Thursday June 25

After getting about 4 hours of sleep, I was pretty tired today. Our first stop was back at the Criminal Justice Center. From there we figured out groups and plans for the day. I split up with Angie, and we paired up with a couple of CCOs. One of them had us sit in on an appointment we had with one of his offenders. We then went to a meeting with the other CCO. They just had breakfast and talked about what they had going on during the day.

We then met up with Drew, Stephen, and their CCOs. We rode separately to meet at the police station. On the way there, Stephen and I got to go to the first Starbucks! Honestly it was the worst one I had ever seen. I'm pretty sure it was only a drive through, and it was really small. Anyway, we met up with Jordan and Carri when we got to the station. There we met Leslie, one of the ladies in charge of the place. She was crazy, obnoxious, and hilarious, and I loved every second of it. We got to see where offenders are taken when they have just been caught. We even got to go inside of one of the holding cells.

Once we finished up there, we headed to lunch at one of the shopping centers. After lunch, Angie, Drew, Stephen, and I went to a couple of homeless shelters. One of them, Union Gospel Mission, was really neat. They were a Christian based shelter, and had the men and women go through bible studies. We didn't get to see much of the other shelter. After that, we headed to the jail. Angie and I went with our CCO, Cory, and sat in on a hearing. The offender had two allegations against him. Failure to meet with his CCO since early April, and possesion of ammuniton. The offender plead not guilty on the first allegation and guilty on the second. He was sentenced to 45 days of confinment. Ironically, the day that he would be released was his birthday.

Finally, everyone met back together and headed to the campus. After dinner we practiced going over the 4 Spiritual Laws booklet, then had time to do whatever we wanted. Some of the girls had mentioned that the boys were writing letters to all of us girls, so I went to check it out. All together there were 3 letters. One was on cardboard, and I'm not sure where it was put. The other two were hanging up outside of the food room. They were really encouraging letters metioning how we shouldn't believe the lies that the world tells us about beauty. They also said that it was really neat to work alongside of us, and it was great to see how we all worked together. That was so encouraging because there are 21 girls on this trip and 7 boys. Just to see how willing they were to step up and work with us was really great.

I think I might get a good amount of sleep tonight. It's been a crazy day filled with, rifles, crack pipes, swords, needles, machetties, marujania, and cross bows. I'm so ready for sleep.