the GOOTH mission trip started today! as promised, here is the first entry in the blog. three of our middlers wrote entries, so i’ll keep the intro short. it is 10:15. the lights just went out. we have an early morning tomorrow.
(from Sara Morris, 8th grader)
Hello! Today is the first day of our mission trip in NYC. We will soon be eating dinner and now we’re all just kinda lounging around, but we have had a really long-but fun day! This morning, we woke up really early, (or stayed up really late for some) and all arrived at the church really early around 2:00am. We left the church and started our journey, first going to the Greensboro train station. We were basically the only people in the train station so everywhere you looked you would see a GOOTH green t-shirt. Then we boarded the train. The train was a lot of fun. There was a lot of room and it was neat going through some of the big cities like D.C, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. It was a pretty long ride but we made the best of it. Then we went up and waited for Jay and our luggage at the amazing Penn Station. Jay quickly found us because us being in our bright green t-shirts, we were pretty easy to spot! We got our luggage, went up a few stairs and escalators and then were met with the hundreds of honking taxis and tall buildings of New York City! It was sooo exciting! We walked a few blocks and crossed a few busy streets then went to the subway station. We quickly got aboard and were much happier in the cool air conditioned cars. On my train a couple of New Yorkers asked about us and were really interested in what we doing. It was cool. After that, we walked a little bit more than went to board the Staten Island ferry. Today we have ridden all sorts of different things-cars, trains, subways, and now the ferry was just adding to the list but the ferry ride was really neat. We saw the Statue of Liberty up close which was cool. After we exited the ferry, and got through what seemed like a mob of people, we started towards the church. Through some of the Staten Island buildings you could see the church steeple. So the end was in sight! We didn’t know exactly how to get there, but we had a pretty good idea. My group decided that if we ended up in Manhattan, we knew we went the wrong way 
Then after a little walk we finally made it to the church. It is really nice here and I think we are all having fun after our first day.
(from Samantha Cooper, 8th grader)
Hey All!! Today was the first day of our mission trip we arrived got unpacked and we are settled in! The one thing I was worried about today was the subway. Everyone was making fun of me because they knew that the subway was no big deal and that I would be fine. But I did not know that; I thought that I was going to be left behind and no one would notice!! (Yeah right) turns out the subway are actually kind of fun. Because you are getting tossed around and you have to hold on or you are going on the ground! The other fun thing we had to do in order to get to Staten Island is we had to ride the ferry which went right past the Statue of Liberty; We were all excited about it!! I was afraid that Reva was going to drop her camera in the water but she did not!! Thank goodness!!All in all the first day was really fun and I am sure the rest of the week will rock our socks!!!
(from Tyler Hinshaw)
Hey everyone! Today has been great. We had such an early start this morning- we had to be at the church at 2 a.m. Once we got to the train station, we all sat around on the big wooden benches. One thing we could do during that time was work on a prayer shawl. Ms. Jean brought all the materials to make one that we could all work on together. The yarn is a very pretty mint-green. It was the closest to GOOTH green she could get. The train ride was a lot of fun, too. Most of us slept at first, but when we woke up, we moved around to talk to our friends. One thing I learned today was walking across a train is not the most pleasant thing in the world. It was very rickety, especially between cars. About halfway through the trip, our car became empty of everyone except for GOOTH. It was very nice because we could spread out and I got the two seats I had been sharing with Sarah to myself. When we got to New York City, we had to wait in the train station for the longest time, but after we got our luggage, we got to see the city! The city was AMAZING! There were people everywhere, but it was so exciting. We got to see the Empire State Building on the way to the subway. We had a bit of difficulty in the subway station because we had to get our luggage through the spinning things that you enter through. However, Jay came to the rescue and handed our stuff to us after we passed through. The subway was an experience that I enjoyed. Once we found where we were supposed to be, we had to hurry through the doors. There weren’t that many people on the subway- not many of us had to stand in our car. We also got to ride the ferry, from which we could see the Statue of Liberty. It was so cool to see her from the water. We could see the line to go into her, and it was so long! When we arrived at Staten Island, we hiked up this long hill to get to the church. After unloading the car with the sleeping stuff, we had some free time (I took a nap). For dinner, we had New York-style pizza. We also got to decorate new GOOTH cups- red for middlers and blue for high schoolers. We had a safety talk where we discussed what to do it certain situations. Soon after we had devotions. We talked about the burning bush story and how we are being called to “Take off our shoes” this week. We also shared our highs and lows of the day. Bye- I’m off to bed. <3
more to come another day…
peace, love, and chocolate,
jay
