Today we went to a place called Room In The Inn. Their mission is to “provide programs that emphasize human development through education, self-help and work, centered in community and long term support for those who call the streets of Nashville home,”.

We helped moved some things out of their storage unit, and into a building right by their organization. After we got done with our work, we got a tour of their organization’s building!

Later that afternoon we walked the streets of Nashville, exploring and looking for hostile architecture and how it could potentially impact our neighbors on the street.

We then got hot chicken for dinner! We ordered Hattie B’s to go, and surprised the youth with going to see a movie, Inside Out 2!

It was a very eventful day!

Wednesday we split into two groups and went to Martha O’Bryan. This center helps empower those who are in poverty to help transform their lives.

The two groups worked in shifts and worked throughout the food pantry helping make cards to go out to seniors, helping individuals and families shop, and also helping pick up sticks around the property.

While one group worked 11AM-1PM, the other group walked around some shops in Nashville. Then the groups switched from 1PM-3PM.

After working, we went for a fun treat at Jeni’s Ice Cream! We enjoyed our dessert and headed over to Centennial Park for some activities to better understand housing injustice. We got to walk around and even see the famous Taylor Swift bench in the park.

It was a great day of helping and learning!

Here’s a look at our day of serving and learning in Nashville yesterday with By Faith Farms & Safe Haven. Check back later to learn more about our experiences & to see our adventures from today.

Bus Selfie!

Day 1 we started off strong, visiting 2 different service sites that allowed us to use a variety of skills and gifts, from physical labor to conversational skills, everyone had a moment to shine today.

First we went to Soles4Souls, unpacked boxes of shoes and bags of clothes from truck to pallet. We must’ve unpacked a couple hundred or so boxes from these trucks, and watched videos to see this widespread impact that there items would have for people all across the country and across the world.

In between we took some time to relax and connect, doing a fun activity with only a ball of yarn to illustrate how connected we can be to others around us, even in ways that we can’t see at first, the actions we take and the waves we make can affect others in ways we couldn’t imagine.

Our second site in the evening was People Loving Nashville, where we were picking up trash, distributing bags of resources to those in attendance. This is a weekly event hosted every Monday where they give out food, and clothes, with the music and vibe of a neighborhood block party.

We got to see a new perspective and understanding of our neighbors living in poverty and learning their story. We got to talk with a friend who loved showing off his dance moves as an expression of his faith, and it was amazing to see the joy that came from doing something like this.

And we’re off! Yesterday we made our way to Nashville, TN for our week of serving and learning! Our arrival we marked with a beautiful rainbow in the sky. We are excited to partner with Be the Neighbor as we learn about the things that impact rising numbers in homelessness in our country and housing injustice. We hope to make a lasting impact here in Nashville this week and bring back what we learn to make a lasting impact in Indianapolis & Fishers! Of course we couldn’t complete our first day without a stop to Target. Looking forward to our first day of serving today with Soles4Souls and People Loving Nashvile!

Our last day has started… our free day!! We got to sleep in thankfully, 8:30. Two extra hours is a lot but let’s just say I was not used to that before the trip! Haha. It wasn’t to bad though during this trip because everyone had a great attitude for everyone. Before we left, we had our final communion with everyone and talked about what we learned this week. We drove around 1 hour to the Land Between the Lakes. We went canoeing! It was very fun!! Me and Olivia were together and let’s just say I tipped it many times on “accident”. We swam around at the little beach in the park and had hotdogs and s’mores!! Then we headed back to the church. We were all so exhausted and most of us slept the way back!

-Kenzie Moore

After the lake we went back to the church to change and go shopping at the riverfront and get ice cream, bought for us by Sam’s parents, before the baseball game. At the game we got dinner and watched the Paducah Chiefs play and after the game Ben got a signed ball from #13 (Shoutout to Taylor Swift, whose favorite number is 13).

-Izzie Crague

Letting Illinois know that they “suck”

Thursday we woke up for our last work day here in Mayfield, KY. We went to our worksite and worked on roofing the shed (which we finished) and putting the siding on the main house. As we were nearing the end of our work day we all got together and cheered on the people finishing up the roof (Abby, Ben, and Izzie). There was so much laughter in the air and so much excitement for Speak Now TV to come out later that night.

-Selena Reese

We got on the bus to come back from a long but fun work day. When we got back to the church we rested for a bit and got all cleaned up. After that, we had connect time. During connect time when worked in ways we could better our town when we got back. After connect time we made dinner, which was dinner was breakfast for dinner. After we all finished eating, Sam called us in the main room to do prayer partners. We all thought it was time to go to sleep after that but then Sam said we had one more thing to do. We did a drum roll……… and… it was a bake off! We all sat down with our groups for 5 minutes to discuss what we would bake, then we ran to Kroger. We all got the ingredients we needed to BAKE! My groups made brownie cookie bars. After the judges tried all the desserts they left the room to decide which one was the best. When they came back in we drum-rolled and my group won! After that we settled down until 11:00 because that is when the Speak now Taylor’s version came out! We listened to it until 12:00 because that is when we had to go to sleep.

-Olivia Rhoad

Work hard, rest hard. We live by this.

(All napping photos are posted with consent)

Today began with an early morning surprise, a well deserved breakfast of donuts. After a rough wake up we made our way to the home front, prepping for a long, hot day of siding and roofing. The tools were out and the sun was too. We split into two teams to complete all our tasks with half finishing a set of stairs and siding while the others worked on wrapping the shed to prep for siding, and crawling up and down ladders to quickly cover the shed for the incoming rain tonight. We broke for lunch around 12:30 and came back to the site at 1:30 after a well deserved nap. The teams began to work again and didn’t stop until 3:30 when we made our way back to the church (not without a few napping during the drive) for showers and a zoom call to discuss the impacts that disasters have in places like Mayfield. After our quick zoom we began to play a game, in which we gained a better awareness of fairness and how to achieve equality in the game and real life. To finish off the night we had pasta and salad for dinner, a delish meal complete with lots of laughter and fun. To round out our wonderful day we settled in the main room to watch Teen Beach Movie, singing all the songs and laughing through it all.

-Abby Dixon

We had a great day working as Abby said above. After we got back to the church we all took turns showering before we got on a zoom call with Caroline from Week of Compassion and discussed the work we are doing in Mayfield and how we can help when we get back home. After our call we played a game where we were knotted together and tried to get untied which was a struggle. We also played a trivia game about what we’ve done and who we’ve worked with so far this week. Then we had a pasta dinner and had fun bonding and watching the Teen Beach Movie.

-Izzie Crague

A quick morning dance session to get us all awake and ready

Go Frogs!

Our zoom with Caroline

Teen Beach Movie!

This morning we gathered bright and early at 6:20am to share communion. Pausing to mark the middle of our week and the halfway point on our work project, we broke bread together (aka Red’s Donuts) and shared the cup (chocolate milk). It was a beautiful way to start off our day, tackling the mid-week slump head on.