also split into small groups.  Unlike other mission trips our church has been on, we are divided up into 8 groups with people from other churches. It has been fun so far and we all are looking forward to the week ahead.  In the worship service and in our small groups, we learn how to be more eager to to do good and say yes by studying Titus 2:11-14.

A brother in christ,

Noah B.

We Made It!

Hey y'all, it's Aaron.

We just got here at 4:10 pm and are unpacking now. We stopped at a Chick-fil-A for lunch because Brett wanted to and we had a little picnic in the middle of the parking lot. We didn't have too much trouble getting into the country and thanks for all the prayers, because Miranda's passport arrived in the mail literally 5 minutes before she left to meet at the church! As soon as we got into Canada we saw a ton of wineries. They like their wine up here apparently. I'm in a group with Brooklyn and Jennifer and a bunch of other strangers so it's gonna be different being in a group with other people. All in all I'm stoked to be here. It's gonna be a great week!!!

Welcome!

Thanks for visiting Harvest Presbyterian Church's high school mission trip blog! We are exciting not only to serve God through serving the people in Hamilton, but also to share the experience with you. Please visit us daily for updates and prayer requests.