Second Half Summary

Day 3: Agenda-

Wake up. Head to church. Work on our projects. Met with Abe and Angela Help make lunch. Work out on the farm. Conduct training with the refugees. Tara's home. Working on Projects. Meet the rest of the staff during a dinner party. Head over to youth group. Come home and debrief.

Wednesday was an amazing day. It was packed with a lot of thing as you can tell. However, a few things stood out to me. It was exciting to see Abe and Angela as we were able to finally see them after their one night stay at Tara's house. Tara is the Chief Experience Officer of CG and is an amazing leader of CG. We were fortunate to eat at Tara's house with the rest of the CG staff and enjoy Brent's cooking, the new Chef for the 4th part of CG "stir". Along with Brent was a refugee from Eretria, Awot, and has an amazing story about how he was taken out of a refugee camp and brought to the US. His story was on the brink of desperation as he had no funding from the US government and no job and was to be evicted from his own home. Fortunately CG, was starting a new branch of their organization called "stir", and Awot who showed tremendous potential is the story behind it all. They took him and

provided him with the needs with the help of grants and other monetary sources. Stir is a branch where they will help show refugees how to cook, and be helpful in the restaurant setting. The amazing thing about all this is that he is the face of "stir".

After dinner at Tara's home, we went to the Eastwind Church's (the church adjacent to the farm) youth group service. It was about 30 students with high energy and just loving a new thing with a few asian brother's in Christ showing up and leading the night. Thanks for Mike and David as they were able to lead worship, and the rest of the night we broke up into small groups where we were able to share with the different age levels what we have personally gone through and why we chose to come to Boise during our spring break. I was fortunate enough to listen to the high school boys share about their own passions and for them to listen to me talk about my passions. I told them how amazing God works on this trip. Before we were even assigned to the trip, and before Abe even knew. Each of us were assigned for a specific task without knowing before we even came to this trip. Whats amazing is this task suited our very own needs, from photography, to health, to design, to music, and just being flexible. God really picked each of us specifically for this trip and that is amazing. We did not plan for this, neither did CG or Abe, but only God knew. It was uplifting to share my experiences in Idaho so far, and just listen to their background story.

Day 4: Thursday our last day. Agenda-

Wake up. Head to church. Work on our projects. Head over to Cathedral of the Rockies to watch Awot cook. Head back to church to do our projects. Eat lunch. Go to IRC Graduation.

Head over to do some work at Big City Coffee. Eat dinner at the Red Feather. Go to the library to listen to Devi talk. Head home to play with the kids. Debrief.

Thursday was our last day and we wanted to make the best of it. We were able to watch Awot one of the new faces of Stir learn to cook from the Culinary Master Brent. :D It was fun watching and also learning how to cut and julienne and whatever else different vegetables.

After that learning experience we came back to Eastwind Church to get some of our projects done and to eat lunch. We ate fufus which were pretty delicious, and sat very heavily in our stomachs. After eating lunch we went to the IRC where we were able to just be a part of a graduation. This graduation were the IRC students who had completed the tasks and were given a certificate and just congratulated for being able to succeed. It was great just seeing the faces of these refugees who are working so hard to be able to fit into America just smile after learning so much. We were able to play with the kids, and just be a part of this miraculous moment. Some of them have only been in the US for 4 months and were able to communicate.

After the Graduation we were able to spend some time with Abe and Angela to just do work at Big City Coffee. Then we headed over to the Red Feather. A restaurant that actually receives food from CG. The food was amazing and at great prices too. We were able to just speak to Matt, who supervises the food that comes into the restaurant looking for locally grown and top quality. It is amazing the work that he puts into the restaurant. From composting their own garbage downstairs to making sure as many as their products is local grown or fed was in his job description. The meal was great also because we were able to just share with Tara the events that happened this week along with our expectations and goals. Tara is extremely patient and just such a hard working business woman while being a loving mother, at exactly the same time. I think it really just appreciated the work she poured into the organization and just her love for refugees and anyone who is in need was definitely present.

The night closed with us visit the Head Farmer's, Devi, speaking at a library. We were able to meet many other nepali and just people who were also interested in their culture and story. The turn out was amazing and it was great to see Devi outside of his farming setting.

This trip so far has been an amazing experience, and I know God is definitely working here to just provide for the refugees. Its crazy, to think even though we went to "Idaho". Which has a lot of white people and not too many international people, we were able to just learn so much from so many different people groups. Our projects are not yet complete, but luckily we can actually continue to do our work even when we go home. I know God has used us in ways we can't even possibly imagine, and I look forward to what this organization will continue to do.

As I am still reflecting and other members of our team, we will continue to update this blog. Even after the trip. Thanks for reading the longest post in the world.