Day 37: One Of My Favorite Friendship Visits

We had a busy day off in Wichita that started at Jack and Pat Argesinger’s house, their son rode the Trans Route in 2004. They had a beautiful house and spent hours preparing our breakfast. They served a ton of fruit, quiche, sausage, yogurt, toast, and juice, it was an amazing feast. They turned on the TV downstairs and we got to watch the Tour De France on the big screen, those guys are ridiculous riders.

Picture: Enjoying a breakfast and watching the Tour De France.

After being treated like Kings we left for a friendship visit at Rainbows United. This disability center had a large number of patients with most of them ranging from ages 5 to 21 years old. The kids there were so much fun to work with; they were so excited to see us. We had about 30 kids and staff cheering for us when we walked in. Right when we got there they presented us with a large framed collage of pictures they pieced together of past friendship visits and pictures of themselves. They then sang two songs for us in their choir uniforms; so many of them light up and get so excited when they get a chance to sing, it really brought a smile to my face. At our visit I played with Bryan, Kevin, and Katie all of them between the ages of 5-8 with different disabilities. After serving us lunch a food fight broke out with the whip cream from the desserts, it wasn’t long until people were spraying cream cans everywhere and on everyone. During the sugar high from dessert everyone played some karaoke, all the Pi Kapps would sing a song together then the kids and staff at the disability center would sing, the songs ended with a joint effort from everyone in, “The Hokey Pokey.”

Picture: Rainbows Untied Choir singing in their unifoms.

After the sugar wore off I worked with Sam and Brad in one of the activity rooms. There we made worms in dirt made from pudding, gummy worms, and graham cracker. Brad was blind so Paul and I helped him get all of his ingredients together so he could then prepare his worms and dirt. Brad was a very polite boy and would feel my arm and compare how hairy it was to Paul’s “naked” arm.

Picture: "Why dont you build me up, buttercup..."

It was pretty funny seeing his reaction to the difference in our arms. I also helped Sam with his worm and dirt creation, he was very excited about eating these worms and assured me over and over that they were in fact not real. He kept asking me to count him down when he ate the worms so I would start it 5…4…3… and by then the whole room would join in 2…1… and he would proudly eat those worms like it was the grossest thing anyone had ever seen. We would all cheer and he would feel so brave and funny for what he would did, it was a really fun time and was one of my favorite friendship visits.

That evening we went to the Witchta Independent Living Resource Center where they help families and individuals with disabilities by getting them in contact with other organizations that can help as well as other resources. We didn’t work with anyone there but they did serve us some burgers. That night we got to bed around 11 to get ready for our 5 AM wake up.

Picture: Max and Jesse eat with Andrew at the friendship visit.