School Buses Can Get Old. Fast.

So the topic of this post is about school buses! Yay!
Yeah. No not really. But this does involve a few buses eventually.

So this years youth conference was a little different than last year's. Last year I was dressed up like someone from 200 years ago and sweating unbelievable amounts of moisture. I was sleeping in a tent and being eaten alive by huge bugs. Good grief I loved it! (Well not the bugs that were twice the size as the ones in Missouri. I had no idea that just one state away the bugs could get that much bigger. You should have seen the ticks!) I was probably the only one that did besides my friend Shelbe who also wouldn't mind going on a trek every year with me. To top it off we had charter buses to Nebraska and back! We were livin' the life. (If you didn't see that post you can see it here.)

This year was a lot softer. Besides the school buses...oh wait I wasn't going to talk about that yet.

So starting at 11:40AM I got to the stake center Thursday morning. Registration started at 12 but I had to check-in early to work on a skit I was in. We had only gotten together as a group of 6 youth once to work on this skit but it went pretty well. We were going to act out the rules so everyone knew them. We decided to ask a few people during registration to help us with the skit and do a little improv. There were four scenes and 1 or 2 of us were in charge of each. The first scene was about "Registration", second was the "service project", the third I was in charge of and it was about the "host home", and the last was a dance. So after registration we headed to the gym and this is how it went:

So after that we did group games the rest of the afternoon. We were split up into small groups and the chaperones were each given a game to teach to each group. Then we went outside and did some games with everyone. Talk about crazy! A few hundred youth playing a game like Dragons is quite amazing. Or insane.
Then we went back inside and did a trust/faith exercise. You'd need that to fall off the stage...

At 5 we went back outside and had  hamburgers and hotdogs.

(Random fact: the one in yellow is Shelbe my trekking buddy.)

 Then we sat around until the dance that started at 6.

 You will notice that the majority of the pictures were taken during down time. So I am posting a bunch of pointless pictures because that's all I really have.

So we danced for three hours and then packed all our luggage into our chaperones car and headed to our host home. I had 5 roommates and we were all sleeping in this little girls room. Guess who got the bed? Me. Hence the reason I was asleep before everyone else. In fact they woke me up because they were laughing so loud. If I had been on the floor I probably would be awake all night too.

The next morning we woke bright and early at 5:15 to a siren of a blaring alarm clock. We all practically jumped out of our skin! It was on the nightstand right next to my ear so I was quite awake. After getting dressed we quickly ate breakfast because we had to get to the stake center by 6.

Now I can talk about buses. School buses. They are defiantly not the charter buses we had last year. And we had to drive the total of about 6 hours today. Well we were split up into one of the four buses. None of the girls in my ward were on mine. I don't know how that happened but we weren't aloud to trade buses. The bus you were assigned to then was the one you were on the rest of the time.

So after getting situated we were off the Joplin, Missouri. You probably have seen and heard a lot about the May 2011 tornadoes in Joplin. Well we were privileged to go and help in a small way for our service project.

So this 3 hour trip gave us plenty of time to...uh...do nothing. And that's where my camera comes in. Everyone played with it and took pictures of other people sleeping. So basically most of the pictures on my camera right now were not taken by me. The majority of them are from the bus trip.

When we got to Joplin this is what we saw:

 The original Home Depot was completely gone. Now it is just a huge tent.

 Trees were ripped out of the ground or stripped of all their leafs.

 You could see right into the Joplin High School. There were still books on the shelves. On the schools sign the letters of "Joplin" had been ripped off. Except for the O and P. So someone had added a H and a E. The sign now reads "Hope High School". I didn't actually take a picture of it but I found this one:

 Just desolation everywhere. And this was 3 months later...

After a tour around town we went to a clothing distribution area. Some people sorted the donated clothing and toys while others shelved them.

 My wards girls...

 ...and boys. (there are a few missing from this picture.)

I handed over my camera to a chaperone from my ward to take pictures. She got a good variety lots of people.

 That's my chaperone and two of my roommates.

After a couple hours we stopped for lunch. Subway!

After lunch we had a devotional. It was a very special one because the woman who gave it had been in the Joplin Stake Center as the tornado tore up the building. The only room that was even barely left was the restroom. The room that she and a few other people were in. They all survived and walked away with only a few minor wounds. Across the street at another church no one had survived. Another amazing story was that the High School graduation was that night and had for some reason been moved to the university across town. If they hadn't done that thousands more people would have died.

(This is sister Falls who gave the devo.)

After thee devo we got back to work for another two hours.

Oh yeah. You probably noticed the bright green shirts we were wearing. They had all the key words in the 13th Article of Faith on the back. I really like them!

After a total of four hours we were done. That's when we found out we had done a weeks worth of work in that short time. It was such a great feeling!

Then we made our trip back. Now you can see the multitudes of "sleeping pictures".

One time my friend Carol asked for my camera and when she gave it back I had this video on my camera. After that we had a good laugh as we watched it over and over. I don't know how you stay asleep when your head is all over the place.

 There were a few girls that slept in a dog pile. It was pretty amusing.

I only dozed but Carol managed to put the camera in front of my face once without me noticing.

When we got back we had an hour at our host home to shower and get de-sweatied. We had to be back to the stake center for dinner soon. We were a bit late but there was still hardly anyone there yet. So it was nice. There was never a line because people just trickled in the whole time. And because it was so late our dance was short. Only and hour and a half. But I guess its better than nothing.

The next morning we were able to sleep in for forever compared to the day before. We didn't eat until 8!
At 9 we were boarding our bus yet again. Though we only had 3 buses this time so everyone from bus 4 was split up between the others. So 2 of the girls from my ward was in my bus. But I didn't see them much because they were all the way in the back. This ride was much shorter. We were only going up to our almost finished temple that is about 45 minutes away.

 But there was still plenty of time for pictures!

Um hi! I mean I wasn't hyper or anything...

When we got there we sat around the pond behind the temple and had another devotional by our area CES representative about the temple and then the chaperones had an opportunity to bear their testimonies. Afterwords we had about 20 minutes to go off and ponder. The girls in my ward found a tiny bit of shade (the trees in the area are really small right now. They have just been planed in the last few months.) and we just stayed there until we got back on the buses for the last time.

When we got back we had pizza and then had free time at our host homes. We were going to go swimming at the neighborhood pool but then decided it was too much work and it would be kinda weird to wear our clothes (because we didn't bring swimsuits) so we just lazed around until we had to leave.

Back at the stake center we ate dinner and had a testimony meeting. And yes I did eventually get up there. In fact almost everyone from my ward got up. Then we had refreshments. And went home. It was really short. I wouldn't have minded another day. That is one difference from last year. I was glad I didn't have to do the trek for 3 days. I don't know if I would have survived very well.

Anyway. To end with a comment on buses. I'm glad I don't have to ride on one every day. Just saying.