Whelp to start, in February papaw became sick and went into the hospital. He came home a couple times through the six months he was sick but was never getting any better. We tried to keep our hope strong while he was going through everything in and out of the hospital. He passed away on the 7th of August. :(
In the summer i gained lots of faith and new friends in Pennsylvania on our church's mission trip. On the trip our group was split into two groups so we could get more work done at the YMCA camp we were staying at. The first group went down the lake at the camp and tore down and rebuilt the bridge crossing the lake. The second group, my group, tore down and rebuilt a set of stairs outside of the main building where we ate and had sessions. We finished all of our work in about four or five days, which is amazing. The stair team, my team, on the first day had to tear down the stairs that were already there. The stairs were literally nothing but railroad ties stacked up a hill with a slab of concrete underneath. Just so everyone knows these railroad ties are pretty blooming heavy. It took us the entire first day to take down all the railroad ties and load them on a tractor to dump elsewhere. The next three or four days we carried, cut, and nailed wooden boards in about 80 degree weather. Thats pretty warm for Pennsylvania. This
wouldn't have been a big deal if we had air conditioner, and we kinda didn't. Yep, thats right, no air conditioner in any of the buildings at the camp. This made us all really appreciate the outdoors and the shade given to us by the trees and some of the buildings around. During the days we built the stairs a lot of us youth learned to become friends with different tools and pieces of machinery available to us to help us out building the new stairs. In case you didn't know building a set of stairs is a very tricky deal. You have to make sure every measurement is measured correctly, if something was the wrong size it would not work at all. During all the measuring I learned some adults are a lot wiser than they appear. With this I became good friends with some of the adults that came on the trip. About halfway into the week I was clumsy enough to slip and fall on some gravel leading down to some stairs down to our cabin. When I did this I had a nice gash in my hand that was filled with little rocks and dirt. Luckily my now good
friend Phil, he's the dad of one of my good friends, had a nice first aid kit with him. He bandaged me up and wrapped my hand up after he cleaned out my bloody wound. For the rest of the week my friend Chase and I called him Dr. Phil haha. During the week of working my friend Luke and I became bored when some of our materials ran out so what did we do? We grabbed hammers and began having fun! We first started hitting rocks with the hammers. Then we got some rocks and threw them at a trashcan. Then we got our hammers and got on top of a large hill and threw them like the North Carolina rednecks we are haha.
Throwing hammers and skipping rocks on the lake were our great entertainment sources while we were outside. While skipping the rocks on the lake I learned I have a great throwing arm haha. I nearly threw a rock clear across the lake. It was a pretty wide lake too. You can ask my friends haha. Towards the end of the week my good friend Luke and I were bored during our 'free' time one afternoon, we figured we'd check on the girls to see if they wanted to play a card game. Lucky for us they did haha. We walked into the main building where we ate and had sessions and sat at a table where we played so many games of mafia that it began to get old. While we were there we met a wonderful girl named Kim. :) Kim played mafia with us lots of times also and became our favorite person at the camp. She was on the bridge team with the other half of our group. She was able to hang out with us a lot during the week. During the week we had sessions each night. The sessions were pretty good. Each one was about one of the staff members having some addiction or problem in their life, each person described how they overcame it and were then closer to God because of it. It really touched our hearts each night. One night after one of the sessions my youth pastor Amanda and a couple other youth that I am very close to and I were sitting at a couple of the picnic tables behind the main building. We sat there for a long time just thinking about our lives. Amanda finally spoke up and asked if we were all alright. When most of us nodded our heads, Amanda looked straight at me and asked, "Are you okay Graham cracker?" Before that question I had kept a smile on my face during all of the days and I had kept most of the group laughing and happy with some of our conversations. When Amanda asked me that question its like every emotion I had been building up with my Grandpa being in the hospital and my hope fading rapidly came crashing down. I was overwhelmed with tears and sobs. Amanda had known my real life back home in NC had been on my mind that whole week. All I had been thinking about was the condition my grandpa was in and how broken apart my family had become because of it. I sat at that picnic table for a good half hour crying. I just let everything built up