Our Amazing Appalachia Service Trip

This may be a sports blog, but for now, it's my life blog. The following is a detailed account of one of the most powerful experiences of my life: an Appalachia service trip to Roanoke, VA with 12 amazing classmates and many more into the week.

A lot of seniors spend their spring break boozing on beaches, dancing at clubs and getting their tans on in tropical locations around the globe. That sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, and there's a good chance I may have done that if it hadn't been about $1,500 to pull off. But now that Spring Break is over, I can safely say there is nothing in the world I would have chosen over the Appalachia service trip to Roanoke, Virginia that I attended.

Thirteen Boston College students — most of us total strangers — loaded onto a bus with several other BC groups bound for the beautiful state of Virginia. Four guys, nine girls. Three seniors, one junior, five sophomores and four freshmen. Those numbers included our leaders, Danny and Tatiana (a senior and junior, respectively), who gathered the group for dinner and introductions that Saturday night before departing. A lot of us were quiet, and a lot of us didn't know what to expect of the week ahead. One of our activities that night was to write down one hope and one fear for the coming week. We pocketed the pieces of paper with our hopes. We tossed those with our fears into the fire from the grill out back.

After twelve long, mostly sleepless hours on coach bus, we finally arrived at the Roanoke Airport in Roanoke, VA at around 10:00 Sunday morning. We waited for a bit at the airport before finally getting our rental vans checked out — two Dodge caravans, each with capacity of seven. The other BC groups checked out their cars and headed to their locations as well. For us, it was only about a ten minute drive to our destination from the airport. Danny and I, the only two registered drivers in the group, packed everyone into the vans and hit the road.

It's pretty rural once you get outside the city of Roanoke. Danny was leading the way with his GPS, but once we got to the approximate area of the church we were headed to, it was a bit unclear which building it was. All we knew was that we were looking for a brown, brick church. After turning around once, we pulled into a brown brick church lot. There were a lot of cars there. It seemed to be a Sunday mass. Danny peeked his head in the door and saw a church service going on. To him, this was a good enough match. We'd found it. He signaled us out of the cars, and we unloaded our luggage.

He went around the side of the church and started checking the basement doors. They had told him and Tati that we'd likely be sleeping in the basement of the church. All those bottom doors were locked, and so he went back up to the main level and entered a side door. We saw a pastor come over to Danny and have a conversation. We saw this through the window as we stood outside in the cold. Not all southern states are always in summer.

After five minutes, Danny came outside and told us it was the wrong church. We were supposed to be at the one across the street, tucked away behind a little hill. No big deal, we'd just load back up and drive over there. But I began to wonder... what had Danny and the pastor been discussing for five minutes before realizing we were at the wrong church? We ultimately learned the conversation went something like this:

Pastor: Hi... can I help you?
Danny: Hi, my name is Danny. We're from Boston College on a service trip. We're going to be sleeping in your basement this week.
Pastor: (slightly confused) Uh.. well, we usually keep the basement locked. But I suppose I can open it up for you.

To make a long story short, this random church was about to let us stay in their basement before it was determined that our real destination was across the street. This pastor's openness foreshadowed the hospitality we would continue to receive all week long.

It started from the moment we got to the real church — Ebenezer Baptist Church located in Kingstown, which I think is a district or county within Roanoke. A baptism mass was going on when we got there, but they stopped their mass in its tracks to welcome these 13 Boston College students arriving for a week of service to the community. Reverend Lee Pusha, the man who I can only best describe as looking exactly like Vince Wilfork, was leading the mass and would lead our experience as the main pastor at Ebenezer for the week. His wife, Beth, and their three children were also huge parts of the community. Two of the Deacons at the service in particular — Earnest Sweetenberg and Calvin Coleman — were also huge mentors and influences throughout our week.

