Since we were SO blessed on our Rehoboth Service Trip last year, we decided to take another group of students down to New Mexico during this first week of summer. It was a testament to how powerful this trip was last summer when half of the students returned, and 3 of them brought younger siblings! The trip begins and ends with lots of time in the car-- 16 hours to be exact-- so that is where I will begin this series of blog posts about our wonderful week of service. Ella actually told her piano teacher "the van ride!" was what she was most looking forward to on this trip!
We begin the trip with a prayer in the dark church parking lot. We like to arrive in Rehoboth the same day we depart, which means we leave at 4:00 am.
We had some quiet vans as our students went right back to sleep for a few hours until the sun came up.
Our drive takes us across the Mojave Desert and the state of Arizona in its entirety. We pass the time by having dance parties, watching movies, goofing off on the walkie talkies, playing drawing games and Would You Rather?.
The Mojave Desert is hot! And dry!
Dave, the girls and I stayed in the smaller van. We would take 3-4 students at a time. When we had a van full of girls, we'd listen to the dance/pop Pandora stations and watch The Princess Bride. When we had boys, we'd listen to Classic Rock and watch Star Wars. We'd laugh more with the boys, but the van smelled better with the girls. :)
I liked watching the landscape change every few hours. The Joshua Trees (above) were some of the favorite things I saw whiz by my window.
I spent most of the rides occupying a very small space in the back with the girls. Mostly they loved each other and did great, but after sitting next to anyone for all those hours, inevitable squabbles will break out and we did all take a turn getting a little punchy. Ella and Delia entertained themselves for hours by creating fake iPhones to take selfies with and "call" others in our van. Guess who hung out with highschoolers all week!
And finally, no road trip is complete without the License Plate Game! This time I found a handy app to help us keep track. Alas, we never did find hard ones like Hawaii or Washington DC and only came in at 86%
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