Saturday, June 20th—The Start to My South Dakota Mission Trip  

We all had to get up at the crack of dawn. We had to be at the church at 5:30 and the departure time was at 6:00. When Dad and I got there, people were waiting around, and then we started to load luggage in the trailers. It took a while, and after that, we took a bathroom break before climbing into the vehicles for the first time. We had devotions and told each other our testimonies for the first two or so hours. 

Each time we stopped for a break, we'd switch vehicles. We brought three vehicles, a small bus and a big bus, and the church van too. We stopped for lunch, and I went to Taco Bell. 

During the afternoon, all of us worked on learning the music and motions for the VBS songs. Even those who weren't teaching the songs had to learn them, so that we could all do the motions at the end of the week with the students. We went over the songs more than once and even got to stand up in the bus and try our best to hold on while singing and doing motions at the same time. 

At one point, we stopped and played Putt-Putt. (We had a goal of playing Putt-Putt in 11 different states). We ended up playing at only one stop and skipping the other two. We were supposed to play again going to South Dakota, and once coming back, but it didn't work out. It was hot that day, and I ended up only playing 9 holes. I managed to make a hole-in-one once!

We were planning to stop in Kansas City for the night and stay at a church, but for some reason or another, we couldn't and our plans were changed. We ended up staying in Omaha, Nebraska. We stayed at a Christian school there. It was pretty late when we arrived, and it took a while to get the luggage out of the trailers. It was a long day, but a great start to a fulfilling mission trip.