Summer of 2016 was the best one yet. I spent most days on the farm with my family, which is my happy place. I was enjoying life keeping busy with summer sports, camps, and work at home, but I decided to join my church youth group and go on a mission trip to Florida! I had never been there before, but I was pretty much expecting the stereotype "palm tree and beach" scenario. It was so much more than that though! Our youth group leaders found this National Youth Event for us to go to. It is pretty much an event where 3,000 individuals worship together and do mission work around the city of Orlando. After fundraising $26,000 in the months before to be able to attend the National Youth Event, July 25th had finally come. We drove to Sioux Falls as a group and had to spend the night in a church fellowship hall, yes, on the cold, hard ground. The next morning, at 5:00 a.m, a charter bus came and picked up all 51 of us and we drove to the airport in Omaha, Nebraska! To be honest, I was on the verge of a panic attack. I'm not much of an airplane person, considering I have only flown one other time before this trip. After an hour delay, we finally arrived in Orlando, and yes, the first thing I saw were palm trees! :) It was beautiful. Throughout the days of the six day trip, we had sessions, worships, workshops, and most importantly, mission work. Every youth conference had different work to do. Keep in mind this is a NATIONAL youth event. There were people from Hawaii, Connecticut, all over! Our group even met a youth conference from Germany! Anyways, our youth group got to travel to a warehouse in downtown Orlando called Clean the World. Clean the World is an organization that receives used soaps from hotels and recycles them and sends them to third-world countries. Our job was to sort the bottles of soap from the bars of soap. Our group was pretty competitive, so our group sorted the most out of everyone, of course. ;) It felt so good to do some good with all the money we had raised to attend this event. After all the hours of work in 106 degree weather, we finally got to enjoy the relaxing side of Florida. We got to spend two full days at DisneyWorld. I had never been there before, so it was a really cool experience, especially since I was spending it with my closest friends. Since I'm not much of a fan of lots of people in one space, Disney wasn't the place for me. Don't get me wrong, I had fun, but I don't think I'd ever go back. The day to head home finally came. I was so excited to get home to my family and puppies! We flew to Omaha then drove to Sioux Falls. From there, we drove home to Tulare and arrived at 2 a.m. You'd think that since it was late I would get right to bed, but I stayed up for another hour bugging my mom about stories and exciting things that happened on my trip! I brought everyone in my family gifts from Disney, but I think I brought home the best gift. My faith grew immensely on this trip and I will remember all the memories and relationships I made for the rest of my life!