Days 61-64: North Carolina Pt. 1 (10/14-10/17/20)

After a great week and a half in Louisiana, it is officially time to leave for a new state. I’m gonna miss this place so much. We said goodbye to the Talbot family, and even dropped off Christina and Anthony, our supervisors, at the airport, before heading out. We won’t see them until sometime next month. That evening, after driving through Mississippi and Florida, we stayed the night in Dothan, AL, with Mr. Mike. His son, Jonathon, did NET back in ‘16-17, and have hosted NET teams the past couple of years. He is a super gentle man, and he serves us so beautifully, making this place feel so comfortable. . . The team spent the whole next day in Dothan doing ministry work, while I had my weekly day-off. So I found a hiking trail nearby and went out for a couple hours. I hiked quite a bit during quarantine, and I didn’t realize how much I missed it until then. From there, I get a surprise call from Ellie Lehto, my teammate from last year, saying she’s coming to visit me!! We meet up at Chick-fil-A, and hang out/catch up for the next hour or so. I have not seen her since we left the road last year in March, about 7 months ago, and it’s surreal that I’m seeing her today. She wanted to meet my new team, so we went to Mike’s house and she spent the whole afternoon with my new team! It was a wild time, watching worlds collide, but I was thriving. I’m so grateful for that opportunity to see Ellie, especially since I don’t know the next time I’ll get to see her. . . We left early the next morning to arrive at St. Therese in Mooresville, North Carolina, driving through Georgia and South Carolina to get there as well. Long travel days are so much fun with the team, as goofy as we are. We can make any situation fun. Upon meeting with the people at St. Therese, we went to dinner at a restaurant the ladies’ host family owns, which was delicious Mexican cuisine. After dinner, we left for Dayna and Lin’s, the guys host family, whose house was right on the water. Beautiful times. . . Today might be the craziest ministry day ever. Here’s the deal: there are 120 confirmation students at St. Therese, but the max capacity indoors in North Carolina is 25. So we had to do two separate 4-hour retreats today, 60 peeps each, and split those two groups in half! Hence we also split the team, 6 in one room, 6 in another, which should never happen unless with special permission from NET. We would come together for Prayer Ministry, but it was a long day. Grace and I led 2 retreats each, and we had different team members for both retreats. I’m not sure if this has ever happened in NET history until now, but ministry is ministry.