We just found out that the St. Louis school dropped out of missions because of the hightened boarder warning that the U.S. Gov has put out recently. Cartel against Cartel violence made some news papers in the United States so the government issued a warning meant for teens on senior trips thats says pretty much just be carefull and the St. Louis school board tells the kids that they can no longer participate. We are not even going through the cities the watch was put out for. Its just parents not being rational and it makes things much harder on the people still going. In most cases, there will only be one american in each village instead of the three that we had last year... And all because parents dont want to behave like adults.

I am a little annoyed about this.

The Jefferson City trip was a success. Not as fun for us as last year but it was still a good time to get to know the other people going on mission with us this year. It doesnt quite feel the same as last year's retreat but that is more because we did not stay with host families this time. We stayed at the retreat house across the street that reminds me of the brother's residence except that its not attached to the school.

Around thrity guys attended the retreat and of those, only three were really weird or awkward people. Minus that it seems like a its going to be a fun trip and the expirence of getting twenty nine other guys all to do one thing was an eye opener. I dont see how teachers do it everyday. It would drive me insane.

We got alot of papers and posters out of the retreat day though so that should be something to show to the senior project board.

Poster:

So Brother is bugging us so much we decided to get to work on our poster for the presentation thats coming up. To be honest it crept up on me, I had completely forgotten about even needing one but I guess thats why we have mentors.

We are using stincils and probably spray paint to make our poster with a photoshop background. The idea is to print the poster we make in photoshop and spray paint over it so it should look pretty good.

Lock In Night:

The lock in last night was really the first thing we could have fun at this year, and even though it turned out to be a bust (since no one showed up besdies some of the guys from last year, minus Aaron, and Danny Joe and Tyler). Even though no one new showed up so our plans for explaining the mission was sort of ruined it was still fun and helped to get everyone excited for missions again. Especially after the group building games, that was when we all started to come together better. I think Danny Joe and Tyler are excited for it too so we must have done something right.

Our Schedual:

Group goes to the O'Hara Play
Icebreaker
Intro Prayer
Create Prayers for later
Group Building Excerise
Prayer/ Movie - The Power of One
Night Closing Prayer

Wake Up - Breakfast - beans, chileqias, tortias and coolaid
Church at Regis
Closing and Going Home

Failure:

This was supposed to be the day when the first payment was due, I think it was the payment for plane tickets, but it turns out that almost everyone who wanted to go suddenly dropped out. We have maybe five from last year and two new ones. Danny Joe and Tyler. It seems like it is going to be very hard to get interest in missions for some reason this year. CBC had more than seventy-five applications last year alone and we have seven...

I don't understand why people don't want to go, maybe they are scared by Brother's amazing man beard. Or, maybe they just need to be made aware of the mission opprotunity by a more reliable source. It can't sound good to have two seniors come up and ask you about whether you want to run away to mexico for a couple weeks... Note to whoever takes me and Trevor's place next year. Make sure you get the administration involved in promoting this mission. Obviously kids need more encouragment to commit to leaving the country than I can give them.

First Parent Meeting:

Our first parent meeting was tonight and we had quite a few parents show up. So far it is looking okay, we had maybe ten new families here so we should have a decent turn out for the mission this year, better than last year anyway.

But even with all the parents that showed up we only have two new guys committed to mission. Danny Joe Adams and Tyler Fratzke. We were hoping for at least three from each grade... Not what we are looking for so far.

The people that are interested though are Kevin Hogan, Matt Mac, Teddy Dujokidivc (misspelled quite badly), Anthony Liggit, Brandon Weshe, and a couple others that are even less involved than those ones.

So this could end up being fantastic or it could be a waste of time to try and plan... We have nine committed if everyone from last year still wants to go.

Applications

I just finished re-typing the applications for this years missions, all the dates are right, and hopefully all the misspellings or grammar errors are fixed.

This week is the first time that underclassmen have shown some interest in missions, asking for applications, talking to me or trevor and aaron about what we would do in mission, things like that. We have also talked to some teachers about students that would be good in missions and talked to indivuals that the seniors think would do well. But all of that might not matter too much if none of them show up to Lasallion youth tomorrow morning. So far we have had meetings with just me and trevor and also a few with all of the returning missionaries minus Joe Volz.

Surprisingly the application took a quite a bit of time, and effort. I didnt expect it to be that difficult to check all the dates and things. Got a lot done today though.