And The Winner Is...

Thank you all for a truly amazing race! The winner is the BLUE TEAM! The green team took second, and the red team was third. The race came down to the final challenge, where each team dressed up their leaders in ridiculous outfits, complete with face paint and well placed toilet paper rolls, and paraded them in front of the church. Matt, who was driving for the blue team today, won the congregational applause-vote, propelling the blue team to victory. Kristan and the red team took second place in the final challenge, but it still wasn't enough to beat out Mike and the green team for second place.

Watch over the next few days for our final posts; we'll be putting up the videos that we had technology trouble with, and pics of the final challenge (well worth seeing!).

Thanks again for all of your support. Special thanks to Candi Banghart, who worked behind the scenes to arrange our travel, organize our budget, and make this event happen! Also thanks to Orchard View Congregational Church of Muskegon, Michigan; Mike and Sheri Miller, Jennifer Gregar, Pastor Andy of Community Evangelical Church in Niles, MI; Nina and Brandon Cooper and family, Ashley Towey, Craig Wood, Andy Veith, and everyone at Lighthouse. Also, thank you to the Wiliams family and the Schettler family for letting us borrow Matt and Kristan. And Matt and Kristan, THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH for joining us and making this event possible. It is 11:43, the race just ended, and I am exhausted, so if I missed anyone, please, understand and know that I am so thankful to everyone that made this event happen. And, most of all, thank you to you, God, for allowing us to run this race so that we can better understand this faith race that we are living every day.

~Pastor Mike

Everyone who has the hershy squirts say I....

Were off the see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of CORALVILLE!! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, were headed back to Iowa. To all you worried little parents...were not coming home..we've all decided to live in boxes because houses are overrated. But just in case we change our minds, be ready to pick us up on sunday morning. I'm hoping we'll be getting back before the church service, but we dont know yet.
Anyway...Today was a good day. This was the first day that we got to rest our pretty little heads a while longer on the soft comfy...BRICKS! The hotel said we were too rebelious to sleep on pillows. We agreed that we were rebellious and gladly accepted the bricks. No but really guys, the hotel was really nice and we loved that we got to sleep in. After we woke up and got ready, we got on a transit and rode into downtown chicago. I was about to pee my pants to we stopped in subway and went potty. Then we walked 1,029,283,746,524,231,337,496,899,879,867 blocks to a giant homeless shelter. It was pretty cool becuase we got a tour of the place and its really nice. It makes you realize what you have and appreciate it more. After the homeless shelter, we watched an "unshackled" radio skit which was pretty cool. We ate a wonderful dinner there and left to catch another transit back to the hotel. When we got back to the hotel, we got into the vans and now were on our way back to coralville. Here are some funnnny videos and pics from today and a couple from yesterday. COMMENT THEM and let us know what you think. I know I wont have to worry about my mama commenting cuz i know she will... :]
Roger Wilco
Megan




This is the funniest video I have ever made...ever.

What A Day!

Well as you read earlier we did good at winning the two competions at Norte Dame and the Chocolate Cafe. After we were done with this it was off too the Windy City, Chicago, IL. We all went to the the bathroom before the trip (you thought that would made a difference). When we started to get closer to the Windy City, people started to get to get a bad case of the "Hersheys Squirts" or as Megan likes to call it. Here is a recipe of disaster.

1 Chicago traffic jam
4 people who needed a bathroom badly
1 major case of boredom

You get two girls talking and singing with an accent sort of Russian like or something. It wasn't really bad, i would say it was more along the side of funny. Once we got into the city we searched for a useable bathroom. Our driver and a fellow teammate found one I wish I knew where. Then Megan and me came down with two choices of using a filthy and awlful smelling port-a-potty or become a paying customer at Subway who had a nice bathroom. The choice was Subway, and I bought two cookies so that both of us would be a customer.

After all that mumble jumbo we went to one of the tallest buildings in Chicago, the John Hancock tower. There we rode an elevator that made your ears pop at 20 miles an hour. The site of Chicago at night was really good. There we did something unique by having one of our services there. Getting through Chicago this time wasn't as bad and ended up at this very nice hotel called the Renaissance Suite. Here had some fun in the pool knocking eachother in the water at times and finishing it off in a hot tub. Don't forget to comment the best team here. If you do comment then that means your really cool.

Posted by,
Eric Fulton

Beached Whales

Here are some little pickturskies that we forgot to post on our older blogskies...
ENJOYSKIES!

Sank you verdy muchskies.

Posted by: Russian Megskies (Megann)
















Britt on good lookin day.






















The sunset on the beach















Eric waiting to go to the beach

















Beached whales

Friday's Adventure.

