El Dorado Hills - Lakehills!

August 14th:

Today I, along with my friends L, R, and K, drove up to El Dorado Hills to visit our summer camp-made friends' youth group at Lakehills Church.

After this summer at Pondy, R, L, K and I decided that we really wanted to see our camp friends and "brothers" again before heading off to college, so we told their youth group leader that we were interested in visiting and he loved the idea! Despite being college freshmen, he said that we were welcome to come to their wednesday night youth group (which worked, because most of our brothers and friends are still in high school). So we chose the date August 14th and made our plans!

The drive there took about two and a half hours with traffic and we actually got there sooner than we thought we would; we left my house at 1:40 and had dinner plans with our brothers at 5:45, so we found that we had a little more than an hour to kill (since we stopped for the bathroom and a snack break). One of our brothers, J, invited us over to another of our brothers' house, so we drove out to K and G's house, where J was. By the time we got there, time had been sufficiently killed, so we just caravanned over to the restaurant where some other friends were going to join us. It was SO fun seeing J and K because the last time we saw them was LAST summer - our greeting hugs were filled with such love! We had G in our family group two years in a row, so it was also super cool to see him!

Our other "brothers" J and Z joined us at Peet's (the restaurant), as well as a friend of our older brothers' P. It was so fun to have dinner (pizza in my case) with so many friends I hadn't seen in so long! It wasn't even awkward or anything, totally natural!

Their church Lakehills was within walking distance of the restaurant, but since the girls and I had food to drop off at our car, and it was 100 DEGREES outside!, we decided to drive up the hill to the church. We were some of the first to arrive, but even with only a couple people there we began to feel welcome! We knew most everybody by sight from seeing them at camp, and a good amount by name too. Haha. I made two mistakes: one person I called by the wrong name, which was awkward for me, although I don't know if he noticed/cared, and the other was expecting that someone else would NOT remember my name and not realizing that he had already greeted me by name when I asked if he remembered my name... Hahaa. I'm an awkward person sometimes.

A bunch of our brothers were unable to attend youth group because they had football practice or (in once case), were in firefighter training (what the what?!), but some were able to make it to say hi afterwards. The college-bound and already-in-college brothers went to college group, but we stayed with the youth group :)

The message was about giving one's testimony and made me think about in what way I would give mine if I were ever asked. Huh. Also, during the introduction to youth group, the youth pastor kept alluding to the fact that they had visitors, so we got a lot of attention, haha >.<

After youth group ended, we hung out at the church for a bit with some of our friends and then K had the idea of relocating to a tea/coffee house in Sacramento called Temple Coffee. Tea is sorta something that J and K and some of our other older brothers are totally in to, so we gladly went along. I got peppermint. I have no idea what the others got. We ate leftover chocolate cake from dinner and chatted about college and our interests and just sorts enjoyed each others' company until K and had to take G back home (at 11:45) because he had school the next day. K and G were J's ride, so we had to part ways for the last time (sounds so ominous...). We all hugged each other, then had a big group hug at the end that made me realize just how much I'm going to miss my "brothers"!

So we got in our separate cars and drove our separate ways :,( The drive home took two hours and fifteen minutes and I only almost killed us all once! (I drove all five hours of the trip). We had to stop to pee at a gas station on the way home (darned tea!), but I REALLY didn't like the idea of four girls going to a gas station at midnight so I checked to see if either McDonald's or Starbucks were open first (they weren't...). Luckily we all survived the gas station and were soon back on our way back to my house!

We got back to my house at EXACTLY 1:00 am! I was impressed by the perfection of the time. Nice round number. :)

The others girls went home and I plopped in bed, SO ready to sleep. I got nine hours of sleep - still doesn't seem like enough!

SO! Do you have long distance friends who you like to visit every once in a while? If not, you should, it's lots of fun!

Keep it classy folks.