Guns, Dogs, and Sweet Tea

South Carolina. Where do I begin??

Let me explain how I got here. I'm on what we WELSers call a "TCW Trip," or, a "Travel, Canvass, Witness" trip. These are for college students, and they take place all around the country around scchool break times. What happens is a team of about four kids signs up to go to some congregation that needs their help; perhaps they will host a day camp around Christmas time, or do a Vacation Bible School in the summer, or help the church advertise for an upcoming event; it really varies depending on the church's situation. WELS Kingdom Workers pays for all travel expenses, and the church is responsible for making sure we get fed and boarded for the week. It's a nice way to meet some great families, see how things are done in other churches, see another (warmer) part of the country, and serve the Lord. I've always wanted to go on one, so I finally took the chance this Spring Break. A group of Camp Phillipites from Madison banded together (me, Leah Schlect, Kayla Stone, and Sarah Jones) and the WELS Chapel on campus found us a place in Summerville, SC. Awesome. We were all set.

We left Madison on Friday, braved Chicago traffic to spend a night in a hotel near O'Hare, and traveled for far too many hours on very weird connections to make it to Charleston in the evening on Saturday. We were picked up by a nice Southern lady named Daphne (of course), who fed us and gave us a place to sleep for the night. Awesome. We did the whole church thing on Sunday, and then we had to part company: two of the girls (Jones and Leah) stayed with Daphne, and the coin toss told us that Kayla and I would stay with a lady whom we hadn't met, Marlene. Well, Marlene is an older lady who moved down South in her retirement. (I could tell you probably two hours worth of stories on Marlene alone. She is pretty much the greatest lady ever. I'll just say that we call her house "Hotel Marlene.") She's on her own and quite independent, and she actually took all four of us for the day. We lounged around at a park, basking in the spring weather until we made our way back to Daphne's for a large get-together. Daphne made a Southern dish called Frogmore Stew. Luckily, there were not actually "more frogs" in this dish, but it did contain a lot of veggies and various kinds of meat. Strange? Yes. Good? Also yes. We got to hang out with the Pastor, Vicor, and their families, as well as Daphne's grown daughter and her little daughter. All told, there were 7 children in attendence. Children are cute, but also loud and sticky. I hope you are all aware of this.

When we started working on Monday, things weren't too bad. Our job is to canvass, but before we could do that, we had to stuff 3,000 door hangers full with information about the church and the new school and an invite to Easter services. So, we spent all the morning and part of the afternoon filling bags till we were all a bit batty and I began to worry about what effects carpeltunnel syndrome would have on my future life. We didn't finish, but we started canvassing later in the day anyway. We only went for maybe one and a half or two hours, just hanging stuff on people's doors and talking to them if they happened to be outside. For the most part, people were quite friendly; even if they weren't interested, they politely declined. One guy, however, threatened to release his dog on Vicor Joe, our fearless leader. Really? He's wearing kahakis ... he's probably the least threatening person I've ever met.

Monday was not bad, but Tuesday and Wednesday, however, were kind of like ... walking down the steps of hell, or something to that effect. Quite honestly, they were horrible. Absolutely. Horrible. Vicor Joe (and the infamous coin toss that decides everything on this trip) chose Kayla and I to go out with him in the morning, while the other two continued stuffing door hangers. So, we went out from about 10:00a till 1:00p. By the time we came back for lunch, we were already pretty beat. I mean, three hours is kind of a lot of walking, and when you consider that you can easily walk a mile in 15 minutes, so that's about four an hour ... times three ... well, you do the math. After lunch, we simply added to our numbers: All five of us canvassed from around 2:00 till 6:00. Four more hours, at least ten more miles. The highlight of the day was walking up to a guy, getting sniffed up by his suspicious rotweiler, and then coming to the realization that he had been cleaning his gun the whole time he talked to me ... Doesn't anyone in the South own a dog that doesn't look it wants to take a bite out of my nearest extremity? Doesn't anyone enjoy, say, a rousing game of ... oh, I don't know ... tennis? Or another non-deadly hobby?

By the end of the day, we were hobbling from aches, blisters, migraines, whatever ... But, this amazing couple named James and Sarah had offered to feed us that night, (and crash their house, and sit in their hottub ... yeah, amazing.) But after dinner / hottub, we ended up just sitting in their rec room watching DVD's of The Office. We were so tired and worn out that literally nothing besides sitting on a couch seemed fun ... Oh. My. God. We were supposed to do this all week?

