We'll see you later, Reedley!

Thanks Wendell and Aleta for the awesome car!

our team and the Boldt bros

gathering lemons at Georgia Linscheid's place

Megan and her class

Calla and her cuties

It's not been two days since we have all departed from our new found Reedley home/family and returned to our respective homes. Without doubt, we have all felt the longing to be back with this community that we feel so connected to and so much love for. Soon I'm sure there will be updated photo albums on facebook pages and reports given to friends, family and churches.

The final week was spent constantly on the go. Tuesday was another semi-chaotic day at Summer Learning Experience but immediately following we got to relax and quite literally "chill out" during a float down the Kings River with the help of the Boldt brothers. Definitely a MUST DO experience for anyone going to the Reedley area. Nevermind the numb feeling experienced by any part of the body that sits in the freezing cold water, it's just great. We then got our taste of delicious Mexican food at a little Mexican burrito shop in Dinuba. Best burrito ever, hands down!

On Wednesday, we experienced a minor miracle. By no means do we intend to imply that we didn't want some kids who have behavior issues at Summer Learning Experience, we love them and want to be there for them, but we were exhausted emotionally and physically. On Wednesday it just happened that most of the difficult kids were absent. God gives us only what we can handle and on Wednesday that just happened to be what we could handle. It gave us the break that we needed for energy through the rest of the week! In the evening, we were invited to a DELICOUS and amazingly peaceful dinner at Wendell and Aleta Rempel's house. The Rempel's are the gracious couple that lent their car to us for the 3 weeks and we are so happy to have that time to get to know them better. Such nice people! Afterwards we went to a swimming party with the youth group. Swimming was a huge theme of the last week in Reedley especially. But the day wasn't over after the swimming party. It was, well, a late night. It seemed necessary in the last week to spend plenty of time with our California friends so some came over after swimming for a movie at our house. A good end to the long day.

On Thursday, we had another very good day with the kids and followed it up with a delicious supper at Steve and Glena Penner's house. Since this was my last night in Reedley and second to last for the other girls we had to spend the evening cleaning and preparing to leave so we could enjoy the final day.

Finally, on Friday, it was time to sadly say our goodbyes! The morning was packed full of stops to get fruit and say our farewells. We had a crazy day with the kids. This Friday was a planned water games day, unlike the Friday before, which was more spontaeous. The kids came knowing that they would get wet and water seemed to be all they had on their minds. A little out-of-control it was, but everyone seemed to have fun on our last day with these great children we had come to know so well. It was so sad to say goodbye, but our time had come to and end and we all felt pretty confident that it wasn't a goodbye but a "See you later!"

And that's that! That is the close to three beautiful and powerful weeks in Reedley, California.

We miss you, Reedley, and will see you later!

-written by Jill on behalf of the Reedley Youth Venture team

Time is going too fast!!!

It's been a crazy, fun, busy, overwhelming, sometimes frustrating and yet awesome week here in Reedley. I promise to have a longer update soon. We were in process of posting yesterday but internet connection is unpredictable at best at our house (thanks "ward" wireless, whoever you are) and we lost it. There are some pictures below to give a little idea of what has been happening. Last week we had our first week of Summer Learning Experience at church with the Kid's and Conflict curriculum. We had 20-25 kids everyday with minimal staff, basically our group and 2-4 others. Let's just say we learned a lot about discipline and kids' attention spans during our daily 4 hour sessions with them. The evenings and this weekend were packed with fun activities, some of which can be seen in the pictures, others that we can hopefully describe soon. Yesterday was day one of the final week of Summer Learning Experience. It felt like a Monday, the kids were less then well behaved and the staff is now the 4 of us and Barbara. But through the frustrations we have really developed a love for these kids who we are becoming quite attached to. And the group keeps growing with 27 yesterday. The pouring out of love from the church is amazing. We have dinner invitations essentially every day until we leave and that day we leave is not one we are looking forward to....

Week #2 pictures

Summer Learning Experience on the first day last week.