This mass was exactly the way it's shown in the movies. I never thought it would be as lively as people always say it is. They were singing like crazy and getting very involved in their faith. They loved it. It took me by surprise. These people don't go to church as a chore, as an obligation on Sundays. Mass is the highlight of their Sunday, the highlight of their week. They live their life through their faith, and it showed. It was nearly a four-hour service, but everyone loved every minute of it.

It was immediately evident that the people of Ebenezer Baptist Church were exceedingly welcoming. They opened their arms and their hearts and took us in like family. They warned us right from the start that we would never leave anyone's home in the south without a full stomach. Trust me, they were telling the truth. But there was another huge part of that opening mass that needs to be discussed. As we entered the church amidst this baptism service, we were not the only students in the building on an Appalachia service trip. We soon learned that we would be sharing the living space and the experience with a group of 23 students from Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. They had arrived in Kingstown the previous night. They watched as this group of BC kids rolled in, late to the service because of travel delays. We didn't know exactly how we would blend in, whether or not they would welcome us, and whether or not we would get along.

It didn't take long to realize that it was going to work out phenomenally. We ended up setting our sleeping arrangements in the main part of the church, where mass was held. St. Joe's agreed that we should all sleep upstairs, and leave the downstairs open for other things — that's where the kitchen and a large eating room, as well as a few other rooms were located. We took one side of the church and St. Joe's took the other. Even though we had ten fewer people and seemingly took up just as much space, they were completely on board with it. We began making friends both within our group and with our newly discovered Hawks from SJU.

Upon the conclusion of the mass and our settling into our new home, we hopped in our vehicles and drove over to Central Baptist Church — another church located about ten minutes away — where several Appalachia groups staying at a few different churches were gathering for a community dinner and opening ceremony. The rest of the BC students staying at other churches (including Central Baptist) and more students from Holy Cross joined our group and our St. Joe's companions for a feast. And guess what — they ran out of fried chicken! We couldn't believe it. But it really wasn't a big deal, because they had loads of other food there. Pasta, vegetables, casseroles, everything. But that southern hospitality kicks in when they feel the guilt of running out of chicken, so they got on the phone and ordered about 15 pizzas to supplement the meal. Like I said, we never left anywhere without a full stomach.

The ceremony showed the community's appreciation for our work and the fact that we were spending our spring break here instead of on a tropical island somewhere. It was awesome hearing how much these people appreciated our help, but a different theme would emerge; it became evident throughout the week that they were giving us more than we could ever give them in return. It was us who owed the most gratitude.. After dinner, one of the church members from Central Baptist led most of the students on a trip up to the Roanoke Star — a huge, illuminated star that sits atop a mountain and overlooks the nearby city of Roanoke. It was an amazing view. Despite the bitter temperature, it was well worth the adventure.

After seeing the Star, we drove back to the church to spend our first night there. Every night, we had group reflections. These are a pretty big aspect of all trips and retreats through BC. We would share a high and low point of our day, open up stories about our lives, reflect on our situation and so on. These reflections were the best way to form our bonds with group members. Asking a few questions and starting a particular conversation can really get someone to open up. Everyone opened up. Friendships began to form stronger than any of us imagined through these nightly reflections.

The next morning was our first true work day. And in stereotypical southern fashion, there was a big box of Chik-Fil-A fried chicken sandwiches waiting for us at 7:45 in the morning. It was the first time I've ever eaten a fried chicken sandwich with orange juice, let alone a fried chicken sandwich before 8 in the morning.

Our first working task for the day wasn't one venturing out into the community, but rather one right there at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Earnest, the deacon that I previously mentioned, was the man running most of our tasks throughout the first half of the week. He pulled up his truck full of bags of mulch and landscaping tools, and we mulched a bunch of areas of the church lawn. Around bushes and trees, along the edges of the church, around the sign out front. It was physical work, which I personally was looking forward to. Our group consisted of 9 girls, though, so I can't be sure that all of them were the biggest fans of manual labor at first. But it grew on them. The church looked even more beautiful after we were done landscaping the property.

