Sophomore Service Day and Day Away-
This year’s service day consisted of going to Quaker Haven Camp and helping them with various tasks around the beautiful area. Some of these tasks included moving tables, taking apart and painting a gaga ball pit, rebuilding a stone wall and painting chairs. The sophomores worked hard all day with a wonderful lunch in the dining area at the camp filled with delicious hamburgers, salad and chocolate chip cookies. Although, one of the highlights is the popcorn made over the fire while drinking soda. A main takeaway from that day was, however, the friendships and the relationships built from scraping paint off wood for hours.
Day Away was a similar bonding experience except that it started at Goshen College. Sophomores were split into groups picked by the teachers; thus, they worked with people that they wouldn’t always hang out with. This ended a success though because the groups competed in a scavenger hunt all around the campus and took many wonderful pictures. This took up the morning before lunch and running around the campus (sometimes even physically) took a lot of energy that was replenished at a student’s house, whose parents were gracious enough to allow the sophomore grade to swim and eat there for the whole afternoon. There was swimming, swinging, jumping, talking and even watching the Lego Ninjago Movie, which entranced many.
These two days ended in the same sentiment: we come from different places and have different lives but coming together to finish a task can bring us closer together with people we hadn’t known well before. Let’s hope next year’s service day and day away is just as exciting and eventful!
Freshmen Service Day and Day Away-
For the freshmen, it was different from the sophomore service day as they were split up into different groups to help out at different wonderful places. It was split up with nine freshman girls in one group and the 18 freshmen boys were split up into two different groups. One of these groups got the amazing opportunity to work at ten thousand villages. Another of the boys group went to Goshen College to clean; although, many if not all the sophomore groups didn’t notice these freshmen were even there! The last group of girls went to Pathways where they were able to bond over doing activities like cutting invasive plants and putting soap on trees to repel deer!
Day away was quite a bit different from these other activities the freshmen did as they were able to enjoy themselves by doing all sorts of cool activities at Camp Mack. Many freshmen were happy with the opportunity to zipline and climb the rock wall that was outside. While part of the grade did rock climbing, the other team did team exercises and games to bring them closer together as a community. This, however, was only one part of the day as after this they ate a great lunch and were able to swim for the rest of the time. It definitely was a relaxing and full day for the Bethany freshman class!
It is safe to say that Bethany was able to provide a great two days to this grade as a start to their whole high school experience! These friendships and connections built over these two days will last the whole of high school as these freshmen start their journey of growth from middle schoolers to high schoolers. Let’s pray for even more exciting service days and days in the future!