On the Kings River beach for a BBQ and throwing the frisbee around with our Reedley friends

At the Boldt's fruit packing shed

Nick and Alex Boldt showing us the fruit packing process

Don Ewy explaining the peach packing process at his packing shed

So many peaches coming in to be packed

On Friday last week we had a somewhat spontaneous water fight. It felt SO good and entertained the kids. If you can't tell we're all soaked.

Giving Barbara Ewy a big wet hug. Quoting Barbara at that moment, "Ah, my kids!"

Telling Sarah Pohl and Dietrich Reimer goodbye before they went to Camp Keola for the next two weeks. It was great fun while they were here.

Oh our way to Cayucos beach on Saturday

OH BRRRRRR!!! It was so cold at the beach.

Megan figured out how to stay warm. Get buried in the warm sand!

Cayucos Beach

We had a suprise birthday party for Calla on Sunday. Not sure we did the best job at suprising her but it was fun to have about 12 people come over and celebrate with us.

Best part of the party, the pinata!! Not sure if Nick is helping or hindering Calla's attempts to hit Tinker Bell.

Go Rosy!

De-armed, de-legged, de-candied. Happy Birthday, Calla!

The Blog Revolution

This blog is now being taken over by the girls. As in the girls who are not Jill.



She tells me that the last day she blogged was Saturday morning so we shall start with Saturday's activities. There is a group of families from FMC Reedley who own cabins at Cedarbrook Picnic Area in a national park/forest in the area. (There really are quite a few parks close together. It's not our fault for not remembering) They have an annual Fourth of July picnic and we received an exclusive invitation courtesy of Barbara and Allen Ewy and family. Apparently not just everyone is invited, so we felt blessed to be able to join them.



After a fairly silent drive up the mountain (because we didn't want to break Jill's concentration on the windy road) we arrived in a beautiful little mountain getaway with around 7 cabins. The picnic was hosted at the Krehbiel cabin with about 50 people on the porch and area. We were expecting to be the outsiders by far, but many people didn't know each other there. Jill did a fabulous job BBQing with the men.



We didn't stay at the picnic too long because we wanted to make it up the mountain to see the big trees at Kings Canyon National Park. The area we visited, Grant's Grove, is home to the General Grant Tree, which was named America's Christmas Tree by some president in the 1920s.



We arrived home earlier than expected so we decided to patronize a local business, Uncle Harry's restaurant. After a BBQ for lunch we wanted nothing but a light salad for dinner. They were quite delicious. Uncle Harry's, as we found out, serves ice cream with every dinner. They let us choose from strawberry, chocolate, or spumoni. Rosy had been talking about the spumoni from Spaghetti Warehouse, so we decided to try it. Turns out the spumoni flavors can change in different establishments. We were not fans.



Moving on. Sunday morning we went to a hybrid of church services. We wanted to experience the worship service in Spanish at Primera Iglesia Menonita, but wanted to see the testimonial at the beginning of the English service and needed to sing with the VBS band at the end of the English service. We solved this by going to the beginning of the English service, leaving after the testimonial, and Jill came to get us before the song in the English service.



After church we went out to eat with Cathy and her friends. They get together every Sunday afternoon at a restaurant or at one of their homes and have a great time. We love talking with them and they all seem to have a connection to Newton.



For the evening on the Fourth we went to Steve and Glenna Penner's house for a BBQ. It was great to see where Jill has been staying and they made some pretty darn tasty lemonade. We have turned into quite the lemonade connoisseurs with our exposure to fresh lemons. They also treated us to homemade ice cream made with Jill's recipe from the dairy farm back in Kansas.



We went for the cheap route in terms of fireworks and drove around watching other people's fireworks. This included parking outside of the city firework show and watching it from down the block.