Anyone have a guess what we ate for lunch after our morning round of work? We washed our hands of the mulch residue and sat down in the basement at our tables for freshly delivered meals from Bojangles. More fried chicken! Delicious. I had no complaints. Get Bojangles if you ever have the chance. We don't have many up north, I don't think.

Time to work again. In the afternoon, we drove down the road to the property of Charles Sweetenberg, Earnest's brother. Our task was to rake the leaves in his lawn. It was a huge property, basically a pair of lawns to rake. We filled 68 black trash bags with leaves. It was gratifying, but not nearly as gratifying as hearing the stories we would hear from Charles. Afterwards, we had a talk with him about his experiences in the community of Kingstown / Roanoke. He'd been living in that house since 1961, two years after his 1959 marriage to his current wife. He explained that he used to know everyone on the whole street, and he was good friends with them. They've all mostly passed on by now. He hardly knows anyone on his street today. He expressed sadness that people never have time to stop and talk anymore. Everyone is so rushed. Our group fully appreciated that observation, coming from the non-stop culture of Boston. As we probed to find out more information about Charles, though, we discovered one of his coolest stories. It turned out he was really into cars. Fixing them up and putting them in auto shows. He showed us his garages, filled with old Monte Carlos and Chevrolets that he had been working on for years. He was so passionate about it. It was awesome seeing him open up to us and let us in on that part of his life. Sometimes asking a few questions can open doors to awesome things.

After work, we went back to our church again. We were starting to slowly get more and more acquainted with the St. Joe's kids, but we felt a little bit weird because they were always leaving before us in the morning and getting back after us in the afternoon. They were working for Habitat for Humanity all week, building a house for refugees to move into in the future. At times, it felt like we weren't doing as much work as we could have been doing.

Surprisingly, we didn't have a third round of fried chicken for dinner! It was chicken noodle soup with some other pasta dish that had some beef and peppers in it. Also exquisite. Following that dinner, we had what they called a history lesson. First, everyone from BC and St. Joe's stood up and gave a 30-60 second spiel about their life. Who they are, where they come from, etc. Once that was done, Earnest and Calvin gave us a bit of a history of Roanoke. It was really cool. Afterwards, they took us on a tour of the city. Calvin was the one leading it, along with Earnest and Reverend Lee. That's when we realized what a happy guy Calvin was. He was laughing the whole week. It was awesome. Roanoke was a small city, but it was beautiful. It had a bit of an old fashioned look, and in some areas it felt like an old western town. But there were plenty of big, modern buildings mixed in with the old, archaic railroads and monuments. It was cool. We went back, reflected, and hung out for the night.

Tuesday morning served as another instance where we felt a little bit frustrated at our lack of work, but it wasn't any one person's fault. St. Joe's, as usual, got out the door early and our group remained, waiting for directions. We were eager to get out into the community, do something bigger than local things on the church property. Reverend Lee showed up at about 8:30, though, and informed us that Earnest was out looking for his brother-in-law — he had Alzheimer’s, and multiple people had called and said they saw him walking around along different streets. That's why Earnest was late. In the meantime, Reverend Lee asked for half of our group to go help him empty out an apartment of a family that had to leave because of financial reasons. Since there was some heavy lifting there, three of the four guys went with Lee to do that task. Since I was the other van driver, I had to stay, in case Earnest came back with something to do. So it was me and five girls left at the church.

Earnest came back (after finding his brother-in-law, safe and sound). The task for me and five girls? Tearing down a huge metal shed.

I quickly saw that I was going to be the one using the drill and climbing the latter. There were tin panels that were screwed in on the top, and a frame that was holding it all together. Each screw had to be removed in horizontal order, to let the panels fall off in succession. It was about 15 feet high at its peak. There was basically one way of accomplishing this. The girls move the ladder, and I climb up every time to do the work. It was tough at first, but it ended up being really gratifying. Once it was done, we had a good sense of accomplishment. We went inside to eat lunch.

