Zion Youth Gathering 2018: Proclaim Community Day

I know we're starting to sound like a broken record but today has just been incredible! Even though we're still not getting as much sleep as we'd like, we are having so much fun together!

Today started with another early rise. I'm so proud of the group for having such a good attitude about being on the bus by 7:15am each day. One of the perks of being up so early: we were front row for worship with Presiding Bishop Eaton and even got a picture with her! We had a great time singing along with Rachel Kurtz too.

After worship, we headed straight over to the interaction center. Yesterday there were long lines for the Walk for Water activity that helps simulate what it would be like to have to cart your water 3.7 miles each trip. Today we jumped in a walked right away. We didn't do the full 3.7 but one lap around was enough for most of us! Along the way we read stories of people who live with this struggle to walk for water and even had a few pit stop challenges such as a heat wave, bumpy bridge, malaria, diarrhea and worms. We were all thankful to give $300 more to the initiative today. We got a certificate to take home to Zion to help us celebrate!

After spending a little more time exploring the many stations available to us, we set out for a lunch break on our way to Ford Field. Turns out the place we wanted to eat at was a little busy but thanks be to God we found another with just enough time before we had to get to practice for our Mass Cast appearance tonight.

The rest of the afternoon was spent going up and down, up and down, up and down the stairs to practice our entrance for the finale song. There are a few hundred helping make it possible! It's amazing to watch it all come together from behind the scenes. But boy are we going to have some sore legs tomorrow! The ending song was "Love Can Build A Bridge" sung by Rachel Kurtz and a young boy named Rudy. The rendition is enough to get you choked up and inspired to walk hand in hand with our neighbors to make this world better. May we leave inspired By God's love to build bridges back home.

We hope you had a chance to tune in to the livestream to watch! Hopefully, a link to the live video will be posted soon to share with you.

We had been expecting to have floor seats since we were a part of the ass cast. Instead, we sat at the top to make our entrance even more incredible for all those in the dome. The Gathering people were generous enough to make sure we got floor seats for tomorrow though!

Tomorrow during the day we head out for our Proclaim Justice day. We will be serving someway somehow but we won't find out the details until we get on the bus. May our contribution tomorrow be meaningful not just for us but for those we meet too!

Peace,

Anna Wencl

Jenny on stage during worship!

We learned a lot of sad facts about the struggle for water in many parts of the world (hence the glum faces!)

We are strong enough to carry all that water ... so we thought!

Dan and Madisen making the long walk to the finish

We were proud to give $300 to the WfW cause

Meeting Palestinian and an Israeli Lutherans! We had a great time talking with them about their friendship, frustrations with how their perceived in the media and what they hope for.

We love art!

We're all getting used to all the bag checks we need to go through to get into Ford Field. The girls are not getting silly as they vary their bags on their front!