Where Do I Even Begin?

Seriously. So much has happened this summer! I don't know where to begin, or where to end, or what to put in the middle for that matter. Prepare yourself for a very eclectic and poorly organized post.

I guess I'll start with Week 3, seeing as that's where I left off. Week 3 I had the great joy of working with my dear Matthew Thomas at Theresa and Tyrone's house. They're a married couple about the same age as my mom, with children all grown up and a young grandson who hung out with us that week and wrote messy love letters to one of the high school girls who was there that week. They are such a precious family. Theresa is universally known as Sweet T, a name which she more than lives up to. She calls us all her children, and has been very sad to say goodbye to each group as they leave every week. She kept inviting us in just to sit in the air conditioning and was so kindly insistent that sometimes she actually made it hard to keep the campers outside working. I LOVE being at Sweet T's house, or just around it, because she is so appreciative of what we've done for her that she never fails to remind me why I'm doing this. The homeowners are another face of why I'm here, but unlike the campers, who are always around, it's easy for me to forget how much our presence here means to them, and I am grateful to Sweet T for always reminding me of what a blessing it is to be able to plant flowers for someone who loves them. Also, that Wednesday was Tyrone's birthday and we had a party! Well, Sweet T had a party, and invited all of us! But she told Tyrone that the lunch was just for all of us as a thank you for all of the work we were doing, so we got to watch him run around all day setting up his own birthday lunch! It was quite funny, and led to my favorite part of that week, which was watching Casey, my 17 year old camper, literally pull a table out of Tyrone's hands because she didn't think he should have to do any work on his birthday. He gave up because she threatened to fight him. Casey's younger brother George was there too. I say younger because he was certainly not little. Though two years younger than her, he was over a foot taller, coming in at about 6'5'' and close to 200 pounds. I liked him though, because he was one of those gentle giants. He was big and strong and kinda scary looking, but he was all sweetness and fun, and got a huge kick out of jumping on the low end of a piece of plywood balanced on a bag of quickcrete and bouncing me into the air. On Thursday night Casey came up to me and told me that George had called their mom that day and asked her to start taking them to church. I admire that so much, because seriously asking my mom to take me to church is something I never had the courage to do. It's the little things like that that make the summer for me.