Last Day :( But a Fun Day! :)

June 17, 2022

Good evening AGAIN people!!!! We hope to have a smooth blog tonight (no part 2...) This is Molly, Pam, and Gene once again bringing you our EXCITING, FUN, SILLY, INSPIRING, daily recap!

Breakfast started off exciting (or should I say scary) this morning with a visitor... a bug visitor... we had excitement with a spider in our kitchen to really wake everyone up this morning. Then the whole crew headed off to work at the thrift store again (no splitting off into groups today we all worked together on the same project for the first time this week!). Before we began working, we met with Mike again (from last night, the artist who brought all the native Lakota games) and shopped some of his art pieces and made some great purchases! Some of which he even made last night! Then we all started unpacking more amazon shipments and donations for the thrift store. We organized in-coming items, re-loaded another truck, broke down boxes, collected trash, built more furniture to sell, and can claim that we got through at least 3 huge pallets (stacked higher than we are tall) of donations. Some highlights from the morning were when Barb found a box of STAR WARS LIGHTSABERS!!! (Molly was very excited and immediately bought them after having a lightsaber battle with Connor), and when David and Molly discovered a dead animal smashed into one of the donation boxes and had to go run to wash their hands (thanks for catching that Melanie because we did not notice until after we had touched it). We worked from 8:30am to Noon at the thrift store and then said some goodbyes to the thrift store ladies and came back home for a quick lunch.

In the afternoon we had an exciting adventure!!! Linda let us have the afternoon off from working so that we could go tour the equine therapy horse ranch that we had heard about earlier in the week (see previous blogs). Justin Baker had invited us to go tour SGU Horse Ranch and see all the good work they are doing there. SGU Horse Ranch provides licensed therapy to kids who have experienced abuse or other trauma with the help of their volunteers, therapists, and of course horses. They have a 25 head herd of horses and most of them are rescue horses! This was a huge highlight of the week for a lot of us especially me (Molly) who was freaking out the whole time because I'm a huge horse person and was living my best life among the horses. They let use go into the corral, hang out, hug, and pet the horses for a long while but unfortunately they had just had their annual vaccines that morning and were sore so we could not do any riding :( but we did take lots of pictures! (see below) We got a full tour of their facilities by Dave (the head owner of the ranch) and it was really cool hearing about all they are able to do for the community and the kids. While there, we also got to visit with Justin again and see one of their sweat lodges that was actually on the ranch's property. We were even allowed to crawl inside the sweat lodge and sit in it for awhile. It was really a neat experience that connected us to the Lakota people and culture even more.

Then after we got back from SGU Horse Ranch we worked on care cards, cleaning, packing, and resting before dinner and our journey home tomorrow. Molly sorted David and Barb into their Harry Potter Hogwarts houses with the help of Caleb, Melanie, and Gene. Connor flicked a tick onto Molly's back... (long story)... all in all we had a good time before dinner! For dinner we had what I like to call "bread for dinner and bread for dessert!" we were invited to a fry bread feast by Linda and the people at Tree of Life Ministry! We all LOOOOVE fry bread and were very excited to eat fry bread tacos and fry bread blueberry pudding dessert prepared special by Linda and her family. We had a lovely meal together enjoying good Lakota food and reflecting on the week and the wonders and faithfulness of God. Linda told us how it might not always seem like we did a lot but what we did this week was very impactful and truly meant a lot to them all.

After dinner, we headed back to do more cleaning and packing. Howard then lead us in a beautiful last devotion and reflection over the week and we all shared communion together with... you guessed it... more fry bread! It's been an AMAZING week and we are all sad to go home tomorrow but happy to be seeing you all again real soon!

signing off for the last time...

Molly, Pam, and Gene

GOOD NIGHT !!!