inside me come out. Amanda and my other good friends; Chase, Dillon, Olivia, Allison, Luke, Grace, and Chrissy; put their hands on my shoulders and prayed over me to put papaw's condition and my faith into God so that I could have peace and not worry over what was really going on in my life during that summer. Once everyone prayed over me, Luke, Chase, and I walked down to the lake and eventually back to our cabin around 11-ish or 12-ish. The next few days my friends started looking at me a little differently and gave me notes telling me how they couldn't believe what I was going through and how well I had hid it from my smiling face that week. With the sadness that had overwhelmed me that night I was ready for our fun day. The day we didn't have to work we were able to pick going white water rafting or cave spelunking. Us cool kids, Luke, Allison, Grace, Chrissy, and myself, with one of our youth counselors, Adam, went cave spelunking. Cave spelunking is where you go 'off road' caving. Its like going off the trail inside a cave and just going in and out of small spaces into large open spaces all in pitch black with nothing but flash lights and helmets. After getting all muddy going spelunking, we then went to the river the white water rafters were going to be on. We played in the river for about an hour or two before we went back to the van and up to a pizza restaurant. We ate our pizza then got ice3 cream. Some of the ice cream we tried had chocolate covered potato chips in it! It was crazy and delicious. After our wonderful lunch and dessert we then walked around the small town and found a vacant play ground! We played on the playground for a good hour then we walked back down to the river after going through trails in the woods. We then played in the river another good hour or two. By the time we got back to the camp we had had the best day ever! We were able to do both cave spelunking and white water rafting kinda. It was pretty epic I must say. On one of the last days at the camp our whole mission group were beginning to get ready to go out to a steakhouse for a nice meal. (The food at the camp was not very good. It was pretty much like eating poop. -_-) As we were about to leave Kim was outside walking, so we asked her to come along, and she did. We had a great night with lots and lots of laughs. :) The next day we had to leave unfortunately. Personally, I could have stayed up there for another week or two.
On the way back home from the mission trip I was able to get our good friend, Kim, her cell phone number. I then texted her constantly on the way back and all through the rest of the summer and into the fall and winter. :) In December she was able to come up to NC; she lives in GA. When she came up here she stayed with one of our good friends Chrissy, Dr. Phil's daughter. Chrissy and Kim came and visited the 'Thanksgiving Leftovers', which included all the spelunkers, and chase. I was the last one they visited on her first night here. They came to my house at about 6:30 and stayed until 12:45! Haha it was great. We talked for almost six and a half hours. I can't remember half the stuff we talked about but I know most of it was just random babbling about each other's lives haha. The next few days while Kim was here I tried to hang out with her as much as I possibly could. :) I kinda had had a crush on her since the mission trip and I kinda thought she might liked me too. So finally one day Amanda told me I should date her because she thought we would be 'cute' together. :) I completely agreed. :) She told me that she thought Kim liked me and had a feeling I liked Kim. So the next few days I composed a note to give to her sometime before she left back for Georgia. On the night before she left back, the college kids and seniors of our youth group had a 'tacky Christmas sweater' party. I won the tackiest sweater award. -_- Anyways, we went out to eat at Olive Garden where Chrissy had to leave for a party before we left back for the church. So someone had to take Kim home. ;) Luckily Kim didn't go with Chrissy to the movies for her friend's party. After Olive Garden we went caroling to some of the youth counselors' houses. Once we got back to the church after Chase offered to take Kim home, I was like nahh Chase I'll take her home. ;) Luckily he let me take her home. On the way home I gave her my note that said all my feelings I had for her. Thankfully she said yes to the 'question'. We're now dating and we're both happier than we've ever been before. :) She is so incredibly wonderful that I can't even describe it in words. We've constantly been texting each other every day. We're also sending each other letters through the mail. She is so perfect in so many ways and I'm pretty sure we will always be together. :) I love her sooooo much and she has made me so happy, especially after what all happened in 2010. My faith is now stronger because of her and I'm happier than I've ever been before and I always am happy/excited when I'm talking to her. :) This Saturday is our one month anniversary, and it will be only the first of many anniversaries to come in the future. :) December 22, 2010 was the day my life changed forever. :) :) :)
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