Best week ever!

Region 8 is just plain AWESOME!
Most regions have 5 people on their team.... We have 6.. Our most important member is Butch. Butch was made by Leah. He is a 6 ton, dark, handsome hunk of a van. He takes us places we have never been before, including Highlands, NC.
Our first adventure with Butch was our drive from VA to NC and we had some amazing team bonding moments between our team and Butch.
On Sunday we went hiking at Whiteside mountain where 3 of us repelled down a 150 ft mountain.. Hose 3 would be Luke, Scott and yes, our very own cheerleader, Paige!! We were so proud of her as she overcame a little bit of fear that day. Butch was proud too! On Monday we had a great bunch of kids show up for camp and we also had 2 frogs that wanted to play basketball... We named them Ted and Frank. On Wednesday we went to White Water Falls where we saw a guy being rescued who had fallen and broken his leg. Scott took off to hike down the trail to find the base of the falls and so Leah and Stacee went down after him... We thought he saw us, but nope he didn't and apparently we passed him.. Long story short, Leah and Stacee ended up hiking to the base which was about 1.5 miles one way... Talk about perseverance! Thursday there were 11 kiddos Jo made first time decisions to follow Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. What a rewarding time! That is the whole reason we do camp!!
Our team is so sad to be leaving Community Bible Church in Highlands, Butch is happy because he has had a heck of a time getting up all these hills... We are sad though because we had an amazing group of volunteers and staff.
Well, that's all we have for this week! It's been great and it is going to take a lot to top this week but, "it is what it is!!"

Love Region 8!!!

2nd Session Region 2: Why not?

It was clear an hour into our ride that Region 2 was not your average region. Two words have become a part of our vocabularies within the last 24 hours..."Why not?" To paint this picture a little more...

Why not go to Starbucks twice in a day, rearrange the furniture, & watch the Bachelorette as a team?

Why not get aggressively honked at by New Jersey drivers every time we try to go left?

Why not drink expired milk in the morning?

Why not talk about Titanic with an 11-year old?

Why not go in the off-limits office at the host home (still coming)?

Why not take the invitation to stay an extra week at the host home?

Why not go to bed at 8:00?

Why not eat the gluten-free option at the communion table?

Why not coach football with one ball and zero flags?

The most important "Why not?" that we've thought of though...Why not be first to write on the UW blog this session? And why not write the second day our team is together?

Our team is legit. We have Cory, Franky, Hannah, Kelli (coming soon), and Janae. Why not get in the same van with all of that?

No, but on the real....we are blessed to be on Region 2 and ready to do camp and fulfill some serious bucket list items this week in New Jersey!

Jesus Bucket List

• 75% of our campers this week are unchurched...we want to show them Jesus.
• This is the church's first VBS/any program for kids in 3 years. We want to be used to help this healing process.
• We have 75 volunteers! We want to build relationships with them and make sure they feel needed and wanted.
• We want to know all of our music motions because it's not funny.
• We have 6 more days as this team and want to live as much of life as we can together.
• We want to drink a lot of coffee....coffee and the word. Talk about spiritual.

Fun Bucket List:

• We will be going to New York City.
• Progressive fast food dinner...why not get your entre, fries, and drink from different places?
• Going to see and eat something from Cake Boss Bakery.
• Go in the off-limits host home office for 10 seconds.
• 7/11 experiences for poor deprived Hannah (first world problems).
• Go see Princeton and act like students for a day.

As you can see, we would not have time this week to blog for you...we'll be checking our bucket lists off, spending time with each other, winning kids for the Kingdom, drinking coffee, and daily finding more "Why not's?"

Why not,
Region 2

Sports Camp, Laughter, and Gangs, Oh My!

Lets start off by saying that we are the team that survived two of the worst travel days in UW history. Don’t believe us, just ask Sam. We are THE best region by far, sorry to burst your bubble Coach Andrew.

We started off camps in the lovely city of Yakima, Washington! The morning camp was an all soccer camp and the night camp was an outreach camp in the inner city. Coach Kelli did great at soccer, Coach Sadie made Caleb do everything, and Coach Cindy mastered her British accent while at the morning camp. At the night camp we heard what Coach Sadie insisted were gun shots and what Cindy insisted were fire crackers (she was just being optimistic) many times throughout the week. Caleb tried to take a joyride on a golf cart while at lunch at a golf course, Sadie and Caleb both successfully went joyriding on a moped (well it was at our host home), and that is just some of the fun. 

The night camp was rough the first day but ended up being the hardest to leave. A lot of the campers parents were deep in the gangs and if they weren’t the campers had a ton of influence to be in the gangs.  We were able to see a few kids from that camp ask Jesus into their hearts. They were so enthusiastic, joyful, and on fire for the Lord and it was just a reminder of how we should feel about having Jesus in our hearts. We got so attached to the kids there and it was such an incredible experience.

We then left there to have camps in northern California by having the most crazy day ever of training.

Wake up at 5am + Drive 3.5 hours in the opposite direction + Wait 2 hours + Fly 1 hour + Wait 4 hours + fly 2 hours too far + drive 2.5 more hours back = 15 hour travel day to go 708 miles.

We had morning camp in Cloverdale and our night camp was in Novato.

In Cloverdale Cindy had 4 team 45ers 2 of which were 3 years old, needless to say the kids hit the playground a lot. Sadie took claim of Kelli’s cheerleaders, and Caleb had the Pastor and all the parents convinced that Cindy grew up in London. 

For the night camp it was an outreach camp that was a ton of fun.  On the way Kelli reworded the song Mr. Roboto to say Domo Orrogato We’re going to Novato. It is now our them song… Just kidding. On Monday we had a whole 7 campers at camp. 4 of which were cheerleaders. We did end up growing and having about 30 by the end of the week. They had cheerleading and then we alternated with playing huge games of football and soccer. That attracted a lot of people. Caleb had to abandon his team on Wednesday to be in a friends wedding so it ended up being the three girls in charge.

Thursday started off great and we headed to Novato. Camp went great and one of the campers who had never been to church asked Jesus into his heart. Sadie and Cindy were going crazy and decided to dance around to you rock my world, which we normally didn’t do.  We then were meeting with the volunteers afterward to discuss how great things were when a gang fight broke out in the parking lot. Meanwhile our camper who had just asked Jesus into his heart and his cousin witnessed the entire thing, including seeing a gang member get stabbed. The cops came and the gangs dispersed, some of them even ran right by us.  Us u dubbers were the only ones who were truly calm through the whole thing.  The kids were terrified but asked us to pray with them and for the hurt member. It was really incredible for them to ask us to pray after what they had just witnessed.

The camps ended great and we couldn’t have had a better team. We only did about 50 u turns, laughed the entire trip, and had about 7 dozen cookies between the four of us.  It was a fantastic session and there are many memories from it!

There’s  so much more to Region 4!

Caleb, Kelli, Sadie, and Cindy