A final goodbye

For our final blog post of the year, Renee agreed to share some thoughts since leaving Philippi a week ago. She's been staying at Allison's house and returned home to Florida today.

"We finally finished the 'adventure', and it is strange to not wake up at 7:30 a.m., to get to work by 8:30 and see the wonderful, at times silly, families that I helped at the Heart and Hand Thrift Store. So far my mornings have consisted of sleeping, my afternoons spent reading, and my evening out on the town with Allison's friends and finally staying up past midnight! Yet this vacation feeling will end and in a week or so it'll be back to reality. I miss being needed at work. I miss waking up and sitting quietly at my spot on the living room couch listening to our house (the only time it's silent). I miss getting attacked with hugs and kisses from Ian and Ella--who will NEVER understand how much they've impacted our whole lives. Being in Philippi was definitely an adventure, we got to experience, EXPERience, EXPERIENCE, and enjoy God and friends for an entire ten months. No homework, no bills (a budget, but no personal bills--just taking turns paying house utility bills), and no parents... who could ask for anything better? There have been busy days, hard days at work, grumpy nights with dirty dishes, and a whole lot of time to stare at each other. But, I hope I can speak for everyone when I say, we wouldn't replace this past year for another. We are so blessed to have had this experience. We have learned, grown, and matured just the right amount. And I pray God continues to challenge us to utilize and take everything we've learned back to our homes and MAKE A DIFFERENCE. We didn't come to Philippi to coast... God meant to change our lives so we must not forget and trust Him to work through us even in Kansas, Ohio, Oregon, Germany and Florida."

And I'll add Indiana to that list because our family will be transiting back to Goshen, Indiana two weeks from today. We also pray that we will continue to trust God as we begin our next adventure.

Going, going, gone.

(Scroll all the way to the bottom of this post for a couple videos).

The weekend after we returned from Raleigh started our closure week. Everyone had their last week of work and then we began our closing activities. It was also the Blue and Gray Reunion in Philppi, where they celebrate the first land battle of the Civil War reenactment. To read more about what that whole celebration is about you can read about it here. Highlights of the weekend that we attended included the parade, ball, reenactment, and an amputation reenactment. Several of us in the house also ran a 5K--a first for both Heidi and Mike.

Renee at the ball

Gray shooting at the reenactment

Jim explaining the history

Jim Skidmore did a learning component that week in Civil War era muzzle loaders and we all got a chance to shoot one at targets. We all eventually hit the targets. Micah nailed the Pepsi bottle, Renee hit the center target, and Ben used his TP eye patch to help aim :) We had some cleanup to do at the Skidmore's after our shooting lesson though, because some people in the group had never been TPing before and thought it was time to experience that! (NOTE: this was a late-night prank not endorsed by unit leaders :) as we learned about it the next day)

Ben and his eyepatch

Micah's great shot

Allison's turn

Strawberry pie!

Other closing activities, besides some sessions on transitioning home, and major house cleanup, included a canopy tour with zip lines, revisiting Otter Creek, and messy games! We celebrated Ben's 21st birthday too. All in all it was a great way to end our time together. We hope everyone's experience in Philippi was memorable and rewarding. We'll miss everyone but know the relationships made this year will last a lifetime.

Looks like the shaving cream cans exploded!

Chocolate and oil dancing

Let's go to the beach

A tradition of the East coast Service Adventure units is the annual Memorial Day weekend trip to Raleigh, NC. The highlight of this trip is going to the beach on Saturday. The warm weather has usually arrived and everyone is excited to unwind, relax, swim, play games, and get sun-burned. Yeah, the other tradition is "sunburn Sunday" at Raleigh Mennonite Church. This year there was plenty of sun, but the burns weren't as bad as the parking. You would think this tradition would have a manual on how to find good parking over the first biggest travel weekend of the summer?!? Todd says he'll have a plan next year so we don't have to drop people off and shuttle drivers two miles away. Typically the units are winding down to their last week or so before closure week so it's a nice time to share stories from the year and relax before parting ways. We also celebrated Ian's sixth birthday when we arrived Friday.

Before we made it to Raleigh though, we planned on driving about half the seven hour trip and camp for the night. (See last year's post for our previous Raleigh camping experience). The weather forecast was not looking in our favor, so we decided at the last minute to sleep in our dry beds and leave at 7AM instead. We had reservations at an exhibition coal mine that we still wanted to make Friday morning. The Beckley Exhibition coal mine was a real mine but has been inactive since 1912. Before our tour started we had time to walk around the museum and other "coal town" buildings, including a pretty cool kids museum. It was fantasy storybook themed so you could dress up and sit in Cinderella's carriage, climb Rapinzel's tower and sit at a cobbler's bench from, well I don't know what story that was from. The coal mine tour was interesting. We rode into the underground mine in small coal cars and were led by a retired miner. He stopped us at several spots and demonstrated the evolution of mining technologies throughout the years. For example, he showed us a wooden cage that miners used to carry Canaries in to know if the gases in the mine were too high to sustain life. Nowadays they carry a small electronic meter. He also demonstrated how different lamps worked.

In Cinderella's carriage

Our guide

In the coal car