Day 1: It was a good day.

Hello, I’m Isabel and I’m here on the Geist Christian Church mission trip for the second time. I’m writing with my sister, Anna, who’s on the trip for the first time. We’re excited to have arrived safely in Lexington with all our friends. As soon as we got here, we jumped right into the first of many fun activities we’ll get to do on this trip. The great thing about these activities is that they’re designed to help us understand the problems and emotions of the people we will be working with later this week. Tonight we engaged in a simulation of households living below the poverty line. The families were challenged with many different things, including: acquiring social security numbers, finding care for their children, finding a way to afford shelter, and sometimes even getting jobs. We learned the challenges of finding balance in such a difficult lifestyle. Hopefully, this will help us find empathy with families that struggle with these difficulties, and will help us to provide better service to them. After that, we enjoyed a gourmet dinner of pizza and salad. We played games with our friends and are about to enjoy a reflection of all we’ve done today. We hope to have a safe and memorable trip!