· Date: Tuesday July 30, 2019
· Rest Day: Lancaster, New Hampshire
I woke up late because there was nothing else to do. The team was supposed to have volunteered at a service event today, but it was canceled. At least this is what Ulman said. But there was nowhere around us I could have imagined volunteering at anyway. We were truly in the middle of nowhere. I wished we had done more service events and impacted the community more throughout the summer. I had been looking forward to this service event since our last service event had gone over so well, and found myself extremely disappointed that today was a day of nothing.
Since there was nothing to do, the team split apart into different groups. A few people were trying to run one-hundred miles this week which meant adding about thirty additional miles to what we already had planned. Since so many were already injured though, this didn’t include a lot of us. As much as I wanted to get my weekly mileage into the triple digits, I had opted out of it. In a few days, Tyler and I had one more time trial for Project:Return, and I wanted to be smart. A much larger group went to go sightseeing in New Hampshire. I can’t remember what they went to see, but I had already visited the area multiple times with my family and chose to stay behind. I wanted to have some of my own space and wanted a day of complete rest.
There was only a small handful of us who chose to do absolutely nothing. We explored the town a little and were able to obtain a donation of a couple of gift cards at a supermarket. We used it to buy dinner for the team. Later, Jack and I would cook beef burritos for everyone in the church’s kitchen. Tyler B., Aspen, Ally, and I did some laundry together too. While it was cycling, we went through the gift shops which had the usual souvenirs. I felt like I had seen everything before and found it crazy how much of the souvenirs were the same throughout the states we had been through. The little trinkets, shirts, and clothing were simply changed to say, New Hampshire, Montana, Utah, or wherever else the store was located.
At this point, it was still early in the afternoon and it was getting unbearably hot. The church had no air conditioning or showers, but I was more comfortable just laying on my sleeping pad then walking around the town. Eventually, I moved to the town library across the street because they had air conditioning. Once I was there, I joined a few others in writing in everyone’s journals. I wrote in ten of them today, which meant I had finished twenty. I only had a few more to do before reaching Boston and it felt good to be checking them off my mental to do list!
When everyone got back from sightseeing, and Jack and I had made everyone dinner, we traded stories for the day. Everyone loved New Hampshire and agreed that the White Mountains were one of the prettiest places yet. Abby, who was the only person on the team from the West Coast, was in amazement about almost everything. We all loved it and thought it was so funny.
After dinner, Justin and I would go to the supermarket to load up on a few snacks and breakfast items for ourselves. We both had gotten used to providing our own breakfasts since food was so limited. When we were walking outside it suddenly started to pour and thunderstorm. The lightning lit up the sky and cracked so close, we were sure something got hit. We hoped it wasn’t the church!
As everything wound down for the day, I called Annalyse. Since we were all sitting on top of each other in the church, I went outside to the parking lot and sat at the base of a light post to talk to her. We ended up talking for about an hour and it felt so good to catch up again.
Soon though we were interrupted. At the back of the parking lot, was a driveway to two extremely run-down homes. I had heard yelling and dogs barking throughout the night from inside both homes. I also had heard a baby crying and multiple times, a car left through the parking lot and came back in a hurry. Ordinarily, I would have hung up and gone back inside, but I wasn’t the only one on the phone in the parking lot. There were about four others from Team Boston who were also talking on their phones in the parking lot. But before I knew it, the man and women who had been fighting with each other by the two homes, were in front of me.
I immediately stood and up looked around to get someone’s attention. I was uncomfortable, and the hair was standing on the back of my neck. That’s when it registered that I was the only one outside and the sun was going down. Everyone else had gone inside the church and I hadn’t realized. I didn’t hang up from Annalyse but instead kept the phone on inside my pocket. Hopefully, if the situation was as sketchy as I was feeling right now, she would be able to do something if anything went wrong.
When I had looked up to notice the man and women coming closer to me, they immediately stopped in their tracks. It looked like they hadn’t showered in days. They started talking to me and at first, it was the typical small talk of strangers who meet in passing. But soon, the questions about 4K expanded into more intrusive, personal questions. The entrance to the church was to my back and I was looking at them as we spoke. Every time I tried to cue the end of the conversation, it kept going and got more intrusive. As they asked me about my family, my life, and more questions about the rest of the team, for the first time on 4K I found myself lying about these facts. I was incredibly creeped out and they were slowly getting closer to me despite my backward steps.
At one point, I explained how we had no showers. They had probably asked about the accommodations and the food, but I honestly can’t remember. That’s when they offered me to shower in their house. I started to panic inside. All my internal alarm bells were going off all at once. They went on to say that they were part of something called The Twelve Tribes and were more religious than the church. They explained they were committed to service and wished Ulman had contacted them to provide us with accommodations.
Although these words are nice, I could tell something was off. Their facial movements, mannerisms, and the way they spoke to me didn’t add up. And the conversation was still going despite everything I had done to stop it. I also had walked backward about fifteen feet, closer and closer to the door of the church. In hindsight, I should have just run into the church.
My heart was racing, and I was on high alert when I suddenly heard the slam of a vehicle door. Rob emerged from the host van, which he had been cleaning, and walked over to the three of us. Immediately, the man and the woman stopped talking and backed away from me. For only a few seconds, the conversation continued as Rob introduced himself. They asked almost no questions to Rob, and then turned around and walked back down their driveway. I told Rob we had to go back inside the church and to lock the Host Van.
Once inside, Rob had told me he had been watching me inside the host van while I was talking with Annalyse. He was cleaning the Host Van but wanted to make sure I was okay since it was getting dark. He said when he saw the man and women come up to talk to me, he thought it was weird but had only assumed that it was like any other encounter on 4K. But every time he looked up, he had seen we had moved, and they were following me, getting closer each time. He said it looked very uncomfortable and gave him goosebumps. Not knowing what else to do, he got out of the Host Van, slammed the door as hard as he could to make the biggest noise possible, and inserted himself into the conversation. Seeing how the two people reacted, immediately stopping the conversation and leaving the area, only freaked us out more. I am so thankful Rob had my back.
As we looked up what the Twelve Tribes were, we only got more freaked out. If you read the Wikipedia page, the Twelve Tribe Communities are a mysterious cult-like global organization. Granted, not everything you read on the internet is true, but there had to be some grain of truth to what we were reading. The organization has been accused of everything from antisemitic beliefs and child labor to abuse. In Germany, there have even been police raids to free abused children on these compounds. Even if what we were reading were only controversies and held only a little bit of truth, Rob and I agreed that both of our sixth senses about our encounter said it all. We did not want any affiliation with these people. We didn’t want to think about what could have happened if Rob had not been there for me.
Furthermore, we were shocked that Ulman hadn’t done anything at all to investigate the surrounding area. In any preliminary search for a host for Team Boston, you would think that knowledge of this controversial group would have surfaced. For the first time in forty-five days, I didn’t feel safe in our host site. We wondered how many other places like this we had stayed near. Rob and I immediately told the team about what had happened. For the remainder of our time in Lancaster, no one went outside alone, and we slept with the church doors locked.
In all honesty, this encounter was the cherry on the cake for me. I didn’t like Lancaster and was so glad to be leaving in the morning. I don’t like to complain especially when everything for the team was donated, but I did not enjoy our time here. The church was old, musty, and smelled of age. The fact that it had no air conditioning made us sweat for the entire time we were there, especially tonight when we slept with the doors locked. We also didn’t have a shower both nights. We were disgusting. I felt like the foundation could have given us better accommodations, and at least checked into the surrounding area to ensure our safety. As I fell asleep, all I wanted to do was go home.
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