Mission Trip to Joplin, Missouri

This is my first mission trip ever. I really did not know what to expect. So, here is my daily diary of what my experiences were. I wrote this on a daily basis every night right before bed. I hope you enjoy my experiences.  

Day one... Sunday June 17th

We got out itineraries to look through. Here is the daily schedule...

6:30- Rise and shine
7:00- Breakfast/morning devotions
9:00-2/3 p.m-  Work. (lunch at 12:00).
3:00-6:00-  Showers and down time
6:30- Dinner
7:30- 10:30 Worship and family groups
11:00-  Quiet hours

On our way to Joplin! Went to church then met everyone who was going on the mission trip 
afterwards then packed the bags into a haul. We didn't leave the church until about 12:35. 
Drove to a gas station and met the rest of the crew from the Panama church.

Got back on the road at 1:17p.m. And now we are cruising along. 
Planning to stop in Nebraska City, which is about 45 minutes away. 
We'll see if it works that way.

We wound up stopping at Nebraska city subway and at lunch. 
It will be hard on this trip, but I'm trying to eat healthy! 
It is 2:43 and we are back on the road.

7:05 p.m

Made it safely! We are staying in a town about 10-15 miles away from Joplin called Carthage. 
We are sleeping in this old, old house. It is huge. I
t has 4 bedrooms, 2 baths but in one of the bathrooms the toilet doesn't work but the sink works. 
In the other one the toilet works but the sink doesn't.

There are 10 youth girls, 12 counting myself and the other female director. 
Us girls have the upstairs rooms with 3 cots in each room and the guys (3 boys and 3 directors) 
have the whole down stairs. 
The guys have it made.They get the air conditioner down stairs and in their 
bathrooms they have 3 showers and we only have one. We actually had to buy fans for each room. 
We switched bathrooms with the guys since there are more girls.

We have 2 different buildings that we are using... 
One building is for meals, morning prayers, and showers (church) and the second one (house) 
is for sleeping and daily converses.

Day 2  Monday, June 18th
Day 1 of working

First official day of working. Not really what I expected. We had to water trees. 
We had to fill up 5 gallon buckets with water, carry them to every tree and water the trees. 
We had to use 4 buckets on each tree. We had to do 3 parks. 
We had to fill up the buckets with water with a faucet type thing and carry the buckets
 to the tree and start all over. Sometimes we only had to walk 10 steps to the tree other 
times we had to walk a mile (seriously!!)

I did not know what to expect when we got here. 
After a year after a tornado you never know what to expect. 
The first park we went to must have had its own little path because just by looking at the park 
( other trees and houses) you wouldn't think anything happened. 
But if you walked through the park you could actually see the old tree stumps. 
There was a church right across the street that they were rebuilding.

The second park we went to is more of what I was expecting to see. 
There was still debris everywhere and there were brand new houses. 
There were houses still under construction. There was a house with just the foundation and nothing else. 
While we were driving around I saw a house that looked like it was just hit yesterday.
 It was just amazing to see all the construction going on and all the rebuilding.

Even kind of ate a little healthy today. Had 1 pancake with no syrup for breakfast. 
A sandwich for lunch. And lasagna, salad and a roll for salad.

Day 3 Tuesday, June 19th
Day 2 of work.

Had a bowl of grapes for breakfast. We had cereal this morning, but I don't eat cereal.

We watered trees again today. This time we were at a cemetery. 
Like I said before you can't really tell until you walk through the place that there was a tornado. 
If you looked at the top of the trees there would be just the branches where the leaves used to be. 
When we were walking through the cemetery you could see debris everywhere still. 
Once in a while you could see the fake flower petals from the cemetery plots all over.

Today was a short day. We started at 9 and worked until 1:30.

 Our itinerary says that we have to have quiet time at 11:00. That is not working so well! 
Sunday night everyone was up until at least 2 a.m. 
No reason, just sugar highs and the adrenaline from the trip. 
It didn't help that we went to Walmart at midnight.

Monday night we had everything done and were running on
 schedule to be in our rooms by 11 when we had a little distraction. 
Okay it wasn't a little one. One of the youth girls has back spasms at home and she had one on 
Monday night at 10:30. they lasted until midnight. It was very scary to watch. 
It is almost like watching seizures. 
We had to run to Walmart again at midnight to get her an air mattress for her back.

So, needless to say we have started a tradition of making a point to go to Walmart at midnight every night. 
We'll see how long that lasts.

Day 4 Wednesday, June 20th
Day 3 of work

We got told on Tuesday that we wouldn't have to water trees again. 
We have been having a lot of injuries. 
We think that the back spasms were due to lifting over 40 pounds of water 
by yourself and walking a half mile to a mile ( that's actually how far we had to walk for each.) 
Another girl dislocated her shoulder and another girl's shoulder hurt her.

Well, I don't know if today is much better than the other 2. 
Today, we had to clean debris off of a private property. 
It wasn't as good as it sounded.
 I was expecting there to be a house and we would just have to remove the tree branches and what not. 
We get there and there is no house, just an empty lot. 
There are rocks and sticks everywhere. 
We had to rake up the rocks and these aren't just big rocks that we had to pick up by hand, 
these rocks were like the little tiny landscaping rocks that you put in your yard. 
These were everywhere! They gave us rakes to use, but the rocks went right through the rake. 
So, most of us used shovels.

This was not easy. You think of shoveling rock and you think of shoveling snow. 
It's not like that... There were not piles of rock.. 
These were rocks that were stuck on the ground that we had pull out.

We made our nightly run to Walmart. It was fun.

Day 5 Thursday, June 21st

Today was fun day for the kids so we went to Silver Dollar City. 
It was super fun. The kids had a great time. 
We left the house at 8:30 am and didn't get home until after 10 pm.

Stopped at Wendy's on the way home and ate supper at about 7 p.m. 
Came back to the house and still did our family groups. That lasted until 1 a.m.

Day 6 Friday, June 22nd

Day 4 of work.

Today we didn't do hard labor. 
We just walked around surveying people who were affected by the tornado. 
It was interesting to see their reaction and hear what they had to say. 
It was good for the kids to hear some of the stories and see how important our 
mission trip is and the reason for watering trees. 
Some of the youth thought it was silly just to water trees then 
we explained to them that these trees are symbolizing a time 
of rebuilding and we have to nourish the trees like their parents nourish and take care of them. 

Pretty tired today. We've been getting up everyday by 7:00 am. I am ready to be home. 

We get to go home tomorrow morning. 
We should be getting home by 3-4 p.m. 
But that depends on what time we leave. 

Day 7 Saturday, June 23rd.

Going home today! We got up at 7:30 a.m and got packed
 (most of us were already packed from Friday night). 
Cleaned up the house then headed over to the church for breakfast. 
Finally left at 9:30 to drive home. Stopped in St. Joe, Mo for lunch. 
then continued home. Got home about 4:30 p.m.
 I drove about 3 hours and the other director drove the rest of the drive. 

This is my daily diary of what happened on my first mission trip to Joplin, Missouri. 
I hope you enjoy!