06/24/2026
Day 3 of the youth mission trip. This morning we volunteered at the Green Bay Botanical Garden. The youth did amazing. They cleared the weeds from the magnolia tree garden. Yes, they have magnolia trees that actually grow in Wisconsin. It was hot and dirty work. So parents, these youth are ready to help with gardening and yard work. ;) We ate our lunch in the Children's Garden area. What a beautiful place. It can only survive because of all the volunteers. We learned about different plants and why certain ones need to be removed. From there we headed to Bay Beach Amusement Park where ride tickets are only 25 cents each and the most expensive ride was worth 6 tickets. They learned to compromise and work as small groups to go on everything they wanted. A few of us had some tickets left over so we found random families and donated the tickets to them. With the crazy weather scheduled for tomorrow we made a pivot and added in our Thursday scheduled activity. We headed next door to the Green Bay Wildlife Refuge Center. We saw wild animals and read their stories, some were very heartbreaking. We tried to hike a trail but the mosquitoes were rather hungry. As we went to leave we had a new kind of traffic jam, about 100 geese and goslings decided to cross the road. It was quite a sight. It was time to head back to the Airbnb as everyone was quite sore. Before dinner Tracy informed us we had done over 16,000 steps today at that point. Our chefs Emma, Ellie and Ellie made us delicious meals and I don't think anyone walked away hungry. We did surprise Ellie, whose birthday is next week, with birthday cupcake and the singing of Happy Birthday. For youth group tonight we talked about Courage and Praise. We tried to do a team activity, but it ended up with adults in laughter. It was a full day and the kids/adults too did absolutely amazing. They are an awesome group.
Tomorrow we are learning to be flexible as storms are heading this way. Stay tuned as we learn to pivot and remember God is good...