Monday, our first day of the Summer Learning Experience (SLE), was also Cathy's last full day at home. She left to see her grandkids in Washington state on Tuesday. We took her out to the downtown Mainstreet Cafe for lunch. This served a double purpose because the cafe also happens to serve verenike, a German Mennonite food that Jill and I are big fans of and thought that Calla and Rosy needed to try. Lucky for us, they liked it! That could have been awkward.



We had about the same number of kids for SLE as we did for VBS, only with half the adults. The Kids in Conflict curriculum allows for longer centers and more discussion so we get to keep the kids for twice the time with half the help. It's been interesting so far, and we'll see how we adapt to the new circumstances. Tuesday things definitely went smoother than the first day and if that pattern continues we'll be great.

Tuesday night's activity was another BBQ picnic, this time with the Boldt family and other church and community members. They have connections that got us to a private beach on the river. Now, one would imagine that in hot, dry California a dip in the river would be quite nice. This river is melted snow from the mountains, so it was more like a get-in-can't-feel-my-toes-and-get-out kind of dip. Still pretty awesome though.

We're going to miss having Cathy around. I think she really enjoyed the younger crowd at her house, even though we stay up late and forget to close the door. I just hope we can take good care of her house until she returns. Jill is now the adult in the house and we're pretty confident in her. She doesn't have her iron grip on the blog anymore, though!

-Megan, with some help from Calla and Rosy
*Any facts that are wrong are my fault and my fault only. Please comment and take credit for correcting me.

End of Week 1 Pictures

lovely ladies in yellow
the four of us at the General Grant tree in Seqouia National Park

General Grant tree, it's a BIG BIG tree

inside of a tree

Seqouia Nationa Park big trees

the cabin in Cedarbrook where we had a picnic on Saturday, July 3

telling our friend, Shoroq (second from the right) goodbye before she leaves Reedley ending her IVEP MCC program and starts her journey back to Jordan

last day of VBS on Friday, "camp foods" session

Junior High class around the peace sign all of the kids made with our feet

Baldemar with a very red foot

Calla's class (K-2nd) climbing a "mountain"

Yum! In-N-Out

VBS music session

Megan displaying the window we decorated at Nearly New

The Close of Week #1

It has been a couple of days since I (Jill) posted, so I will bring everyone up to speed. I had hoped to have one of the girls post this blog but internet access for them is limited. Soon we will make that happen. The first week of Vacation Bible School has come to an end. Each of us really enjoyed getting to know our classes and are ready to keep going. We probably averaged around 40 kids each day and are curious to see how next week's extended summer learning program will be attended. Each day that we went to Bible School it seemed like there were new kids there who hadn't ever been before.
Let me give a quick update of each day since the last post. On Wednesday, we spent the morning volunteering at Nearly New, the MCC thrift store in Reedley. We were give an area of the store to clean, reorganize and redecorate. The staff and volunteers were a lot of fun to get to know. In the afternoon we relaxed, napped, swam, etc. The evening was of course filled with Bible School. One thing we have been enjoying this week is making new friends and hanging out every day for awhile after Bible School with these friends from the church. On Thursday, we made a trip to Fresno for a couple of college visits. We first were given a tour of Fresno State University in the morning with an afternoon tour of Fresno Pacific University, a Mennonite Brethren university. It gave the girls a good sense of the differences between the state college versus private christian college atmosphere. We also indulged in a little In-N-Out, a west coast delicacy! In the evening, after VBS we attended a farewell party for one of the friends we've made. My host family has also been hosting Shoroq, an MCC IVEP volunteer from Jordan and she left this morning. Friday was spent back in Reedley. The morning involved some much needed sleeping and relaxation. In the afternoon we had a meeting and time to organize for the church summer learning program next week and then finished the last day of Bible School in the evening.
That is the end of the week in a nutshell. Today we are soon headed to a little town near Sequoia National Park. Several families from First Mennonite Church in Reedley have cabins in Cedarbrook and there is a tradition in Cedarbrook of a Fourth of July community picnic. We will get to be a part of those festivities today!
Thank you for following our activities and supporting us. It will be exciting to see what the second week will hold.