Today was a long but eventful day. In the morning after showers we went to a church. The night before, some people from the church drove two hours to a farm. The farm only keeps green beans that are three inches so the church got all the leftover beans that the farm didn't keep. So today we spent a few hours putting the green beans into bags. Helping us were some kids that were at vacation bible school at the church. Last night at devotions we grabbed another person's hand and whoever was in your right hand was who you made lunch for. So this morning we all made each other's lunches. It was a little confusing but I think everyone ended up fairly happy with what the other people packed in their lunch.
In the afternoon, we decided to make mac & cheese and chicken nuggets for a potluck dinner, so we went shopping then used the other church's kitchen to cook. We brought the food to this awesome place called Rocketown. Rocketown has a venue where they sell out concerts and weddings, and kids play basketball. They also have green rooms and studios for bands, and a small skate indoor skate park, a cafe, video games, and a computer lab. At Rocketown we ate a really good potluck dinner where people brought food that had the same first letter as their name (Melanie brought marinara and Natalie brought noodles, etc.). After dinner we had a long bible session where we spent most of the time answering the 'icebreaker' question- Have you ever had a run-in with the police or school authority? After the bible session, we came back to our church and played Catch Phrase while we snacked on popcorn, Cheerwine and donuts. Now we are chilling in the room we sleep in and answering riddles and whatnot. It's been a fun day. I'm excited for tomorrow because we're each going to pack a lunch but put no name on it and we are going to eat whatever lunch we get but we can trade some food. It should be interesting.
Signing off with the Harvey Browne Squirrels :)

Hiii! Today felt soo long but it was so great. We went pretty early to a house where a lady lives who recently had a stroke. The house had these wooden stairs (maybe five of them) that led to the door. First we took the stairs and rail off. Then, some people put the stairs on the other side (farther from the driveway) while others rebuilt the railing. Then we started on the ramp. It was a lot of digging, measuring and drilling. Some people learned how to use a drill. After a long 6-7 hours, we were finally finished. It felt good to look at the long ramp and know that we built that ourselves for someone specifically. 

We ate a great meal (taco night!) prepared by today's food team: Seth, Brittany, Adam, Larissa and Katie. After playing several rounds of Left, Right, Center and Catch Phrase, we took an awesome walk around downtown Nashville. We heard a lot of music and visited what is probably the most awesome candy shop ever. It had this cool contraption thing that delivered the taffy from where they made it out to the display. After we got back from our walk, an awesome devotion was presented by the amazing team including Emily, Anne, Braeden, Ben and Darrell. 

Today has been a great day! Looking forward to tomorrow!

This morning we had a yummy breakfast thanks to the cool people who woke up early to set the food out. First we headed back to Kroger to pick up 11 cases of water bottles and brought them to this huge warehouse where we spent most of the time packing food into boxes. The warehouse was miserably hot but we took plenty of water breaks. We took a long break and answered about 80 riddles before we left for dinner. We ate at Jack in the Box then went to this cool place under a bridge. We got out all the massive heaps of food that we had packed earlier and lined it all up. Around 1100 homeless people showed up and ate dinner and listened to a few different people sing. Then they lined up and collected food from our boxes. It was great seeing their faces light up when they saw all the food we had for them. The kids' faces were priceless when they saw the monstrous box of baked goods that we were passing out. Then, we headed back to the church where we ate a delicious snack of ice cream, chips, salsa and queso prepared by Brittany, Seth, Adam, Larissa, and Katie. Then a reflective devotion was led by Emily, Anne, Darrell, Braeden, Ben and Sue. Now as I type this, Seth is angrily throwing his hat at the wall (trying to make it land on a peg on the wall). After devotions, the majority of the group went on a ghost hunt led by Darrell. We trekked through the dark church with flashlights and had a lot of fun scaring each other and making each other jump. Overall it's been a pretty fun day and we're looking forward to tomorrow!

