My team and I have successfully finished one of the toughest weeks of youthworks I have ever experienced. By no means was it a bad week but it was just really hard. I'm not sure how else to describe it. The groups we had were a challenge. They all came from extremely privileged backgrounds and walked in with the mentality that the world revolves around them. It took a lot of energy for us as staff to get them excited about serving the community here. By mid week we were emotionally drained. On Wednesday night we had a little bit of a staff break down... it was hard and painful but it was a very good thing. The evening ended with four out of the five of us in tears and an extreme new found respect and LOVE for one another. The week closed out on a very positive note. The groups left broken and a little messed up (which is what we are looking for!). The youth learned how deny themselves and live for others. My prayer is that it sticks when they head back home. 

Yesterday just had to be one of the most amazing days I have ever had. Not good... not bad just amazing. The amazingness began, I believe, when I met three of my staff in the kitchen to help them unload all our groceries. Just a note we had been in a tornado watch all afternoon. When we started to unload it was just sprinkling but by the time we were halfway finished it was down pouring. Preeti opted to put away groceries while Jake, Jacob, and I finished unloading.  After the groceries were all in as you can expect after all the food was in the three of us decided to play in the rain. After a while we coaxed Preeti outside and we all had way to much fun. It was about the time that it began to hail and the winds reached 50 miles per hour (Ok, I might be lying but there were trees on the ground afterwards!) that we realized that we were all locked out of the building with no phone... but we did have a set of truck keys. The four of us proceeded to pile into the cab of the truck sopping wet and we drove to Ila's house (our Cass Lake Grandma), during a tornado, to see if we could seek shelter with her. After tracking water through her house we realized that we left Stephanie's garage where she keeps her work project supplies. We were saved!!! And all was well.

I finished off my night by not putting the blender lid on tight enough and having hot chocolate sprayed all over my shirt, face, hair, pants and shoes... ohh well my staff at least got a good laugh out of it.