Saturday's Flight Information

American #1339 left Boston a few minutes late.

Current estimated arrival (according to American Airlines site) is 7:20 PM.

Friday, June 24th

We caught the big yellow bus and headed for the Plimoth Plantation, the Mayflower II and Plymouth Rock. The Plantation features a replica of a 17th Century Wampanoag Village, a reproduction of the Plimouth Colony of 1627 (7 years after the Mayflower landed), a crafts center, and a visitor center where we all ate lunch.

The Mayflower II itself reenforced the notion that it took some significant sacrifice and some dogged determination for the early Separatists (whom we started calling Pilgrims) to brave the late fall/early winter Atlantic for that journey nearly 400 years ago.

Then tonight our "rookies" presented their annual skit, and we spent time honoring our 6 seniors on the trip, Justin Alexander, Jeremy Curtiss, Kevin Erb, Reid Gardner, McKinley Geiger, and Jeff Thomas. This is always an emotional time, because our seniors take huge leadership responsibilities for our Youth Community, and so many of their peers, and all of the adults are always grateful.

Clean up and worship tomorrow morning, one more trip on the big yellow bus to Logan airport mid afternoon, back at O'Hare about 7:30 PM, if we're lucky and the weather cooperates.

Thursday, June 23

A half day of work today at many of the same sites as earlier in the week, and then a Ferry Ride along the coast up to Salem. The weather was gray and drizzly, and the boat ride was something just this side of the Perfect Storm. But we got to Salem, visited the Salem Witch Museum, ate a little dinner, then trained back to Quincy.

Our schedule changes for tomorrow, as we catch a charter bus to visit the Plimoth Plantation (yes, I know this looks misspelled, but this is their spell not ours!) and the Mayflower II, before heading back to Quincy for rookie skits and senior night.

All the adults on the trip are marveling at the ability of this group to weather the storms (pun unintended) they encounter and become a stronger community from it.

Wednesday, June 22nd

We lost our gorgeous weather today, which automatically makes the public transportation aspect of our project more challenging. In addition to some of the kinds of things we had already been done, one of our groups worked with a food distribution site, while another went out on Long Island (who knew Boston had a Long Island?!), a couple miles out into the harbor near where we are staying where they worked in the fog and drizzle in a field hoeing and weeding, and even helping move a chicken coop.

We "debriefed" a bit this afternoon with Carl MacDonald, our contact with the City Mission Society of Boston, who did a great job helping us articulate some of the things many of us have been thinking while doing the things we're doing. Part of the conversation was about, in essence, how people with a vision and a passion, and how perseverance in the midst of extreme hardship inspire us, sometimes into wanting to do even more to helpful, and sometimes into just taking a step back and trying to figure out where we fit in the great scheme of things.

Our young people continue to be engaged, helpful, appropriately curious, and most of all, compassionate. And they do, for the most part work really hard. New friends here continue to marvel at their work and their energy, and at how quickly they seem to "get it."