2016 Tour - Day 1

Day 1,
It was an early morning for us all, especially the seniors. We woke up at 3 or so to meet up at IHOP for pancakes.

After the bus was all loaded up, the journey started. We all slept for most of the ride and made it safe and sound to Ohio State University where Jill Loveless gave us a wonderful tour of her campus.

After that we went to the United methodist church of Wilmington. The families were great, despite a lightly filled sanctuary, the audience was great! Even the skits got some laughs!

Then it was time to go with our host families. My host family had two dogs, George and Sparky. Sparky was a little older and more reserved where George liked everything that could move! the families were great and Ellen felt especially grateful to hers. "Our host dad told us in the car he was going to give us a 'lecture'. At first we were nervous but when he spoke with us his message was really important. He told us that these 10 years (ages 13 to 23) are the hardest of our lives because everyone's trying to tell us what we should be doing and make us decide our futures right away. He told us that to deal with this stress, we need to remember to do 3 things: exercise, stay involved in our faith, and be patient. To hear this from someone much older than us (age 83) was so important because most of the time it feels like these stresses at this age aren't listened to or aren't valid," Ellen said. The host families are always one of the highlights of the trip, meeting and covering with new and wonderful people who willingly open up their homes to us is a feeling that is so unique to this tour. Thank you to all those host families, you guys make this trip for us and we are so grateful for your hospitality.

-Wes Davenport