Monday, March 16

This morning, the whole crew woke up about 8 AM with breakfast ready and hot. Jason and Troy prepared coffee, eggs, sausage, and some fruit along with that. Before breakfast, the girls all did Pilates in the theater room. Everyone was tired from watching TV the night before in our theater rooms (the girls watched Mulan while the boy’s watched baseball). After breakfast we packed our things to hit the road for Asheville. 

Beforehand, we all went on a shopping spree. The girls went to an outlet mall and visited several stores. Everyone was able to find something cute to buy. Afterwards, we went to another souvenir shop where Miranda bought fudge to share with everyone. While shopping, the girls saw some bears :)

While the girls went shopping at the outlet, the boys went to the Knifework’s shop and found some sweet weapons. Four of us came out of that store with a hatchet, two knives and a sword (Zach bought the sword). The store itself was awesome and had some old relics inside to ponder over. After that, we still had to wait on the women, so we went to a local tool shop, and the name of the store was "Daycare for Men". Nobody bought much there but there were some satisfying tools. After that, we all met back up, got in our vans and ate lunch, and got back on the road.

Even though it was raining, the group stopped after an hour to appreciate the scenery. Paxton spent a good amount of time aura farming looking at the mountains while a few of the girls were carsick. Finally, we got to the YMCA in Black Mountain, NC, after two hours. To quickly bring all our belongings in, we formed a firemen’s brigade. After we put out stuff away, the girls tried to build community and share fudge with the guys, but the guys locked them out.

After getting unpacked, the leaders had a meeting, and all the students went for a quick hike around the YMCA campus and had some game time before eating supper. Supper was salad, a baked potato bar, a cookie, and ice cream sundaes. After dinner, we spent some time in worship and small groups, and the rest of our night will be free time till 10:30 PM.

Today was a good time of shopping and scenery soaking. Tomorrow we will head to our jobsites and serve the people of Asheville!

- Written by Paxton Bouma and Rachel Kacmarynski