Today we were cruising on the interstate looking for Indiana; South Bend, Indiana to be exact. On our way there we were just jammin out to our new favorite song Down by Jay Sean. When we got to Indiana we went to the amazing Notre Dame University. There, we had to scavenge all around the campus to look for some interesting things. On our race to find these things we got a video of a little accident I had :/. When you watch please don't make fun. I was just in a little bit of a hurry to get to the finish line! Don't you worry tigers we were the first ones there, and received 500 points! WHOOOPITY WHOOP WHOOP! Something we learned about at this campus was that they have bathrooms NOWHERE! Let me tell you I HAD to go so I had to take a little leak in front of everyone. It was a little embarrassing, but you gotta do what you gotta do. There is a little video of that one too. Now that we went and ate at the Chocolate Cafe I'm stuffed and ready to hit the road for some more sight seeing. But before we left we had to get a little laugh in somehow. We dolled Mikayla up and made her look beautiful and took a video of her (you will have to look at her page for that one. She is on the Red team). So now we are headed back to Illinois to visit CHICAGO! AKA: The Windy City :) There we will do some more scavenging. We will update later to tell you how tonights adventures end. Comments are great so keep them a comin little hooligans.





















Bear Hug















First to get at the Chocolate Cafe! Whippy!















Megan chasing a poor, little squirrel















We just had to go.




















Eric's posing :) his future senior picture.















Copying the Jesus Mural
















Jesus Mural































Ceiling in Administration Building at Nortre Dame
















Administration Building
















The unique clock on the O'Shag Quad















Meg and Me posing by "The Visitation"







Posted By: Britballs

Still Runnin'

We are here in Niles, MI, where our teams are staying at Community Evangelical Free Church. The students are still impressing me with their great attitudes. The service projects went well, it was a new and challenging idea for us.

My prayer is that God is working in the lives of my students this week. It's one of those things that can't be gauged; at the end of this trip we may be able to say how many miles we traveled (maybe around 1,100?), but we won't be able to say that we came 'this far' in our faith. This evening I poured myself out in the teaching. I taught on the audience we have as runners of the faith race, the Christian life. I centered on the fact that God is cheering us on, both as our coach and as our greatest fan. I believe it. I know it. Scripture says it. As we live and obey and struggle and learn and worship, God cheers and applauds and beams, the image of a proud Father. He desires for us to succeed. Some have the misperception that He is some detatched judge in the sky, some horrible ogre of a being, observing with disdain and awaiting our every mistake. That is not so.

The message of God as cheerleader inspires me. I'm caused to worship, to marvel; I am humbled and in awe. How can it be that God even knows me, let alone cheers louder than anyone as my Advocate?! Yet it's true.

Sometimes my students are more cryptic than the clues that I've written for this race. They are often unreadable. I couldn't tell if the message was fully received (they are quite tired, afterall). Please pray that their hearts will be open, that they will welcome the transforming power of God's Word. Tomorrow evening will be an espescially important message. My hope is that the setting will provide perspective and the impact that I'm longing for. I'm sure you'll read about it.

As with our race, it's impossible to know what will happen tomorrow, we just have to keep runnin'!

Oh this is interesting, very interesting...

Wednesday is over, a new day has come! Thursday, like predicted, has been a pretty easy day. Unfortunately, we are all WORN OUT from running everywhere yesterday. Running up and down the stairs, dunking people in the lake, running 5,000,000,000,000 miles to the dang lighthouse to see the silver haired foxy lady, ummmm...and lots more things, but we're so tired we can't remember right now. Oh yeah, and everyone has gotten lost about 4,523,452,362,346,346,362,456,234 times (no exaggeration on the numbers). That's the most frustrating thing, but besides that we're having a lot of fun. Anyway, Today we were given 20 dollars and told to spend no more or less on any service projects we want. Our groups split up, and Blue team was pretty lost on what we were gonna do to bring God glory. We ended up going to Arby's and buying the people's lunch behind us with the money. Then we went to Aldi's to get popcicles and hand them out at the beach. But, before we left Aldi's, we got two dollars worth of quarters to put in all the carts for people to use them in the future. The beach was nice, and giving people free popcicles was even better. All the teams met up at a go-cart place and we had a challenge of racing. Britt (what a slugger) was FIRST!!! WHOO HOO. Eric (a slugger also) came in second!!!!! and I came in 5...i think. So, Blue team got 150 points for that challenge.
On our way to the vans, we were given the next password to the clue. We were unaware we could do an easy puzzle to get the next password before we left, so we had to choose the choice of stopping at three places along the way to our next destination (Niles, Michigan) and play air guitar concerts in public. Let me tell you, it was interesting. Here are our pics and videos of today. We'll keep you all posted because I know reading and seeing our blogs are the highlight of your day :] We're on our way to a riverfest concert...and i don't think any of us in this van know what that is....hmm.
Meg and Britt
p.s. The greens rap song is nothing compared to the plans we have planned...mwhahaha