To My Secret Admirer

You know who you are. You never post comments, but apparently you read my blog. I'm sorry that I have upset you by not posting recently. I will seek to remedy that today and do a much better job of posting on a more regular basis. I hope your GPA has not suffered too much. Please accept my humble apology and enjoy the ramblings of my life. Also, you're pretty and nice and pretty nice.

So, I last blogged on New Year's Day. Weak sauce. Unfortunately, not a lot has happened since then. We have our first camp since the new year in this weekend. There are actually 2 groups, both church youth groups in for 3-day retreats over the holiday weekend. Which means I'm FINALLY back in the Sassy. I've missed it like crazy. A lot of fun things are going on in my little piece of the property. We got 2 new microwaves and a shelf to put them on and a new safe! (Doesn't take much, does it?) Also, the Guest Services rotation switched so now Kristen, Darren and Mike are in the Sassy with me. I'm super pumped although sad to lose my old crew. We were finally getting the hang of it!

Other exciting news from the Canyon: we are starting the process of picking our summer jobs. This is more exciting for everyone else because the only way I would get to switch is if I made a strong case as to why I would be better somewhere else. They pretty adamantly encourage me to remain in the Sass which I absolutely want to do anyway. This is exciting for me though because we get to start thinking about summer. I already can't wait for the complete chaos. Rich informed me that I have one of the toughest and most stressful jobs which just made me more excited. I can't wait to have summer staff and hang out with kids and never sleep and all the other things that come with it. This also means that they have started taking applications for the summer interns. We'll get 9 more interns (we get first picks on jobs though!). It'll be weird, but fun to get new interns. And I just got a call from my good friend J-Mac saying he's going to apply which would be ridiculously great because I like him a lot and he can help me prove to people that Missouri is awesome.

The other exciting thing that is happening is that the interns get to take a work week to Oakbridge! Oakbridge is a Young Life camp down in Southern California. It was hit pretty badly by the wild fires a couple months ago so the first week of February, they are sending us down to help clean up the property and do some other stuff. We have to travel on one of our days off but otherwise they're paying us to go hang out in SoCal. And they're paying for our travel expenses and our food and everything. I seriously have the best job ever! Rich, Curtis and Jay are going with us because it's mainly landscape stuff we'll be doing. We are all super stoked for the road trip and for getting to see/work at Oakbridge for a week.

As to what I've been up to... The week after New Year's we were in HK pretty much non-stop. We broke up into teams to deep clean and Lacey, Kristen, Sarah Morrow and I were in the Sassy. It was really fun to deep clean the Sass. It is sparkly and looks so pretty.

That weekend our entire staff took off for Florida and Young Life's All Staff Conference. It is a once every 4 years conference for anyone on any type of Young Life staff, field, property, international, etc. It sounds like it was a really incredible week. It's cool to hear about who all supports YL. Jeff Foxworthy was there because he just became a leader in Marietta, GA! How cool is it if Jeff Foxworthy is your YL leader? And Jack Hanna was there, I guess he's on committee. And a bunch of different bands, authors, organizations, etc. sent their support. It's cool to know that there really are so many people who see the value in this ministry when it feels like we're always facing opposition.

So as cool as it was for our whole staff to go to that, I think we had more fun stuck here in the Canyon. It was literally the interns, the volunteers (the Petersons and the Thompsons) and Bill and Dena (Dena's the teacher, Bill's in Maintenance). Bill was in charge of us all and they left us the task of painting the 400 floor of Quad B. It was so much fun painting. I ended up on a team with Nick, Peter and Mandi. It was so great to get to hang out and get to know Nick and Peter more. They're both such cool guys. Peter reminds me the most of the guys back home. He's hilarious but super sincere and passionate about the Lord. I like him a lot. And Nick is never what you expect him to be. He's an even keel, always keeping us on task, but also cracking me up a lot. I enjoy him.

Bill and Dena became the intern mom and dad for the week and they were such a blessing. They have kids about our ages. Bill would walk into our room every couple of hours and just hang out for 20 minutes, talking about anything and everything and Dena brought us snack every afternoon. It was so great. We seriously bonded with them and they have been such a blessing. It was a great week of work despite the fact that there's still paint in my hair.

Also, American Gladiators is back! While the staff was gone, we were watching Charlie and Rufus. Charlie is Erin's dog and Rufus belongs to the Pratts. But that also meant we had free reign to watch satellite. What did we do with it? Gladiators! Wolf is my favorite Gladiator because he's so crazy looking! It has turned into a huge intern party to watch it and we get really into it. We convince Bill and Dena to come on Monday and it was awesomely cheesy!

The other fun thing we did last week was play Bunco with the Mark 2 girls. I'm not sure if I've talked about Mark 2 or not, so I'll explain. Mark 2 is a seperate ministry that exists out here and works with Wildhorse. The goal of the ministry is to place disabled women in a community where they can live and work, minister and be ministered to. There are 4 women here currently that live and work at Wildhorse and 2 other women that live and work with them and are on staff with Mark 2. They're just starting to remodel condos to bring Mark 2 men out within a year. It's a really cool program and it's been really fun getting to know those women. They invited us all over on Thursday to play Bunco. The Petersons, the Thompsons, Bill and Dena, and all the interns went. It was a joy to spend time with them. They are such great women and Bunco was really fun!

Peter and Becca also decided to have worship at their house on Sunday night because we hadn't had worship in so long. It was really wonderful to just hang out, the 13 of us (and Bill and Dena!) and spend some time in worship and prayer. It was definitely needed and a really great night. We're going to start trying to do it every Sunday night which I'm so excited about. I really miss worship back home, at leadership and church and praying in the weird TV room at 504 and Veritas and RUF and every other chance I had. It is certainly becoming apparent that it's a little harder in the real world than in college. There's a chance to be plugged into everything in college, but you have to be way more intentional as a real adult, even in a place like this. But we're getting better about it.

So that's pretty much that. I guess there has been more going on than I thought. It has definitely been routine since we haven't had any groups in. It is freezing cold and the days are short, but already starting to get longer. You should all call me because I'm not actually that busy and I like talking to you all. I'm extremely jealous of anyone who is on the leader retreat this weekend. Seriously. Miss you all and love you tons!