Week 1 [6 buses and a wobble]

     So I know that I have been here for a little over a month now, almost 2 really but this isn't talking about the first week I am here. Ladies and Gentlemen, SharpTop Cove has just completed Week 1 of our 10 week Younglife summer session! I can say now that after I have the first week under my belt I feel a lot more confident in what to expect and what is going on in my job and just how a different camp runs things. The beginning of the week was stressful. I can honestly say that I didn't want to be here. I felt overwhelmed, lonely and homesick more than I ever have before. Not to mention that the night before campers came in I had a dream that there was a crash on the driveway. Every day 1 I am the air traffic controller responsible for turning our driveway into a one way road to navigate buses in and out of camp on a two mile long drive way with about thirty seven or so twists and turns and ups and downs and timing it just right so that each area and each camper feels like they were the first and only one to ever enter SharpTop Cove. Miraculously my head leaders are amazing and they did every thing in their power to keep me calm and walk me through how this was going to look like and they were all a good portion of comic relief but patient and kind in wanting the same goal of getting these kids into camp but also in a way that I would still walk out of here with my sanity. No body crashed though and everyone got in.
   
     Watching this first group of kids come in was amazing. This is why I do younglife. I defiantly have always loved being on a property but I can tell in myself that I was meant for the field. I cry during the camp video when I see these kids smiling and laughing and having the best week of their life and understanding the reasons behind why we sing Miley Cyrus in club and why we do things like Pool Olympics starts in the field. I would love to be on an assignment every summer from now til the day I die, but ultimately I think right now at least I know God is calling me to the field. I have realized something though being on a property that is in a city..... a few of the staff here are all leaders in Pickins County. You can do both! So, ya know that is an option too.
 
      As for the rest of week 1 we taught Drew Holcomb and the program team how to wobble with the help of the Earle's Girls. This dance has kind of become an anthem for the session at least, we'll see what happens next session. If you want, which you should, the video of the wobble night is on my facebook. It's hilarious!  Ellie is one of the funniest people I have  met and a great role model for a ton of girls that come through SharpTop. I had never heard of them before this assignment but I can honestly say that I love both of them as people and friends and am completely in love with their music. I have loved getting to know them this week and looking forward to interacting with them more as the session goes on, we will all miss them when this is over.


     Being able to go to club has been awesome, listening to James Rockwell go through the club talks that I have heard a bazillion times before is a great reminder as to why I am involved in this ministry. It's going "back to the basics" so to speak. ... and yes I have a goal to read that book before summer ends.

     All in all, now that I have Week 1 out of 10 under my belt, I am starting to feel more confident and at home not only in my job and at SharpTop. Don't get me wrong I still miss the PNW and the Washington Family Ranch but I am excited for my friends who are up there this summer and I am even more excited for the summer that I am going to have here! I am surrounded my a great community and an even greater group of sisters that I am just now starting to realize. I would do anything for these girls and despite all the creatures that we have found (a mice, a bazillion little moths, a few hundred teradactyl size months, a couple frogs and toads, two spiders the size of a sandal, a baby scorpion, oh yeah and evil mr. rattlesnake that was right out side our door that we had Mike come kill before anyone would go outside) South Fork is a pretty great place to live with all of them :)

I was hollow and closed, in the morning i could not see.
 Your beloved goodness rained itself out on me. 
I raged against You like a river on a stone. 
But against that tidal wave, i am overthrown.

Mercy, Mercy, 
Mercy, Mercy.

well i was tossed in the wealthy and leaning on myself.
I played that religion card; i put Jesus on a shelf. 
Born into darkness i kept putting off the grave. 
So yeah, thinking my own goodness could get me through heaven's gates.


Mercy, Mercy
Mercy, Mercy

I beg You to come and take away all my ancient fears. 
This bloodied history we all cling onto so dear. 
All around me was a blinded fantasy.
The truth in the mirror of a foul vanity.


Mercy, Mercy
Mercy, Mercy

You walk upon heaven, You walked upon the earth.
You brought me my salvation; for me, a second birth. 
You took my broken cross up to cavalry. 
You sang my redemption song, well hang it on my tree


Mercy, Mercy
Mercy, Mercy




Til the next new day ♥ ,

Lonely Night in Georgia

[ok so not really...]

    Blogging and pandora, what could go wrong? Well currently on my pandora station is Marc Broussard's song "Lonely Night in Georgia," and while I don't want to admit it, is kind of how I feel right now but on another level. This is the chours of the song...

"It's a lonely night in Georgia
And everything I do reminds me of being with you
It's a lonely night, but I'll be alright
'Cause I'm comin' on home, comin' on home to you..."

