Hi all,
Typing this after another long day of driving.
We arrived at St. Stephen's in Casper, Wyoming to a gracious welcome and a great evening meal of chili and dessert!
The folks here are most generous and we are also treated to a morning breakfast and will join the parish for 10 am service (our gang is doing the readings, crucifer, prayers and closing song).
Here is a little blurb that I wrote earlier today:
"I type this for the blog as I am burning CD’s of our photos for the slideshow creators- we are driving north on I-25 and are just south of Denver.
We had a great lunch of tuna and chicken pitas and wraps, and of course, Oreos!
Our contact person in Casper, Temple, just phoned us that they are very excited to be hosting us for tonight, feeding us, and to have us worship with them tomorrow at the morning service at St. Stephen’s (Temple has also been following our blog and has written a comment on the site). We have been certainly been overwhelmed with the gracious reception we have received from everyone we have met on this journey. We do sense the prayers, from family and friends at home but also with all the new friends we have met on the way, that have told us that they are praying for us too: these prayers have surrounded us with an almost physically-sensed grace.
Our work supervisor, Mike, at McCurdy School relayed a message to us from one of the other staff that we were the best working team he believes they have had at the school- quite a complement!! Yesterday, Dan, the school superintendent and Mike both said, in presenting our volunteer appreciation certificate, that our team were indeed an exceptional group of young people that have worked extremely hard and that they did not have a single difficult incident with our youth team (it sounds as though that there have been a few issues with summer youth teams before!).
All in all, the youth have all worked, played and travelled hard these past 9 days together. I would be quite happy to take this group anywhere, anytime- we found “our groove” early together and each experience we have together confirms that this trip was somehow divinely meant to be."