Mission Trip

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Indiana
By Dakota Urben

Summer 2007

The Mission Trip I Went On

Indiana was a lot of fun.  I met a lot of new people.  Spread the word and a lot of other very fun things.  I guess you guys are just waiting to hear about the whole story.  Ok here goes.

Boot Camp

Honestly I had no idea what was in store when I got to boot camp.  Of course I knew some stuff that was in the book they gave you.  I was nervous and a little scared but I was also excited because I had never done anything like this.

When I pulled up in the boot camp parking lot, I saw kids working and a lot of woods!  I had to carry my stuff in a wheel barrow down a path all the way to the pre-teens tent.  When I got there I think about 4 other people were there; so that made my count off number 5.  Each of us were assigned count off numbers.  I was number 5 because I was the 5th one who got there.  The count off numbers are just an easier way to help the leaders know if you're here or not.

Our head leaders were Mr. and Mrs. Deegan.  Our other leaders were Mr. Danny, Ms. Amyann, Ms. Lexi, and Mr. Ishmale.  After we got the stuff we were assigned such as boot tray, a food tray, cup, duffle bag, etc., we went to our campsite.

The campsite is where we slept in tents big enough for 2 people and our stuff.  We would be sleeping in tents for the next 8 days.  The purpose for the tent was to train us for other countries, because some teams would have to sleep in tents.  We had lunch in an eating site that we were assigned to.  We ate there for lunch and to my surprise we had no napkins.  Which I kind of expected because they always said "this camp is not a pamper camp."

The 1st day we just kind of waited for all of our team to arrive.  When it was time, all of the pre-teens would gather under the tent for worship.  For worship we would have some music and then we would have a speaker come and talk to us.  After the speaker was done they would ask anyone who wanted to come forward and talk to someone if they needed it.  Then we would all follow our leader back to our campsite and head to bed.  Lights out was at 9:30.

We got up at 5:30 A.M. and had a couple of minutes to get ready.  When we were ready, we got in line and counted off.  We went to our eating site and ate our breakfast and then had devotions.  I was really tired.  After devotions we had orientation, which basically told us about boot camp.  Then we would go do the O.C. (obstacle course).  The O.C. was a series of different obstacles that we had to get through.  When we were thirsty we drank out of a 2 qt. canteen.  They would always tell us to drink out of our canteen so we wouldn't get dehydrated - because it got hot outside!  Then we would have classes and have lunch, then more classes and then free time.

Free time was when we would study verses, or work off S.B.'s.  S.B. stands for special blessing.  This means you have a punishment either because you did something against the rules or you just were being bad!  After free time we had classes, then there was a time when we could do something fun, like the Velcro wall or canoeing.  Next we had bath and laundry time.  We would take a bucket and get water from the lake and then fill our bucket.  We could either bathe or do laundry or both.  We wore a bathing suit; girls were only allowed to wear one piece and water shoes and guys swim trunks and water shoes.

Laundry was done by scrub brush and laundry soap.  Then we ate dinner and had worship.  Then bed.  We did the same routine for the length of time we were there.

In Indiana

On the way there we had a lot of fun.  We sang songs, talked and took naps.  We also did devotions.  I think it took us about 2 days to get there.

When we got there we met the founder of TTT ministries, Mr. Doom.  He showed us around and then we unloaded our stuff out of the van and headed to our dorms we were assigned.  Then we were taught how to set up our tents for the fairs and we would eat lunch and pack the van that day.  Then we got to the fair and we set up our tent.  We then started to spread the gospel!  We would try to reach out to children from 10-18.  We would ask them if they would like to take a survey.  If they said yes, then we would ask 13 questions.  But the last questions were what mattered most.  Number 11 asked "do you think your best friend will go to heaven?"  Number 12 asked, "do you think you will go to heaven?"  Number 13 asks "why?"

If they wanted to accept Jesus Christ in their heart then we would help them.  So basically our routine was that we woke up and took a shower (we were lucky if we got running water).  After shower time we ate breakfast.  Then we had a couple of classes and had library reading time.  After reading time was free time, where we worked off S.B.'s and worked on verses.  After we had lunch we got ready to go to our fairs.  Then after we spread the word we came home and talked about it and went to bed.  One fun thing I did was ride my first ferris wheel and I tried my first fried Snicker bar.  We were there for about 4 weeks.  On Saturdays they had kind of a youth group for teens.  We went to 3 churches to do our presentation!

Debrief

On the way back we were driving and all of a sudden our other van that had monitors (extra people who come with us to watch us) riding in it broke down.  So we had to pull over to help.  Unfortunately, the outcome was that our leader, Mr. Deegan, would have to drive us all the way to Teen Missions and come back to get the monitors.  So we decided to pray.  We went to a gas station and all of a sudden our leader got a phone call that the van started working again.  Praise God.  When we got back, we unloaded our stuff and this time we got to sleep in dorms.  The next morning was just like boot camp, except we didn't do the O.C. and we had running water.  Of course we had classes and we got to go to Wet 'N Wild and CC's pizza.  Remember all those verses we studied?  Well, we had a quiz off.  We had games and had fun.

Thank you to all the people who donated money to help me go on this fantastic trip.  I hope to continue to go on mission trips.