After lunch, we went to another community member's house — we never met the man whose house we were at — with Earnest and another church member to split a bunch of big logs. There were a ton of logs. We used a wood splitter, and it took about three hours to get all of the logs done. Everyone took a turn on the splitter, but once it was getting close to 4:00 and we still had a bunch of really big logs left, the guys took over and tried to hurry through the rest. The pile of wood was huge at the end. We were starting to do more gratifying work. This was confirmed when, later, we found out that the man who owned all the wood has cancer and could never have done that work himself. That made us feel better, knowing we really helped someone out immensely once again — even if it wasn't initially what we had in mind for doing "service."

We ventured back to the church, and it was starting to get colder and colder. In fact, they were forecasting snow the next day. Originally it said up to 6 inches, in which case they said the whole state of Virginia would've basically shut down. But as the night approached, it looked like it might be more like half of that number. Still could cause problems. When we got back to the church, the cooks were preparing TONS of chicken pot pie and homemade mac and cheese, among other things. It was probably the best meal we ate all week. It was delicious. We went into food comas. On the schedule that night, it said we were going to the Recreation Center down the street for basketball and other things if we wanted. But everyone decided not to go that route, and we hung in the church instead. We ventured back to childhood for the night.

It was a projected "snow day" in the morning, because both Boston College and Saint Joseph's called Ebenezer and said that their students (us) were not allowed to drive if the roads weren't cleared. It seemed likely that we wouldn't be able to go anywhere the next day. So our group made some cookies and milk and built a fort out of sleeping bags and church pews. A podium stood in the middle to support the fort. We had our nightly reflection in there for the night. One of the funnier characters in our group, George, read stories out of a Disney storybook afterwards. Everyone felt like a little kid again. It was many members' highlight of the week.

St Joe's came and looked at our fort, and a few of them squeezed in for Disney story time, as well. This was one of the moments where we began to turn a corner with them. We started getting closer as friends, and that would compile in the next two days.

The next morning, it did indeed snow. We didn't know what the plan would be, though, so we had to wake up at 8 o'clock just in case there was work to do. It turned out that we weren't allowed to leave until the afternoon, so we ended up playing games together most of the morning. It was our best bonding with the group from St. Joe's to that point. We were starting to become good friends with everyone. We had already become good friends with everyone within our own group. So it was definitely fun, but it was also a little bit annoying for us. We wanted to help. We wanted to be working, doing service. 1.5 inches of snow shouldn't have stopped us. That was our mindset. But there was nothing we could do about it, so we just waited for the afternoon work.

We heated up leftover chicken pot pie and mac and cheese for lunch. It was decided that we would go to the Habitat site with the St. Joe's kids for work that day, and we got pretty excited about that. We were excited to work with them, and we were excited to get away and work on the house. That would be something fun and different, and we'd be able to see tangible progress.

Unfortunately, when we got there, the Habitat people realized they didn't have enough supplies or space for all 36 students to work at the house. So our group of BC kids went down the road to the Habitat shop, and we help them clean things up, paint lattices, and organize shingles. Personally, I helped move scaffolding materials with Danny into a trailer outside, which was some heavy lifting. But after that, we just helped the rest of our gang sort shingles in the shop. Once again, a lot of the group was a little disappointed in the work we were getting. But afterwards, the store manager had a long talk with us about his life and his story. He mentioned that it would have taken the guys in the shop weeks to sort out all those shingles. And they can't put them on the shelves for people until they are sorted and organized. The Habitat shop runs on donations, so everything is always different and needs to be organized. He explained that we were indirectly helping houses be built, without a doubt. That was reassuring, for sure.

We finished up at the shop, and there wasn't much more to do. So we called the coordinators at the house site, but they said they were all set and would be finishing up in a little while. Once again, we joked about how we were going to get home before St. Joe's. Do these kids leave the church all day? Are they even doing any work? They're never dirty, they're always napping... do they do anything? That's what we imagined they thought about us. It was fitting that we stopped for ice cream on the way back from the Habitat shop and STILL got back to the church before they did.