Tuesday (or, as I like to call it, Black Tuesday) rolled around. We had been told the other girls would go out in the morning, while Kayla and I worked on the flyers. But I had a dream (i.e., a nightmare) that we would all have to go out all day. I should really consider getting a degree in prophecy, for this is what came to pas: All five of us canvassed from 9:00 to 5:30, with about an hour break for lunch in between. Three neighborhoods. Every door.

You know, I'm a really happy person. I have a really good life. But that day, I hated not only every doorstep that I walked up to, but pretty much everything about my own existence. I had blisters the size of my toes on my toes. Every time I stepped, spasms of pain would go from the balls of my feet to the top of my hips. All of us cried at some point during the day, even Hard-As-Nails-Sarah-Jones, who has the highest pain tolerance out of anyone I know, including my sisters. (I'm sure Joe cried too, he's just much too manly to show it. But I know he did.) There were moments of complete despair. I thought wildly: How can I get out of here? Could I get to the airport sometime today? How much would it cost to change my flight? I'll do it. I swear. I'll do it ... Or, I could just lay here. Yes, I could sleep on this grass. Oh no. What about the dogs? And the men with guns? ... And it might rain. What about that? If I got cold at night, I could call a taxi. Yeah. They could take me to a hotel. I would hardly have to walk. They could pick me up right at this corner. Would Marlene pick me up? I bet she'd let me stay at her house. Yeah, she'd let me. She wouldn't tell Pastor. Or maybe dad could send someone. Dad loves me. He'd come and get me ... What's a good illness to fake? Dysentry? Cholera? No, no, I don't know the symptoms ... Perhaps appendicitis? All I would have to do is moan and clutch my stomach ...

The highlight of my day? Hearing Jones cry out: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani!" = "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

You know, you'd have to be cut from the same mold as say, Hitler to not have pity on us. We are all honest, hard-working, grin-through-things-you-don't-really-want-to-do kind of girls ... but walking 40 miles in two days will mess you up a little bit. So praise God, Pastor did have pity on us when he saw us come back for dinner. He even gave us the day off today, a day which we whiled away oh-so-happily at the beach (!!!), with Vicor and his super cute wife and their four little boys: It was truly lovely.

So tomorrow, I will walk another 20 miles ... with sunburn.

The End of an Era

You know, it really shouldn't matter. So, a man who throws around a ball for a living decides not to anymore. And this decision cripples a state. It crippled me, for awhile. I actually teared up when I read the news. For awhile, I couldn't think about anything else. It might be a little pathetic, and it shouldn't matter ... but it does. It matters because we're not just saying goodbye to a quarterback - we're saying goodbye to a piece of our own personal histories as well. To me and to many others, Brett Favre is more than just a great player who imbued this great state's team with a glory that it hadn't seen in years. Rather, he symbolizes a way of life that others just might not understand, a way of life that I am sad to see go.

For 17 years of my life, I got to experience coming home from church on Sunday mornings, putting on sweat pants, making some hot chocolate, maybe eating some hot ham, and laying around to watch "the game." Mom would tune in and out, running around with baskets of laundry, Dad would celebrate with Lady when there was a good play, (in between building shelves, if it happened to be 1995), and Jen would probably be jumping up and down or making loud squealing noises if there was a nail-biting pass ... I got to grow up during the years of the Cheesehead and the Packerana and the origins of the Lambeau Leap. I was present at the Superbowl party where we all watched Brett and Reggie and Freeman and Brooks and all the others take on those slimy Pats (and watched some crazy kids run around the house barefoot in January with every touchdown). I remember the miserably hot and cold games in Green Bay, cheering from the stands and reveling in the fact that I was standing in the midst of greatness ... Losing Brett Favre is more than just the end of an era for a football team, it's the end of an era in our own lives as well.

I never really thought this day would come, and I never really appreciated all that the Brett and the Pack brought to all our lives. Because of him, we share this common history, this memory of a time when we had smiles brought to our faces every time we saw a child-like man complete an impossible Hail Mary, or wiggle out of an inescapable sack (only to proceed to block for another player), or sneak the ball into spaces that were undetectable to mere mortals. I really feel lucky to have witnessed all this, but it's sad to see something so good come to an end.