So I just realized that I haven't talked about um army yet.

United
Methodist

Action
Reach out
Mission by
Youth

It's a Methodist mission trip thingy that happens every summer. This was my first year.

Basically I paid money to go do manual labor in the hood on an old persons house.

Okay but it was actually really fun!

They split us into groups of four and there was a British guy in my group! His name is Matthew. We called him Matt.

I spent a week with a British guy.

ACCENT!

I got him to say potato! :)

Okay so yeah we got put into groups of four and we had to work on this house.

As Matt put it "the only living things were the vultures"

We got there and there was this smell . . .

It was dead armadillo. Half eaten by the vultures.

There was also a horse skull. It was all clean and didn't smell anymore though.

We had to replace the trimming on 6 windows.

Replace the screen door. We made our own screen door.

Replace some siding.

And then paint the entire house. It was a pretty good sized house.

And the old trimming around the windows was rotten. It took a while. On the second window there was this HUGE spider. I would've been fine.

But Matt has arachnophobia.

Do you understand phobias? It's not the same thing as being afraid. It's like you actually need psychological help to deal with this problem. Matt explained to us he is going through therapy. He's getting better. He still jumped off the ladder when he saw that thing. I finally grabbed the saw and killed the thing so he could go near it. I felt guilty. I'm sorry spider. I would have just flicked it into the grass but Matt explained to us that was his worst nightmare because then he wouldn't know where it was.

It took two crow bars two hammers and a good ten minutes to get each of the four boards off each of the six windows. And then we had to pull rusty nails out of the wall and put new trimming on.

And there were wasps EVERYWHERE!!!!

When my group told the other groups about this house they thought we were exaggerating or being over dramatic or something.

The last day we hadn't even started painting it though.

When group leader of yellow k found out they were helping us I was sitting right next to him. The conversation went something like this.

Him: We're helping green G tomorrow.

Me: Oh that's my group.

Him:is this y'all's second project?

Me: no first but it's really bad. We've done everything except scrape the old paint off and paint it.

Him: oh that should be easy. We'll finish it by noon.

Me: It's a LOT of scraping and a LOT of painting.

I could not make him understand.

Four groups were called in to help us on the last day. One bathroom break and we ate In the car on the way to the bathrooms.

We finished at five pm. The leader of group yellow k actually apologized to me for thinking I was exaggerating.

According to them we had actually been understating how awful it was.

But I still had fun all week. The people in my group were:

Whitney was our adult leader.
Shawn was the other boy besides Mathew.
Katy was the other girl besides me. (Honestly a whiny bitch but I didn't have to talk to her.)
Mathew
And me.

I was working with Shawn and Matt most of the week on the windows. There came a point where most conversations just became really stupid things like "Do you have pens in the UK?"
"No we stab ourselves with quills and write with our own blood."

Matt kept saying things like: "it's like thirty degrees out here!"

Shawn would add in "celcius" afterwards because Katy looked very confused.

He also kept measuring things in centimeters instead of inches.

Kilometers.

All sorta nonsense.

Shawn translated for us whenever someone talked about any kind of measurement of temperature or distance or length of anything.

Also we went to the store and we were looking at the candy section and Matt goes "we don't have that or that or that or that. We have that and that and M&Ms." I don't really remember what any of it was besides M&Ms."

They also don't have tacos in restaurants. If you want a taco you have to make it. And apparently soft tacos are referred to as fajitas. Like we were eating breakfast tacos and Whitney goes "do you have these in the UK?"
"Yes but I think we call them fajitas."

Okay. Another story. I'm sorry but Matt was probably the funniest person in my group and there are a lot of Matt stories.

Background: there's this guy we call tool guy Jeff because he drives around giving out tools that people need like ladders while we are working.

So we were packing up our worksite and Whitney looks up and goes. "Jeff just drove right past us!"

Matt who had been silent for a few hours suddenly yells to the sky "WELL SCREW YOU TOOL GUY JEFF!!!"

It was the most unexpected thing. And when something is said in a British accent it sounds very very propper. Even when it's something like screw you toolguy Jeff.

Okay onto subjects orther than Matt.

So there was this preachers kid Jeremy, who suddenly decided he was going to start talking about how being gay is wrong. Apparently legalizing gay marriage is like trying to change the laws of gravity.

I told the idiot off.

Because it's a typo. The bible had a typo because god really doesn't care.

But people never believe me when I show them the website that proves it was a mistranslation so I argued it's in freakin Leviticus.

Leviticus also says not to get tattoos. Or piercings. Or eat meat and dairy at the same time. Or wear polyester. Or eat bacon.

Nobody follows these rules because Jesus told everyone to quit worrying about being unclean. It's better that you eat some bacon then starve to death. It's better that you help people on the sabbath then rest.

I would also like to mention this boy had preached the morning message.

About love. Different types of love. How God loves everyone.

I believe God was trying to tell him something that week because that day this boy got bitten by two chihuahuas.

And after all that work I wish I could show you our clients face. She was so happy. She said she'd been praying for this. I'm pretty sure I've never been the answer to anyone's prayer before.

So yeah it was a really awesome week.

I'm just going to let you wonder about the thing in the media.