We have to be on the bus at 5:30 tomorrow morning, so this will be a quick post.
Today was an interesting day with its highs and lows. We started off the day with a community breakfast at a community member’s house. The food was amazing and it was so nice to be in a real house, which does not happen very often. We meet with many community members and then headed off the school where we were greeted with a mass police presence. At one point, a reporter counter more than 100 uniformed police officers. While there were far too many police officers, they did not harass us and we very professional the entire time, which was very nice.
We stood in silent vigil and occasionally sang a few songs. After our press conference, Josh and Jarrett attempted to deliver invitations to various faculty members, inviting them to the community dinner later that night. They were both arrested and we continued with our silent vigil. We broke for lunch and came back and stood longer. Eventually it started rain and we all got out our ponchos. It stopped and then we got a report that a large hailstorm was coming our way. Soon after this, the sky started to turn black (literally) and we all got worried that the hail would get to us before the bus.
The rain came back and was soon followed by hail. Not too bad, but still ice falling from the sky. We got on the bus and headed back to the community members house. I ended up taking a nap and we had general down time. We headed off to the community dinner and we showed a video on spiritual violence and had a few of the Riders speak.
We spoke to two students today, in a coffee shop. While they think Queer folk are living a life of sin, they said that they did not like or support the way the school handled the Equality Ride visit, which is something.
We will receive no instant gratification from this stop, however I know that we made a few people question their school’s policies and we shed some light on a few closeted students lives.
Tomorrow is going to be an insane day. We get on the bus at 5:30, drive for 2 hours and then we have a full day on Messiah College.
As usual, photos can be found here.
Love,
Adam.