Stubenville Day 1

I got to go this year!! (and yes. This is VERY LATE!)

But I'm still going to post all about it. By request of Aunt Sarah.


Friday morning I woke up..I think I actually woke up! I wasn't woken up! Anyway, I hurriedly packed the rest of my stuff into my duffle bag and crammed my purse full of stuff. We drove over to Emmanuel at about 11:30. There were a lot more kids going than I had expected, and I only knew like 2 of them. I quickly found my friend Rosa and met a group of girls (Allison, Celia, Mary Kate, and Maddie) that I ended up hanging out with the entire weekend.
It was pretty chaotic in the youth group room, but eventually they got us all outside and our bags in the vans. Then they made us get a big circle and pray..welll..they didn't make us pray. Then we had to go around and introduce ourselves. Next they assigned vans to people. I was lucky because I ended up in a mini-van with Rosa, her cousin Mary Kate, a leader, and two girls named Brenna and Amanda. It would have been kind of special if I'd had to ride with a bunch of people I didn't know. Anyway...we started driving, but were quickly interrupted because the youth group leader, Mr. Popp had to stop and get something at his house.

The drive there was pretty boring. We sang with the one girl's ipod, stopped at McDonalds for lunch, got gas, stopped to give motrin to someone in another car...and FINALLY....got there!!


We were late, so we had missed mass and some of the opening talks. The leaders in our group gave us wristbands and happened to make mine really tight. (Oh well..it was pretty loose by the end of the weekend.) We tried to remain inconspicuous when we entered the fieldhouse, but heads turned and stared. The students helping with the conference quickly found us seats in the VERY back, but that was ok, because we were right by a door, and we could see just fine.


The MC talked for a while and then we sang a little bit. Next they started Eucharistic Adoration. It was really powerful. The group in front of us were dropping like flies; being Slain in the Spirit. Only, I didn't know what being slain in the Spirit was, so I thought we had a special needs group kneeling (well actually laying) in front of us. There was this one guy who fell over, was given smelling salts, taken away in a wheelchair, and came walking back perfectly fine....only to fall over again when the Eucharist passed us in Adoration.

After Adoration, they let us go for the night. We got some pizza because we had missed dinner, and then we went to our dorms. The girls all had to crowd into one dorm room..well..two bedrooms, 4 beds, a little living space, all hard floors, and about 30 girls. I slept on the floor. And that was the end of Day 1!