Raisin Center Youth Experience More Than Service

After four days of intensive preparation and training, a group of nineteen teens and adult leaders left Raisin Center Friends Church in Adrian, Michigan for the Friends Kickapoo Center near McLoud, Oklahoma. Our task: to take out an old broken down fence row and clean out brush and trees (with roots) and replace it with new posts and fence. Some of these posts were of very heavy steel (6 inches) for corners and gates, requiring holes 4 feet deep and 28 inches across. Digging in the very hard Oklahoma soil is extremely hard and slow.

We stopped the first night at a church near St. Louis to sleep on the floor of the fellowship area. This generous, non-denominational church has allowed us to use their facility four times while traveling. While in St. Louis, the group visited the famous ARCH, where the more daring half took the tram to the top, while the rest watched a movie on the arch's construction. We also ate at the only floating McDonalds in the world. It is just off shore in the Mississippi River. Next morning we left for Oklahoma.

Brad & Christine Wood, pastor and administrator of the Center welcomed us on Friday night. Saturday was given to adjustments and practice for the Banner/Dance Team, the Bell Choir, and the Drama Team. They would perform three times in the next few days. Monday through Thursday were just plain hard work. The brush was heavy (hiding poison ivy), the trees big and the terrain rough. The temperature was 99-101 each day, with the heat index at between 110 - 115...and no shade. It was brutal! Lots of water was consumed and 53 bags of ice were purchased. But, by Thursday night, the fence was completed... one quarter of a mile of beautiful new fence with steel posts every ten feet and six strands of barb wire! The cost included $600 for the fence, paid for by our group, and 17 people covered with poison ivy.

On Thursday evening, our group hosted the many new teen Kickapoo friends made during the week by going to Shawnee to a wonderful Ice Cream Store for a special treat. This was a neat climax for the ten days spent there and a wonderful highlight of the trip.

After a prayer circle with the staff and Indian teens on Friday morning we began the long trip of 1,033 miles back to Michigan...happy, tired, and still covered with poison ivy. We were greatly pleased when the director told us our group was the very best disciplined group he had ever had for a work team! We are proud of our teens and thankful for the adults who took vacation time off work to accompany the pastor in caring for the trip.

submitted by Pastor Bruce Burch