Prairie Rose State Park

Today Brock decided to get up and take Heidi for a run. They both did well, but I think Heidi was dragging a little on the last hill. Brock's ankle felt good and strong so that was a relief. He found the trail and ran a ways on it and got a look at Lake Macbride. He said it was pretty.

We had another cereal breakfast day and then started breaking camp so we could get on the road headed three and a half hours East to the Harlan, Iowa area to attend Weekend on the Farm. It is an event hosted by the founder of the HTG organization that Brock belongs to, Arlin Sorenson, at his personal farm. I guess you could call it a retreat, but we aren't sure what to expect so we will see.

The drive was not too eventful thankfully. We stopped only once for a bathroom break and to eat cheese, summer sausage, and crackers. Then, we finished the drive and the Schoolcrafts headed into the town of Harlan where they would be staying at a hotel for the weekend and we headed to Prairie Rose State Park.

We were grateful that they had a list of reservations with our name on it and we could see our site number and we'd already paid through the online reservation system so we could just drive to the site. There was no place to check in. The park was really pretty and our only complaint was that they really needed to have more signage. It took us a while to locate our site since we had to loop around and around until we found the right loop that had our numbered site on it.

Our view from our campsite

Once we got parked and set up, we had about 20 minutes to rest a little before we needed to leave to drive to Arlin's farm. We drove right to it, got out of the car, and kind of awkwardly milled around not seeing any familiar faces for a little bit. Then a nice couple came and gave us some name tags and introduced themselves to us. They said they would be leading the junior high and high school programs for the weekend. Next, Arlin spoke up that we would pray and then go to a big tent to get in line for dinner. While we were in line, Arlin's daughter, Laurie, whom we'd met at the service project we'd participated in at the Dallas HTG meeting, came up and asked us to do her a favor and be group leaders this weekend. I looked at Brock feeling a little panicked as he agreed.

The food was delicious - tacos and the best sweet corn. It was so juicy! We all ate pretty well and then it was time for worship and then the evening speaker. The little boys played with several other kids and Brynna stayed out with them to supervise. We had to do an ice breaker activity involving paper airplanes to get into our groups and meet people and then we listened to the speaker, an area pastor named Jack. His message was on the Great Commission in which Jesus commands us to go and make disciples. He was funny and engaging and challenging and shared some staggering statistics.

When we was done speaking, we broke up into our groups and we went into the garage to work on a project. The task was to make a poster or do a skit illustrating the message we'd gotten out of Jack's presentation. Brighton was in our group and of course, wanted to do a skit, but he was outvoted! We worked for quite awhile on our poster and were actually the last group to finish.

We ended up getting back to the campground about 10 pm and everyone was exhausted. We all went right to bed since the morning was to come early.