Hey y’all!! Today we visited the Steadfast house which is a facility that helps house homeless women and children. While there we were able to help them repaint their kitchen. During our time working with them we were able to tour the facility and learn about homelessness within the Asheville Buncombe County area. As a result of our painting project we saved them money that they were able to put towards housing costs for the residents.

After a fun day painting, we drove and hiked to the top of Mount Mitchell, the tallest peak East of the Mississippi River. When at the top we were 6684ft above sea level!! It was an amazing experience with beautiful views.

We ended the night by doing facilitation activity pairs. In this activity were asked to create a fun team building activity and facilitate it with the group. Everyone had something different and creative! Currently we are all working on packing to come back to Oshkosh tomorrow! Hope to see you all soon!

Hey Y’all! Exciting things happening here today. This morning we volunteered with MANNA Food Bank and helped sort and bag Grapefruits. We all agreed working with this organization was super cool! Last year MANNA Food Bank distributed 18.2 million pounds of food.

Once we finished our work with MANNA we headed back to Blue Ridge to eat lunch before our next project. We were excited to finally be able to finish the bridge that we started on Sunday. Being able to finish the bridge project gave everyone a sense of accomplishment. It is awesome to know that this bridge will be used by so many people who stay at the Blue Ridge Assembly.

During our afternoon free time we were all able to enjoy some relaxation time where half of the group went hiking to the local waterfalls and the rest chillaxed.

We ended our night with a pizza party, reflection, and late night games. Tomorrow we look forward to our last day in North Carolina and working at the Steadfast women’s shelter!

Hey y’all we’re back! Today we spent the morning with GreenWorks picking up trash along side the Hominy Creek in Asheville. In total we collected twenty five bags of trash within our quater of a mile area. Nelson our GreenWorks leader was VERY impressed.

After an amazing morning of service we ate lunch then traveled to downtown Asheville to do some exploring. We got to see many local shops and buy some cute souvenirs.

Once we finished our trip we headed back to Black Mountain to grab some dinner. All of us decided to get a little dressed up and eat some wood fired pizza together.

We ended the night with a leadership activity called Johari Window. In  this activity we were tasked with exploring ourselves and creating deeper connections with others on the trip. Tomorrow we are looking forward to be working with MANA Food Bank and Blue Ridge Garden for service!

We teetered our way through a low ropes course where we developed our communication and leadership skills by completing three team building activities. Our first activity involved ten people trying to balance a seesaw, we then swing from a rope to a small platform (see picture below), and ended with a spider web activity. Following our low ropes course we enjoyed our lunch lakeside while relaxing in the sun.

Next our volunteer coordinator Abel informed us we would be building a bridge, which heightened our curiosity. Upon arrival we quickly realized our work was cut out for us. Throughout the next three hours our group, cut down trees, notched the pieces of wood, and nailed it down… it was an experience. Despite our hard work we were only able to get it half way done.

We then enjoyed our free time in the beautiful sunny weather. We finished the night with ice cream sundaes and good laugh. Tomorrow we look forward to working with GreenWorks to do some road side clean up. More photos to come tomorrow!!

Hey everybody!! We’re all together writing this awesome blog for you! We started our trek to North Carolina yesterday with a short stop for Chic-fil-a and Panera Bread then continued to Hammond, Indiana where we caught a quick snooze.

We started today off early and hit the road!  We survived Indiana… the longest state ever! While in Louisville we stopped at Marks Feed Store and enjoyed some delicious BBQ.

After a long afternoon we finally arrived at our cabin. We are just getting settled in now and doing some team bonding. Looking forward to ropes course tomorrow. We will keep you posted!

Our group of students headed to Black Mount North Carolina is our first to start their travel on Friday. They will be staying at the Blue Ridge Assembly YMCA and performing service at different agencies  in the area Monday-Wednesday.  We look forward to reading about your journey Nicole, Erica, Kate, Sydney, Erica, Rianne, Stephanie, Alexandra, Kaitlyn and Carmen!