Four days and seven hours ago we landed in the beautiful City of Angels. After that, we took a three-hour van ride to Arbor Church in Long Beach where we loaded up on carbs like pizza and pasta and then slept for the night. Some of us got to see our family’s while we were in Long Beach. It was nice to see familiar faces after a long trip over seas. We got back to Hume Lake at 11:53 am on Saturday where we no longer found ourselves in the tropics but instead in a mountain range with snow on the ground. It was the second day for the junior high camp that was up for the weekend. The good news for us is that we did not have to go straight to work this weekend. The Joshua staff gave us the next two days to rest up and get back on a schedule which was very nice of them since they too deserved some much needed rest. Most of us stayed up at the building and caught up on sleep and just relaxed while others went off and said hello to friends that we missed while we were gone. It started snowing on Sunday morning and we woke up on Monday morning with over twenty inches of snow waiting for us outside. In fact it snowed so much that some of the campers got stuck at Hume an extra day. The buses were trying to get out on Sunday afternoon but the snow was too thick and they got stuck half way down the hill, in the snow. As said before, here at Hume Lake we got around two feet of snow during the storm and at Grants Grove they got around three feet of snow. With about seven hundred campers staying an extra day, the food service was put into a head spin since they had not prepared for this. They scrambled to make dinner and barely finished in time. The next day, they were in desperate need for help; they called Joshua to ask for workers because they were so understaffed and overwhelmed. Fifteen of us went down and helped out the food service. We now are back on our normal Joshua routine and are eager to go back to our classes. The month of February is going to be pretty relaxed because we will not be leaving the building in a while.
Today, around half of our class did our SWEEPS, which is our volunteer work that we do every week. Personally, I had maintenance, which means that I shoveled snow all day. It’s not hard work, and the guys at maintenance are great guys to hang around with. It’s nice that our jobs are constantly changing because we are able to gain so much experience in a lot of different areas of work.
The videos and pictures that are shown on Facebook and on the blog show all the fun that we have here at Joshua. It’s true; we do have a lot of fun up here. However, it doesn’t really show how much we work up here at Joshua. Our classes are tough, and balancing it with weekend work and SWEEP isn’t easy. That being said, I know that everyone here wants to stay and become better men and women of God. We know that the knowledge and wisdom that we are gaining here will benefit us for the rest of our lives.
Check out the Dominican Republic photos here!