As I sit in the now lovely&CLEAN team room at the ministry (today was cleaning day!) and begin this blog to you all, many thoughts and emotions flood my mind. Spring Tour has finished....it was oh so bittersweet. You see, this was our last tour as a team. We've been touring together for 9 months and to suddenly have that part of your life over...it's hard, scary, exciting, sad. God has blessed our team so incredibly. Throughout these months together we have loved being together, loved playing together, and for some strange reason, have not gotten sick of each other! Sure there have been times of disagreements and times of upset and hurt, but nothing major to ruin the unity and joy of our team. So now as we have reached the end of touring together, the time has come to say goodbye and to move onto the next things God has for each of us. Now it's time for us to split up and take on different roles for this coming summer...some leading summer teams, some being cooks, some being trainers, and some just being there doing whatever needs doing. But for now, let me share with you some highlights from spring tour.
This tour was interesting in that it was only 3 weeks long and we went down to Florida and back in those 3 weeks. So there was LOTS of driving! It was a special tour though since we all knew it was our last, we cherished every minute of it. One of our favourite parts of this tour was in Hawthorne, Florida. For 3 days our team helped out at a school camp of 10&11yr olds at Luther Springs Retreat. We were each assigned to a team and helped out in whatever way was needed. We provided the music for the morning and evening sessions and then during the day helped run the activities for the kids. It was such a fun time even though it was such a tiring time! Julie and I were in separate cabins each with 10 lil girls. Talk about fun times eh?! They were lovely girls :) We found that this age group is so significant. Our whole team was very adored and looked up to....probably because we were that 18-24 age and also we were 'the band'. So for us to have a positive impact on these kids was oh so important! I loved just being able to be there for them, hug them when they needed a hug, play with them, tease them, counsel them, encourage them...it was a special time. Another highlight for our team was in Blairsville, Georgia. The youth group here was in the middle of a 30hr famine and so we played music for them that morning and worshipped with them for 2hours. The rest of the day we were able to help them car wash and then hang out and play volleyball, basketball...etc. Awesome people.
Our last stop before heading back to Willmar was at our team leader Paulie's church in Jacksonville, Illinois. During our 4 days there Paulie's niece was born...it was so exciting and such a blessing for him to be there at that time! Paul's family and church blessed us all immensely and it was a wonderful way to end tour.
Right now we are now heavy into partnership drive and then in a couple of weeks summer team members will begin arriving!! We are so looking forward to the summer and all it involves. Thank you all so much for your continued prayer.
Until later...
Ruthie :-)
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