It's Been A Wild Ride

Starting off with my love for the weather- Thank you Lord! To sum it up, today was 85 and sunny all day. It is 9 at night and I am outside in shorts and a sweatshirt on my computer. Cant get much better! The last few days have been a bit relaxing and our attempt of getting back into the swing of things. Life has slowed down again like it usually is on the bus. I found myself needing to be moving and with purpose at all times back home and now that we are on the road again, I find a few moments in the day with none of the above. haha, it doesn't sound difficult to deal with but it actually seems to be for me. Not so much a problem as something I just need to admit publicly. But we are currently on the hay lot still with plans of moving over to Crosspoint Church just a few miles down the road in Chino. The farm style life we are living now is great and the B&G crew, Linda, Johnny, and Hockey are so much fun to be with. The reason for going over to the church is for opening new doors and opportunities in meeting the congregation and getting involved with projects in their area.

We have connected with Crosspoint Church and met some of the people involved with that church. Mario is their community outreach coordinator and he has taken us under his wing and led us to some volunteer opportunities as well as take us around both Chino and Ontario. In the 7ish days we have been in Ontario/ Chino area, I had never seen how large and developed it is. My idea of Ontario was a smaller town with farm and dairy's everywhere... This idea of the town was shattered when we got a tour of the place and saw the huge malls, downtown areas, and industrial sections. Anyways, we were suggested to help out Three Way Thrift store which is a second hand store that works closely with Crosspoint and donates approximately $600k+ every year to different charitable organizations/ schools. We helped them with receiving donations, deliveries, and putting items out on the floor for the first day. Today we went over and helped with both deliveries and sorting TV's on pallets to get recycled. It was a full morning of work followed by going to Crosspoint Church in the afternoon to help prep for feeding dinner to a group of people at Camp Hope. Camp Hope is a plot of land that the city of Chino reserved for a homeless population starting about 5 years ago. Since then, many churches have been involved with the people here but Crosspoint has been feeding this community for those 5 years and are one of the only groups that have stayed faithful to this commitment. We helped serve them dinner and got the opportunity to talk with some of them. The plot of land will be tore down and rezoned for other purposes in a few months which will put a lot of people out of a place they call home. It was sad thinking about the exodus of people getting kicked out but at least there is an advanced notice on the decision.

Tomorrow (Friday) we will be spending the day at B&G Hay Co. and help them with some projects in return for them being so hospitable and watching over our bus for the past 5 weeks. I have had a such a good time with the race horses that are here on the land as our roommates. I have tried spending time with them and continue the process of getting comfortable around these massive animals. I have to say its been working; In fact, it may be working to well... Chad and I went for a run the other day and after the run we decided maybe to go do a few laps in the pen with three of the horses. This was a great idea in theory and turned out to be a lot of fun for the first few laps. Eventually we wanted to stop but the horses didn't, they were all wound up, frisky, and wanted to start trouble. This turned in to me and chad huddled up in the far corner, scared for our lives while the three horses ganged up on us, stomping, snorting, and bucking around us. In the end we made a few petrified and erratic movements toward the fence where we jumped it into the much more calm mare's pen. We escaped with our lives but left all manly feelings of being tough behind. After they calmed down a bit I was back in the pen with them and had to repair my relationship with the herd. Needless to say, I will not be running with the horses again anytime soon!

In winding down our stay at the hay lot, life has been blessed here. Weather has been top notch, the people here take care of us and at least pretend to like our company, and life is simple. Almost every night we have watched the sun go down over the farm land around us and we talk about how much we appreciate life on the bus. This sun we see go down here in Ontario is the same one we watched go down on No Name Key 1 year ago. Both the same but so different. This adventure has brought us all over the place and through these experiences we have learned so much. I don't want this blog to take a turn towards any sappy feelings or thoughts so to sum it up, man, its been a wild ride.