What has been happening to and in my life in the past weeks.

Let's start with me leaving for SEMP (and no it was not in Ohio):
I go to SEMP on Monday August first and return on the sixth. The week at SEMP was eye opening, seeing what was happening in my own city I found out that my city has the largest homeless population in the entire country. That is because we have cheap meth and cheap heroin so the kids will come to the city and not be able to leave because any money they have goes to drugs and food.
Anyway with that as background info let me go through my week at SEMP for you. All us students eat, do devotions and then go to a two and an half hour training session where we learn to minister to people through listening, caring and seeing them through Jesus' eyes. Then we have lunch and then we go out to the streets of the city just to see what we can do. For example one group of kids helped paint rooms at a Salvation Army rescue shelter and a different group helped clean up a lady's yard which they described as "a jungle". That was Tuesday so now on Wednesday the group I am in decides that the best way to help the people in the place we were assigned would be to hand out sandwiches, water, snacks in bags with antiseptic wipes and socks. The socks were handed out because a lot of people in that section of town don’t have shoes, so when they do have socks they wear them out very quickly then they cut up their feet and get an infection. Also we set up game boards for chess and checkers. After we leave downtown, which happened to be our assigned region, we return to the college and eat. After that it was worship time followed by a speaker, then the youth groups broke up held a debrief and went to Bed. Thursday was different, instead of going downtown all the students had to break up and write letters to four friends who they thought weren’t Christians. After we finished we had free time with our youth groups to do just about whatever we wanted (not literally). It was on that Thursday that everybody in my youth group including myself just plain Cracked! For example in the car on our way back from a trip to a waterfall we started singing “99 bottles of beer on the wall” and made it down to negative twenty. Later that night a prayer meeting for all the letters was held along with the regular worship time. Then on Friday we did about the same thing as on Wednesday with the water, sandwiches and the like. Then Saturday SEMP ended and we all went home.

Monday the 10th to Wednesday the 13^th I did about nothing except play “Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic” and read. Later Wednesday I went camping with one of my friends until Friday evening. While camping I spent almost the entire time on a bicycle seat going on bike rides to the beach, on a mountain biking trail (much fun) and cycling about 5 miles to a jetty on one of the rivers. Saturday I with my family attended the wedding of my mom’s cousin to a most wonderful girl. Ah-ha I have just remembered something on Tuesday evening I DROVE a few around the church’s parking lot then on Sunday evening drove around the parking lot just this time I had to do it backwards which I found most difficult. And this coming Sunday I get to go to this.

Well sums up about all I have (and haven’t) done in the past two weeks.