Recently we had a fifth grade class from Westminster Christian Academy come serve with us for half a day.  We had nearly 20 kids and a few adults here ready to work.  That age group is so fun to work with.  They got here and they were excited about helping out.  So after a brief overview of HFO they split up into teams and started digging, hauling dirt, planting, and drilling.  That’s right we put them to work out in the hot sun.  We were building raised-bed vegetable gardens for five of our neighborhood families.  The Opelousas Lighthouse Mission had been selling seedlings that they had begun growing in their new greenhouse.  The greenhouse was built to aid in their organic garden project.  They were able to donate some leftover seedlings to us for our raised-beds.  The kids really knocked it all out in just a few hours.  By lunch time we had five newly planted gardens in our neighborhood.  These gardens will produce tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and watermelon for the families.  Many thanks to the fifth grade class at Westminster.  We enjoyed having you on the Hill.

I am writing to you today to tell you about my trip to Dallas. When we went to Dallas there were 17 kids and 5 adults. The boys were in one van and the girls were in another one. It was 6 hours before we made it to Dallas where everything is BIG!!

Mr. Loren told me that it was just going to be about 7 kids going. Come to find out when he came to pick me up they had almost all of them in there. When we made it to Dallas they said that we were just going to down town Dallas to walk around. When we went to Six Flags we asked “what are we doing here?”, he said that we are coming to PLAY!! First we ate lunch and then went to the park. When I got in I almost rode every ride. We got on a ride that was so fun that we rode it about 5 times. At the end of the first day we got on a ride that looked ok but it was not. It was the TEACUPS!! When DD, Ty, Kaylan, and I got off it we all were sick! After all of that was that was over Loren told us to get together to take a family picture.

That night we all went to the gym to play b-ball and take a shower. When we got to the church it was so big that it was about 2 blocks long. After that it was time to hit the hay. The next day Loren told us that we were going to a play were you get wet. We went to Six Flags waterpark. Over there I went on every ride. The wave pool was so much fun. The waves were about 8 feet tall. We were there for about 5 hours playing all day. Mr. Johnny, Matt, and Keanu were on the biggest ride there, the Sky Coaster. My favorite ride was the Black Hole. When we got back to the car we were ready to eat. We got back to church and went to the showers. After that we played Hide and Seek. The next morning we went to church with the people out there. Their church was the bomb. After church we went get all of the thing and came back home.

Some things I learned on the trip were no matter how far you go in life God can always turn you around. What I mean about that is that me and DD get into a fight and look we was together the whole trip. I also learned that no matter how mean you are to somebody you should always love that person. What I mean by that is no matter how I am to my sister are anybody I should love them because that is what the Lord would want me to do.

So that was
the trip to Dallas where
everything is BIG!!

I arrived here in Opelousas on May 15 and hit the ground running. My first week with HFO was the last week of school for the students. I was excited to make it in time to watch several of our students graduate from the 6th grade. The teachers did a great job putting together the ceremony. And one of our students Ariel emceed the event. She was name the Historian of the graduating class. Some of our other students were honored with various awards. Tavian and Trevon were recognized for the Social Studies project on Tyler Perry. Their project won first place in Parish and 3rd place in the district. Loren was even recognized for volunteering with the class trip to New Orleans. It was exciting to see the support the school has for HFO and visa versa. The relationships that are beginning to be built between the schools and HFO will only continue to grow each year as God continues to build up the community on The Hill.

Later that day we had our end of the year pool party. All of our kids and a few of our volunteers gathered at one of our volunteer’s house to swim and grill out. We had a blast swimming, eating, and enjoying each others’ company. At the end of the evening we awarded the kids with awards which we thought they were deserving of based on the year of tutoring. They were humorous awards and the kids had fun trying to guess who was going to receive each award. We had everything from the “Miss Boss” award, which of course went to the one and only Tyriana Joseph to the most “Most Dramatic Receiver” which went to Isaiah Charles. Thanks to Ms. Cecette Bassett for opening her pool to us and providing some amazing food as usual.

-Kristina