Wednesday night featured another trip over to Central Baptist Church, what would be our last trip there for the week. They made another feast for all the churches' groups of Appalachia volunteers, and this time they didn't run out of anything. It was delicious. After dinner, they held the annual "Bible Bowl," which wasn't entirely thrilling. Four representatives from each of the three churches went to the front and competed to answer very difficult Bible trivia questions. We lost. We don't know the Bible as well as some other kids. It didn't phase us. We were still happy campers. We went back to the church, had our nightly reflection, did a few cool meditations led by Danny, and called it a night. The following day would be our most physically taxing and mentally rewarding of the week.

Much like what we had hoped for on Wednesday afternoon, Thursday brought us the chance to finally work at the Habitat site with the St. Joe's kids in a big group. We were out the door by 7:45 and ready to get going at the work site by 8:15. Some of the girls got to work painting long strips of wooden trim for the base of the walls inside the house. Another group was painting ceilings. Others were flooring the interior. The rest of us were outside in the yard, hammering nails all day long. The goal was to build the walls for four sheds — one of which may have been going in at that particular house, but most of which were going to other Habitat houses eventually. That meant sixteen wall frames, including four built as doors, four built as windows and eight built as regular walls. The progress was slow at first as we learned how to construct the frame, where to hammer the nails (and even how to hammer the nails effectively). But as lunch approached, we got the hang of it. After lunch, in those four hours of afternoon work, it was probably the most gratifying feeling from a work standpoint that many of us had all week. In four small teams, we were each building piles of frames and getting them done pretty quickly. At lunch time, I think we had four or five frames built. By the day's end, we had framed up all sixteen of the desired walls. BC and St. Joe's had entirely integrated throughout the whole day. We were working together. My wrist was killing me the next day from all the hammering of nails. And for the first time, we were able to stand back and look at the pieces for four entire sheds that would stand in people's yards. We built them. It was a great feeling. We felt like our work was legitimate.

We got back from our day of work and, as usual, had a delicious dinner waiting for us back at the church. It was labeled as the Senior Spaghetti Dinner, and a few seniors in the community came and joined us in the feast. We thought originally that maybe we would be serving or helping seniors at the dinner, but it was more a case of them joining us. It was our last night in Ebenezer, since we'd be leaving at 9 o'clock Friday night. We made the most of the meal. Afterwards, we had some time to kill before the bowling trip that was scheduled for 8:30. Both BC and St. Joe's, as well as the group from Central Baptist, would go to a bowling alley down the road to have some fun.

We sat and talked for a little while about what we should do in the two hours we had before bowling, and also about what we should do for our last hoorah in Roanoke. Tati and Danny pitched the idea of watching the sunrise in the morning. We loved the idea, and after I talked with them and the rest of our group a little bit, we ratcheted up the intensity. Why not hike up a mountain before sunrise and have an awesome view to see it?

Earnest drove us to Mount Catawba in that spare time we had before bowling to show us the spot where we could watch the sunrise. It seemed like a beautiful mountain. There was a spot to park your car a good way up the mountain, and he said we could watch the sun rise from there. But he told us that if we hiked about a mile higher, the view was even cooler. The conversation became a little strange, though, when we saw two hikers who needed a ride. Earnest urged us not to talk to them, to drive away. Our car was full anyway, but it was strange seeing such a warm and calm person getting antsy and nervous about two seemingly harmless hikers whose ride never showed up. He began explaining that if one of them were to have a gun, or something along those lines, we'd all be in big trouble. It just seemed like a pessimistic view. Then he told us that a few years ago, there were a few murders along this hiking trail further up this mountain. We began to wonder... why did he just tell us we should hike up it? He assured us that we would be fine as long as we were traveling in a group. It was still a little bit of a weird vibe. I wasn't scared of being murdered if we hiked it, but it just seemed like a strange turn in our car ride with Earnest.

