By Nick Rossman-Rorman

Today we started off by sleeping in until 8:30! After a quick bite to eat we met as a group to discuss the issue of gun control to get ready for our upcoming meetings with both sides of the issue. We went back and forth for an hour and then we left Dallas and were on our way to Oklahoma City. The bus ride was 5 hours of singing, dancing, and group bonding. For lunch we stopped in front of a few restaurants and had our choice. Most of us chose Chic-Fil-A and it was amazing.

learning about both sides of the gun control debate

When we got to Oklahoma City we went to the site of the Murra Federal Building bombing site. The memorial consisted of two large walls filled with a reflecting pool and a memorial for all the lives that were lost during the tragedy. The memorial itself was beautiful but it didn’t really hit home for me.
We left the memorial and met with a man, V.Z. Lawton, who is a conspiracy theorist on the attack in Oklahoma City. When we got to the meeting with him, he informed us that not only was he a conspiracy theorist but that he was a survivor of the bombing.  He told us his amazing story of survival but also the ideas they have of who was responsible for the bombing.

	meeting with V.Z. Lawton

After the meeting we were on our way to dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse. The food was not amazing but good enough. During dinner, it started pouring rain outside as well as lightning, and the baseball game we were supposed to go to was canceled. Instead of calling it a night, we hit up the movies. Most of us went to the same movie and on the way back to the hotel we joked all about it. We thought the night was over, but Billy had other plans. We stopped at the bombing memorial once again and we took another look at it at night. At first some of the kids were skeptical on why we had gone back to the memorial but we all tagged along. Seeing the memorial at night changed my entire perspective on the event. The chairs that symbolized each person who died were lit up. The walls had the minute before the bombing and the minute after the bombing illuminated. After a few minutes of silent meditation, some of us shared our thoughts on being at the memorial and then got on the bus and headed to the hotel for the night. The overall day was interesting and I hope our trip to Dodge City is just as exciting.