Day 4

The groups were mixed today and instead of us being with Kyle’s group, we were with Katherine’s. After breakfast, we headed to the Children’s Center to hang out with the kids and help put new mulch in the yard. The few of us that went into the room to be with the kids and we introduced ourselves to them. As soon as we walked into the room, kids from ages 4-7 were latching on to who they wanted to play with them all day. Miss Beverley, their leader, started out the morning by playing music and letting us dance with the kids. After that, a couple of us girls were told that we could help make magic wands as it was fairy tale theme day today. Grace and I cut out stars and the girls that were with us put glitter on them in fun designs (mostly smeared onto their hands). The girls then went to line up to go outside and we wrote their names so the stars could dry before we attached them to the wands (sticks). The group of us each spread out throughout the line of kids that were going on a nature walk in order to make sure each kid had a partner to hold hands with. The path that we were lead on had a few dragons that we ran from, a spider that we hid from, and a troll bridge that we tiptoed over. During the walk I met two siblings named Enrique and Michelle. Michelle was worried that the dragons would get her so we had to "run real real fast" in order to escape. Enrique on the other hand only wanted to find the alligator that lived in the "cave" by the lake we saw. It was a very good walk for all of us I think because we each bonded with the kids and they all seemed to have a lot of fun.

There was one part of the morning that particularly stood out to me, however. One girl that spotted me from the beginning was named Savannah. She had latched on and said that she wanted me to make half of her fairy wand with her in order to "get all the magic". I even wrote my name down on her napkin at lunch because she wanted to remember me forever. The part that really made me think was when they were eating lunch and Savannah called me over. When I came over to talk, I was leaning down a little bit so my cross necklace was hanging in front of her. She saw it and was playing with it for a few seconds when she said "That's Jesus on the cross, but where's Jesus?" I then explained to her that sometimes we only put the cross on things, but we still can remember that Jesus was hung there for us to live. This is one of those things I think I will remember forever. This girl was at a daycare facility in a not-amazing part of town and a lot of these extremely young kids were saying words and talking about topics that I would hope they never knew about. But yet, Savannah knew about Jesus dying on the cross and completely understand the concept of his death for us.

We eventually left to eat our own lunch and then headed to the beach to hand out popsicles and try to spark up some conversations about why we are in Hilton Head. We got rid of the popsicles very easily but not many people seemed to want to actually converse with us. It was very understandable as we may not want to talk a lot if we ourselves were on vacation with our families. It seemed to be a little disheartening to our group but later tonight we had a time to share anything with the entire youth group from the day that we wanted. During this, Zeph, another student, told a story about a man he created up a conversation with after playing with the man's son. He told us that the man was a man of God and the shared their testimonies to each other. It seemed to really touch Zeph and I realized that that could have been the only reason God put our group in that situation. Plus we got to give little kids joy through popsicles on the beach.

Once everyone got back to the church, we all hung out and played some volleyball and other games as the adults debriefed for the day after dinner. When all the chores were done and we had gotten into our groups and talked about what affected us from today, Joel and Kyle got a bonfire set up so we could talk and have s'mores together. Looking back it was a really good day for me ad the group. I think we all might be seeing a little more of how our work is actually affecting others.