Nonetheless, we got back to the church and we were ready to go bowling. We hadn't confirmed our morning sunrise plans — or whether or not the St. Joe's kids would choose to join us — but we'd figure that out later. We headed out to the bowling alley, and had a lot of fun there. We bowled a couple of games, and just hung out with everyone. Calvin was there, and man was he a heck of a bowler. I'm pretty sure he was breaking 200 on the scoreboard. He was even giving tips to some of the girls in our group, and he was turning them into good bowlers. It was crazy. It was a good time, but it lasted until after 11 o'clock. We still hadn't done our group reflection, and it was our last reflection of the trip since we were leaving on Friday night. We had to do it.

We didn't end up starting reflection until almost 12:30 that night. Needless to say, people were trying not to fall asleep by the end of it around 1:45. St. Joe's had backed out of the morning hike plans; they planned to hike in the afternoon on Friday, so they figured they would just watch the sunrise from the church or sleep right through it. It was the moment of truth for our group. Would we back out of the plans because of the incredibly small amount of sleep we would get? (We were already sleep deprived). Or would we tough it out?

One of my highlights of the week was seeing our group unanimously decide that we had to wake up and go on this morning hike. It was our last day, and the hope was that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime view and experience. We took more of a nap — our third of the day, if you count two previous naps of 30 minutes or less — and then arose at 5:30 to drive over to Mount Catawba.

It was frigid in the morning. We hit the rode around 6 o'clock, with sunrise anticipated to be at 6:42 am. Our vans twisted up the windy road to the hiking trail, and we finally reached the lot where we'd leave them. We began hiking up the trail, but we weren't actually sure where the spot Earnest mentioned would be. Once we reached a little clearing after about a ten minute hike, we decided to stay put. The sun was supposed to come up soon. It was an awesome view. We decided not to risk hiking higher and missing it.

Well, 12 of the 13 of us decided that was the case. Before I explain, let me go back to the first night of reflection at the church. We did this activity called "Guardian Angel," where everyone drew the name of another person in the group out of a hat. You were the guardian angel of the person you drew. You wouldn't reveal who it was until the end of the week. The goal, though, was to look after that person. Talk to them if they were feeling down. Get to know them better throughout the week. Look out for them if they were in trouble. The girl I drew from the hat was Alex. She was called Superwoman by Earnest at the closing ceremony, I think. She couldn't stand around waiting. Always trying to do more work, whether it was moving around logs or cleaning the floor. She would've preferred to move a pile of wood back and forth across the lawn all day than do something without physical activity.

Of course, it was the girl I was a guardian to that decided that Mount Catawba needed to be explored further. Where's Alex? That was the question. I'm the guardian angel of the one who has now gone missing on the murder trail Earnest was talking about. Perfect!

Danny and I went after her, but she was headed back down before we got ten yards away from our landing spot. She had seen a tent further up the hill. That was her cue to head back. Luckily nothing went wrong there. We waited for the sun to rise.

It rose, and there were some clouds in the way. It wasn't dark anymore. It was getting light, but that beautiful sunrise wasn't really happening. It was a disappointment. It was still cold, we were all exhausted (except Danielle, who, if I remember correctly, was wired for some reason), and we hadn't gotten what we came for. It would've been kind of a damper on the day.

This reminded me of so many things throughout the week. At first, it wasn't what we expected. At times, it was disappointing. And in the end, it was breath-taking and beautiful.

The rays of light finally peeked through the clouds right before we were about to head back and call it quits. We had to be back at the church and ready to head out by 9:15, and we were obviously thinking about taking a nap before that. Our group loved napping.

But those rays of light astonished us. It was the most beautiful thing many of us had ever seen. We admired it for a moment. We realized we needed a picture, but who would take it? Tati's camera had a self-timer, but it was tough to set it up. I took the challenge upon myself. Wedging it between two rocks, this is the picture we got. Most of us are using it as our Facebook cover picture. It came out incredible.

