Day Four

Middle Schoolers visit a local nursing home

Dance Party!!!

Today was a very fun, very busy day.  After breakfast the group I'm in, the Twixters (middle school), took a bus to a nursing home nearby.  We performed a skit, had a Bible lesson, served the residents lunch, and walked around passing out race car door hangers with the verse of the week printed on it.  Later on, after us STM's had our break, all of the Twixters loaded back up on the bus that was headed for putt-putt and ice cream.  We had just finished our ice cream when it started to sprinkle, rain, and then completely downpour!  It was the hardest rain I had seen in a while.  We were finally able to get onto the buses without too much panic.  The last thing we did was to have a huge dance party in the Grandstand ballroom.  Today has been busy and amazing all wrapped up into one.

Amara


I have been paired up with a 16 year old boy named Chris with Cerebral Palsy and he has a brain tumor as well.  He really has quite an amazing story.   In his High School, because of his love of football, the team made him the honorary football captain and let him do the coin toss for the games.  He has really become an icon in his school and because the football team is so nice to him it is showing the others in the school that he is special but they can still be accepted in society and is just like all of us.  He also really wanted to be able to ride a bike but because he is in a wheel chair most of the time and can walk short distances, he will never be able to.  So to give Chris the opportunity to ride a bike, his father ordered a handicapped bike and modified it so that he can use it.  This led to an organization that Chris had the idea to start where he and his dad would modify bikes for other kids with similar circumstances and give to them so they to can have their own bike to ride.  They have given bikes to many kids and have made surprise reveals on Fox 8 news, the local Columbus news and other local media.  One story his dad told me was they gave a bike away to a family with a kid with who was given only one or two years to live. They presented a bike for this child and his two siblings all without their parents getting prior knowledge of it. He said that it brought so much joy to their family that the mother and father just stood there in total shock and just started crying and it took them a few minutes to even regain their composure.  Chris is a such a blessing from God both in school and in his community and whether he knows it or not he has really made an impression on all those lives he has touched.

Kyle