I’m afraid blogging about my Diakonos spring break trip has tripped me up again. Last year, getting behind on the spring break blogging led me to pretty much stop blogging for months. Happily, I’m only a week behind, and I can get caught up with this entry.

The Friday of the trip was a bit weird for me and my group. I hooked up with Nate’s group, and we were going to go to Kent to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Habitat operates hardware stores that sell donations and construction salvage, and the proceeds go to help build homes. These store are called ReStores, and they rely on volunteer help to keep the stock organized, and that is what we were going to do. The only problem was that they did not open until 10:00, so we were left to ourselves at CVCA after the other groups took off at 9:00. I used the time to go fill up my car with gas. Then, just before we were to leave, Nate told me his van had to swing by Sam’s Club to return some items we had not used for the trip. Since I did not care to go to Sam’s Club, I ran home and got my guitar. The Habitat ReStore is next to Woodsy’s Music in Kent, and I wanted to get my guitar a tune-up, since it had never had one in 13 years. I dropped my guitar off, and then went to the ReStore and talked with the assistant manager. By the time I had finished that, Nate turned up with the van-load of students.

We really did spend most of the day organizing the place. They initially split our group in half, and my half set about building a shelf and then getting the store’s ceramic tiles in order. That took much of the morning. Once we had wrapped that up, we helped the other team get things spiffed up, which included getting furniture placed as if it was on display, and condensing objects to take up less space. We did break for lunch, and continued puttering after lunch. We pretty much went through the entire store. Things kind of petered out around 2:30 or so, and we milled about waiting to be told what to do. I’m not sure if we overstepped our bounds anywhere, but the manager seemed curt with us toward the end of the afternoon. The store folks had us do a few more puttery things, and then we left about 3:30. I swung by Woodsy’s to see if my guitar was ready, and it was, so that was a happy bonus.

I got home about 4:00 and napped again. I made my way over to CVCA, and we had supper about 6:00, which was a help-yourself buffet of BLTs and leftovers. The leftovers were very good, but the BLTs (or BLs in my case) really hit the spot for some reason – I had three.

Entertainment that evening was the traditional talent show. There is a variety of talent, but it is always a good time. This year featured:
– A girl making very convincing cricket noises
– The song “Railway Bill,” in which Bill, during the course of the song, rebels against the song’s author and ends badly
– An original poem
– A recap of trip highlights
– The premier of a new Royal Fools game (I had four Fools on the trip) – it went very well
– The worship band having an open jam session (they called themselves Fleagle and the Sweater Vests, for some reason)
– Craig doing a dramatic reading of some pop song (“Tik-Tok”) that the kids loved
– “Ambush” comedy where the group stood up and told unrehearsed jokes
– The third and final year of the MuCoo rap (Mucha and Cooper rapping about the trip)
It was a very fun time.

For worship time that evening, Craig did not give a talk – he showed us a three-minute video on a guy giving the Christian world view in four panels, in three minutes. He then asked us to do something similar – to come up with a topic and explain it in terms of what we had been talking about – Creation, the Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. Our group decided (after much talk) to look at work – how work was intended to be good (creation), but became hard and burdensome (the Fall), then Jesus did the work we could not (redemption), and we are now working with others and the Kingdom of God in mind, and when the full restoration comes, there will be no more work. The groups then presented what they discussed, which were on:
– work
– family
– church
We ended the evening worship singing, and Craig encouraged us to stick around and fellowship. So, I played a couple of games of Flux before heading home at 11:00, and then I talked with Mer for about 20 minutes or so.

Saturday turned out to be pretty easy for me. Breakfast cleanup took longer than it should have, so I was late getting to the library to hook up with my group. I was supposed to go with two vans to the Habitat for Humanity warehouse to do some work, but each van thought I was with the other, and I got left behind. No big deal – I googled the address and took off. An hour-and-a-half later, I pulled back into CVCA, having given up on finding the warehouse. I could not even find a gas station to ask at. It was frustrating. So, I spent the next three-plus hours cleaning the library at CVCA so that it would be easier when the groups got back. The vans came back staggered, and some were early, so we actually had CVCA in pretty good shape by 3:00 or so. By 3:30, Dubbs told me to take off, that she could handle watching the students until the rest of the vans got back. Since I wanted to get to a store before it closed at 5:00, I took off (I wanted to get flowers for Meredith for when she got back on Sunday).

I went home and took a nap, and then got a sub from Subway and started to watch a Batman/Superman cartoon until Dubbs and her husband showed up. We had made plans to have an unwind evening watching Clash of the Titans (Mer had given me her blessing to see it without her). Sadly, by the time we got to the theater, Nate had a painful migraine, so Dubbs ran him home. I met up with Dubbs’ sister, and we chatted in the theater until the movie started, and Dubbs did show up, only having missed the first minute or so.

So, while the spring break trip was very tiring, I think it was a good trip. I enjoyed working with my colleagues, and the students were great.