Hiii! Today has been a good first day. We didn't do much because our planned thing for the day was cancelled, so we went to Kroger's and had a lot of fun picking out food for the week. On our way there we listened to this song like three times. Then we headed back to the church and made our lunches. We ate lunch at a park and after about ten minutes it started raining so some genius decided we would sit underneath the playground. That lasted for like five minutes before we made a mad dash towards the van in the pouring rain.

Then on our way to Sam's, we listened to the same dang song two more times and nobody knew the words because they didn't make sense. At Sam's, it was about a minute before Seth set off an alarm by pressing a button on a camera. We walked through Sam's and spent a long time figuring out the prices of massive amounts of paper towels, coffee, and sugar. I got a couple weird looks because I was wheeling a cart full of coffee and I'm like 5 feet tall. Also the cashiers were a little confused but it was alright.

After that we went to this replica of the Parthenon which was unfortunately closed but was still pretty cool. We explored a lake which had an abundance of tiny cute turtles and ducks and birds. We saw a train that kept making fake bird noises and we saw this guy that was doing flips and stuff for no reason. Then we went to a soup kitchen to serve dinner to people. I was with Larissa and Katie filling cups of ice when this little boy (maybe 4 years old) came up to me and gave me a hug then left. It was the most adorable thing ever.

After serving dinner, we went back to this church to make OUR dinner. The amazing/talented dinner crew included me (Emily), Anne, Braeden, Sue, Darrell, and Ben. We made thin spaghetti, salad and garlic bread. Our pretty cool devotions team (Seth, Brittany, Adam, Larissa and Katie) planned a good end of day closing devotions. It's been a pretty good day. We got to know the city we'll be spending our week in. We also met a lot of cool people.

Day One Nashville mission trip

Day One:
We had a tremendous amount of adventures tonight. First we ate lunch at McDonald's and the smoothie machine was broken, but we decided we couldn't complain #firstworldproblems. After eating lunch, the group had a lot of time to use before getting back on the track to Nashville, so Adam decided we would take a quick tour of a cave near by, what was planned to be a hour detour took us two hours. The trip was well worth the time and we had a delightful tour through horse cave, led by a man who had the ultimate accent and focused the tour on how close his house was to Mike Rowe at some point. A few more hours on the road we arrived at the church safe an jovial and ready to eat! once  we enjoyed our food we then sang hymns for what felt like hours. Then we chilled in this room and ate fruit snacks and talked about stuff. :) #teaminvisible

Harvey Browne family-
We are having such an amazing time! Yesterday, Wednesday, was our free afternoon. There are no scheduled conference events from lunch to night time worship, so its up to each individual back home group to find something to do. What did we do you ask? Rock hop... obviously. Just like the past several years we all got into the cold creek and made a journey to the waterfall that comes off of Lake Susan. It was great afternoon with a great group of friends that is always one of the best times at Montreat. Today, we had another very powerful keynote service by Scott Phillips. After some energizers, which Harvery Browne excels at, Scott delivered us a sermon with the theme "God helps us listen to each other". Scott brought up some popular debated topics among teenagers and talked to us about how he thinks we should deal with them. He said he doesn't care how we feel about these issues, he just wants us to understand one another rather than being aggressive about what is an individual opinion. Our Harvey Browne group has been getting along very well and I think that Scott's theory is why. We are 21 totally different teenagers, but we are truly a family and getting closer with one another everyday. Hope all is well in Louisville, see you Saturday.

God Bless,
Patrick Frentz

Dear People Back Home,

This is my 5th and final year at Montreat and I'm loving every minute of it! Everything from the energizers to the amazing music from Jorge (who happens to also be from Louisville) and even the Recreation events, which are usually pretty lame...One rec event was a color run today where everyone ran around Montreat, getting covered in colored powder! It was very unique and probably my favorite event that I've been a part of at Montreat. I also really enjoy the Keynote speaker (guy who speaks in the morning) and as well as the Worship speaker (guy who speaks in the evening). It's just been a great Montreat so far and I can't wait for the days to come!

Love,
Nick