A Day In The Morning of... well ... me. I guess.

"Your eyes slowly open, you turn over with the creak of the bed and look at the clock. It's dark outside, no clouds, only the stars and the moon that provide the sky's background. The time, 4:12. Laying back down your eyes slowly droop down to help you back in to the peaceful slumber that you previously had awakened from. Darkness. Suddenly, a bright light as your eyes open and you see the sun's corpuscular rays shining down over the land of which you call home. The clock now says, 11:11." That's how I start most of my summer days. Breakfast, then an hour later lunch. That's just the boring stuff. Well my summer started out as the past three have with my dad's music camp. Before that however there is not an Ultimate game I would want to miss. So we, my brother and I, went to WSU where us, East, and WSU play our weekly summer games on Sunday at 6. That was a great way to start the summer. I went to the music camp had real fun. It was great. For the talent show my friend and I played the song crayons can melt on us for all I care by relient k. The night I got back I just washed my clothes and repacked for I was going to Minnesota for a week. Minnesota was amazing. The weather perfect. The Lake was a little bit cold, but we got used to it. Erik and I went swimming everyday. We came home not much happened that I remember then came the National Youth Gathering. That was one of the best experiences so far. I won't write everything but I will create a sort of organization tablet to show you as much as I remember.

So
Day 1 Wed.
- Leave church at 3:30, bus ride for 22 hours, route Wichita-Kc-St.Louis-Memphis-New Orleans(we stopped for breakfast in Mississippi.
Day 2 Thurs.
- We stayed at the Loews hotel it would probably be easier for you to go to their website, WWW.loewshotels.com/, to see how amazing it was. We walked a couple of blocks south to a restaurant called Mulate's Cajun Restaurant. It was VERY good. I had Oysters for the first time. Not bad. We then went back and swam/slept.
Day 3 Fri.
- This was pregathering so we did volunteer work as a district. What we did was help move the South district from its temporary home after Katrina to its new permanent place. This involved moving boxes and taking up tiled floors and yard work. So Thank you Johnston, Beaver workdays. Afterwords we went back and headed to Michaul's a live music restaurant. The band was this pretty old guy that was just a BEAST on guitar. Then when he played his last song he said he had to go home and get ready for his day job. WHAT? THIS MAN HAS A DAY JOB! I know I was that surprised to. With his talent he needed no day job.
Day 4 Sat.
- We started out with a bayou tour. It was pretty awesome we got to touch an albino alligator and eat crayfish/shrimp. Then we went to the original Cafe Du Monde. It was amazing. the Beignets are to die for though you might if you eat all of the excess powdered sugar. That night we went to the best pizza place. It was called "The Louisiana Pizza Kitchen." Let's just say because of that place here is disgusting. Also they had an amazing Mozzarella salad. I also bought harmonicas and the green fedora that I wear.
Day 5 Sun.
- We went to paint a mural at a facility that helps kids after they're kicked out of foster care or the orphanage. Afterwords we drove the bus through the Lower 9th ward. This is the worst place out of all New Orleans. Many buildings were just gone, crumbled, crumbling, or there were cars in bayous and cars in houses. Then there were the Brad Pitt houses which were pretty cool because they were built so that if another hurricane comes they will just float on the top of the water.
Day 6 Mon.
- This day all took place in the convention center. It started out with a Bible study. Then it led into a big room full of activities. There were obstacle courses and other things, but I'm going to talk about the biggest one. It's called Persecution. It was so great that you had to reserve a time to go. More or less its a couple hours in the life of a persecuted christian. It was pretty intense. The story was that someone finally got an entire Bible put together. So we would follow our guide through all these halls. Our cover was that we were trying to find the bounce house. We got caught and they took one of our guides away. Then we took the back way and our last leader told us where to run. Then when he went into the patrols we ran and we could here gun shots in the distance. We ran into a room and sat down to read the Bible. It was somewhere from Corinthians. Then in a second we were pinned up against the wall with flashlights and "guns" in our faces. Then it ended with the question of whether we would die for our faith. Intense stuff. There are apparently over 60 countries where Christians are persecuted. If you want to you can go to the site its www.persecute.org I think. Later that night we went to the Stellar Kart concert. It was good. They played a cover a whole new world. They were what Blink 182 would be like if they were christian. Later that night we went on Riverboat ride with the Kansas and Rocky Mt. Districts. It was really smooth.
Day 7 Tues.
-What we did was go to these sessions that were for different things. One we went to was for addictions such as drugs and alcohol. It was called Things You Can't Tell Your Mom. Before it started the band Remedy Drive played a three song set before hand. Which made up the decision to go to their concert later on. So we went but right about the time it was supposed to start a girl got her knee dislocated. Which took about 30 minutes out of the show. They ended up drugging here so she could not feel the pain anymore. The concert was amazing. The singer would do headstands on the piano and sing or play the piano. It was really energetic and good.
Day 8 Wed.
we woke up went to the last Mass Event, you may noticed how I have left these out. Don't worry, then left for our overnight drive home.
Day 9 Thurs.
-We took a different route through Texas and Oklahoma. We arrived at 8 in the morning.
Mass Events
-Here you go. It was AMAZING! There was a huge cross that rose up the first night with tons of fireworks! Then there were little things that were hilarious all the way through. but the last night was amazing! At the end we rushed the stage but before that up in the 3rd balcony a bright light came from a tunnel and smoke filled the around and a man that was portraying Jesus stepped out. Awesome! There is so much more but I guess you can ask me that next time you see me.

The next big thing that happened was Ultimate camp. This was only from wed. to sat. It was amazing. we would get up run a couple of miles at 7:30 am then do drills and scrimage for the rest of the day. with a lot of fun in the middle We also went to the pasture for a night and played night ultimate with a light up disc and those crack wristbands that light up. It was intense. We played an exhibition game at Harrison park Saturday nightas the ending game. It could not have ended better.

Today I got up at 7 and went to school. I wasn't ready. Though I have a good feeling about it. It should be exciting with taking the orchestra to the Midwest Clinic in Chicago then going to Tanzania to see Andy. Maybe our Ultimate team will play at Nationals again because it should be in KC, Independence, Missouri, or Boulder, Colorado.

I didn't get to read as much as I would have liked to but I read Candide by Voltaire and am now reading Ender's Game by Henry Scott Card. Well you may notice some misspelling or grammatical errors but I justs wanted to get this in before getting any more emails.

Miss all of you,
Samuel/Sam/Samu/Sam'l/any others I have forgotten
Shook