We napped after getting back from the hike. It was one of our longer naps of the week — almost an hour. We headed out to take a tour of Virginia Tech after awakening. It was a 40 minute drive to get there, and we only spent about 30 minutes actually seeing VT. It was really unorganized. We drove around for a while aimlessly, and then we headed back. It was a beautiful, massive campus, but it would've been nice to see it a little more closely. Regardless, we booked it for Golden Corral for an all-you-can-eat buffet, us and the St. Joe's kids.

That was delicious. After lunch, St. Joe's went hiking (and Alex and Danielle from our group joined them). As for us, we had some errands to do — we wanted to go to Walmart to get a poster made of our pictures to give to the church as a gift. Then we had to go back and clean the church, return the rental vans and do all sorts of finishing things before the 6 o'clock closing ceremony.

That didn't go so well. Trying to navigate to Walmart, we were cutting across lanes and maneuvering through traffic. Danny ended up cutting into a lane and a guy in a truck hit him. That sidetracked us for a while. It ended up being okay — insurance covered everything and the guy in the truck was super nice, even though it was technically Danny's fault. It took out a two hour chunk of the afternoon, and suddenly everything was rushed.

The fiasco on Friday, though, was one of those moments where we realized just how welcoming St. Joe's was to us. They had been sacrificing their space and their plans all week for us, and they stepped up again with our dilemma. Our rental vans needed to be returned by 7:30 that night, but our bus wasn't leaving for BC until 9 pm. This meant we'd have to duck out of the closing ceremony early, forgo dinner, and then sit at the airport waiting for an hour and a half. They didn't have to help, but St. Joe's offered to drive us to the airport to return the vans ahead of time. Then, they would drive us to Cici's for a final dinner. And then they'd drive us to the airport for our departure on the bus, much closer to 9 o'clock. They didn't have to help at all. But they loved our company, and we loved theirs.

The closing ceremony that preceded that final dinner was emotional and gratifying. We could tell just how much everyone at the church truly appreciated the time we gave them. Reverend Lee and Deacons Earnest and Calvin, as well as their family members and other church members all expressed their deepest gratitude. They also pointed out how special it was that BC and St. Joe's had become such good friends. They told us we were always welcome there.

We were the ones who should've been thanking them. I think we all felt that way. I fully intend on taking them up on their offer. I will go back some day. I think everyone else in our group — and the St. Joe's group — intends and hopes to do the same. Ebenezer Baptist Church is a special place, and they are all special people.

I didn't mention everyone in our group by name, so I'll take the time to do that now. Our leaders were Danny and Tati. Danny is a senior. Tati is a junior. We had two other seniors — myself and Mimi. There were five sophomores — Alex, George, Kristin, Danielle and Chrissy. Our four freshmen (who I am most jealous of for their abundant futures) were Mike, Jessie, Kathleen and Erin.

Mentioning everyone from St. Joe's would take longer, but we can't thank them enough for everything they did to make this week work out. It was phenomenal.

Overall, I find myself a little bit speechless when it comes to summarizing this trip succinctly. That sounds stupid, because I'm approaching seven thousand words in this "summary." But I'll end with the status I posted to Facebook after returning to Boston. This sums up how I feel about the beautiful week in Virginia.

"I don't think I've experienced anything as powerful as what I have in the past seven days. Detaching ourselves from the hurried lifestyle of New England and venturing down south on a service trip with twelve new best friends ended up being far better than anything I could have imagined on the most tropical Spring Break island in the world. I feel like I've learned how to appreciate life. People from countless different backgrounds can always come together if you give it a chance. I have to thank Danny and Tatiana for being the best leaders imaginable. Thanks to our Saint Joe's University friends who welcomed us like family and sacrificed some of their own plans to take part in a special week together. Let God continue to bless Deacons Earnest and Calvin, Reverend Lee, their families and all of the incredibly hospitable people of Roanoke, VA. You all owe us nothing — it is we that owe you the biggest thanks, for opening your arms and your hearts and giving us the experience of a lifetime. I can't wait to step foot in Ebenezer Baptist Church again one day. And I know you'll be there, waiting, with full hearts."