Tourism and Night #1 of the Gathering

The hallway patrol greets everyone in the morning

 

7:00am - wake up! (unless you are Jake, Bailey, Dawson, and Brandon... then 6:00am)

7:40am - breakfast in the lobby of our hotel

The first to arrive in the lobby at 7:45... one hour before the scheduled time :)

9:00am - board the buses to the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village!

The first safety car

These were our favorite buses of the day.  They fed us Doubletree Cookies and offered bottles of water for the 7 minute drive.  Our drivers Richard and Rose were the best!!

9:10am - arrive at the Henry Ford museum.

9:30am - doors opened.

Are those carseats???

We spent the morning in the museum looking at old cars, planes, and even the bus that Rosa Parks was on!  We split into small groups and the kids were able to tour the museum on their own.  Some even gave away their flat people.  We made new friends with our crayons and received lots of cool things from other groups.

Someone made a new friend

 11:30am - meet for lunch at the Michigan Cafe (at the museum)

Most of the kids ate the assortment of Mac & Cheese dishes they had and those that didn't eat Mac & Cheese ate the Mac & Cheese sandwich with mac & cheese, bacon, and cheese.  You'd think we were in Wisconsin! 

12:30pm - walk to the Greenfield Village

This group found the ice cream stand

New friends

Greenfield village is part of the Henry Ford museum.  It was an outdoor piece filled with old time buildings, an operating coal train, ice cream stands (yum!), old cars driving around, and lots lots lots more.  We stayed here for a few hours and only saw a small portion of it.

One of these things is not like the other... who is that guy??

3:00pm - Matt and Rose picked up back up in the doubletree buses with more cookies and water!  They drove us into downtown Detroit so we could arrive in time to see the first event of the gathering.

3:30pm - Arrive at the Cobo Center.  There were lots of youth inside the Cobo Center resting, listening to Rachell Kurtz sing, socializing, and playing games.  We joined right in, put more of our flat people on others, and made new friends.

4:30pm - Begin the 3/4 mile walk to dinner at Angelina

4:40pm - Jake is almost hit in the face with a pigeon.  They both pooped a little.  No casualties.  

5:00pm - Arrive at dinner.

We met a group at immediately and asked where they were from... Orefield, PA.  How ironic!  They were from Jordan Lutheran Church.  We sat near them and enjoyed a delicious italian dinner.

talking to Jordan Lutheran through the large window

Table for 23, please

6:15pm - Make the short walk to Ford Field where the first mass gathering would begin at 7:00pm!!!

We found Ford Field!  And look at how tall Logan is :)

We walked into Ford Field and found seats among the 30,000 other participants. 

7:00pm - Lost and Found played a few songs to kick off the evening.

7:30pm - The house band played and we sang some more!  The evening was filled with inspirational speakers, songs, and dance.  We even learned the "dance move of the day."  We heard about the lack of clean water available for people in the world including some in the city of Detroit!, an empowering speaker on world hunger (did you know enough food is produced in the world to feed everyone 1.5 times, but a lot of that food goes to waste?).  We also heard from someone encouraging us to speak up and stand up for what we believe.  We shouldn't be quiet anymore, but rather follow the path that Jesus makes.

Those are not lighters... those are cell phones with their lights on

Singin & Dancin

9:35pm - The first mass gathering ended with the gospel choir and Agape.

9:36pm - The mass exodus begins...

30,000 people poured out of the doors of Ford Field into the streets.  Luckily they shut down one entire street for us to walk the 3/4 mile to the bus lot.  We had to walk to the bus lot and find our bus #224 to take us back to our hotel.  The streets rang out with songs, cheers, and lots of talking and laughter.  This was the perfect place for us to unload the rest of the flat people. 
Sometimes it was hard to stay together.  We decided that tomorrow we may have to put Caleb's American flag pants onto Stacey's selfie stick and hold it high in the sky for the group to follow.  Caleb doesn't like that idea.

10:00pm - Arrive in the bus lot.  We happily walked down the lot looking for the slot for bus 224.  However... the happiness died a little when we saw that bus 224 had the LONGEST line in the bus lot.  By longest line... we mean about 300 - 400 people.  The kids stood for awhile and entertained themselves talking to others and nosing other youth.

10:45pm - The kids decide to sit down on the ground to wait for the bus.

These are all the people waiting for bus 224... we think they went home

11:00pm - no buses arrive for the 300-400 people

11:15pm - Justin meets a new friend, Christian Maurer.  They become best friends.

11:20pm - the lot is almost empty EXCEPT the 300-400 people waiting for bus 224

11:30pm - Someone finally decides to let bus 224 get on to other buses who are waiting at empty spaces and sending all of the empty buses to the Doubletree Hotel.

12:15am - Arrive back at our hotel tired and a little cranky.

12:25am - Send text to kids to let them know they must be in the lobby by 6:50am to catch the bus into the city tomorrow.  It's our only option.

Good Night, Hope Church!  We are VERY tired!

Don't forget to check out twitter page!  We are starting to see people with our flat youth of hope.  twitter.com/flatyouthofhope   There are plenty more where these came from.

FlatSamari (Sami)

FlatLogBo (Logan)

FlatSamari (Sami again!)