     Let me start by saying that I absolutley LOVE SharpTop Cove! Please, please don't get me wrong. I mean, it's a Younglife camp... what's not to love? The last week has been amazing and the community out here is awesome and I am so blessed to be able to be with these people for the next couple months and I am extremely excited to meet the future interns that will be joining me in the next couple weeks! This place is gorgeous, the people are amazing and you can feel Jesus alive and well in every nook and on every hill (yes ... this place is very hilly).

Here are 10 things that in my first week at SharpTop that I love about this place [trust me, there are more than 10...in no order...]:
   1. Sweet Tea - yall I don't know how I survived the first 21 years of my life without it and right now STC has got the sweeeeetest tea in town
   2. Rocking Chairs - there is at least 4 on EVERY porch, real ones, not green plastic ones, real ones! how great is that?
   3. Tee 18 Par 5 - so I'm kind of talking about the frisbee golf course right now meaning the location of Tee 18. It's my favorite spot on camp right outside the Bear Den on the corner of the deck that looks right over toward the Wheelhouse [club room]. There's a rocking chair and a great place to people watch, over look camp, talk to God, read, do homework and look at the stars.
   4. South Fork - This is where the girl interns live. It's a strange little cabin in the woods that not a lot of people know where it is but it's a home and it's our home! Which leads me to my next point.....
   5. Octavia, Dani, LeeAnn and Erin - These beautiful women are the STC yearlong girl interns, my roommates and my friends :) They have been so great welcoming me into their home and making me feel at home. I have had some great conversations with each of them already and I am so excited to get to know them more, especially Erin! and I say that because I actually haven't met her yet! She is my actual roomate and she has been in across the ocean for her brothers wedding since before I got here! So excited to meet you Erin!
   6. Housekeeping 2 - Housekeeping 2 is a golf cart on property. This particular golf cart use to belong to maintenance and they removed the govenor from this particular cart which now allows it go significantly faster.
   7. The Office - yes this is my job and where I get to spend the majority of the next couple months but I already love it. I love our little home and the women I work with and I even love hearing random laugher from guest services around the corner. It's where everyone comes for everything.
   8. You'll never go hungry - right now, we have access to the best food all the time. Our kitchen staff is amazing. nuff said.
   9. Brothers - Joe, Luke, Mike, Patrick and Brandon are the guy yearlongs here. I am not just mentioning them because I mentioned the girls but because they are true brothers in Christ. They are always asking me how I'm doing, if I need a ride back from the Mill, or just how my day was and how I'm adjusting to life at SharpTop.
   10. Georgia Stars - on a clear night like tonight, nothing beats the view of the stars in the middle of Jasper, GA.


     That being said.... I am still 3,000 miles away from home. I've never been homesick before but I guess there is a first time for everything. I miss the Northwest. I miss the Ranch. I miss thursday night line dancing. I miss tuesday night college group. I miss the OSU campus. I miss coffee culture. I miss being 4 hours away from my mom. I miss my roommates who watch survivor with me. I miss 9th & Circle dates. I miss the smell of Juniper once you turn onto the camp road. I miss knowing where everything is on property. I miss Condo 14. I miss the rock pile. I miss hot chocolate at the Khulman house. I miss unorganized untraditional club in the MU. I miss Bushwackers. I miss Eagles. I miss having people who are just as excited about your 5th pair of cowboy boots. I miss having a dance partner. I miss the rain. I miss the ocean. I miss Corvallis Goodwill. I miss Fred Meyer! I miss a lot of things but I do love this place and I do love the south and I do love God and I have to trust Him that this is where He wants me for a while. So while I do love it, sometimes it does feel like
"a lonely night in Georgia
And everything I do reminds me of being [back home]
It's a lonely night, but I'll be alright
'Cause I'm comin' on home, comin' on home to you [Jesus]"
 

Life's a Dance... So Watch Your Step

Sink or swim you gotta give it a whirl


Life's a dance you learn as you go
Sometimes you lead
Sometimes you follow 
Don't worry 'bout what you don't know
Life's a dance you learn as you go


The longer I live the more I believe
You do have to give if you want to receive
There's a time to listen, a time to talk
You might have to crawl even after you walk
Had sure things blow up in my face
See the longshot, win the race
Been knocked down by the slammin door
Picked myself up and came back for more
[JOHN MICHAEL MONTGOMERY]


     John Michael Montgomery couldn't have said it any better. Life is a dance the only way we learn is by dancing. When you are learning a new line dance we always tell people to get in the middle. That way when you change walls (face a different direction) you will always have someone on either side of you that you can watch and learn from. It may take some time, it may take a couple tries of making a fool out of your self but eventually you'll get the steps down. And even after you get the basic steps there are still times when we forget the moves, there are always more variations that we can learn from each other, but again the only way to learn is being out of the dance floor, learning as you go.

     Even in the Christian life there is no cake walk. Making a commitment to follow Christ with everything you have usually means that while you have been given this gift of freedom and grace and unconditional love, life usually gets harder. The enemy knows this as well. He knows that while we have a desire to be in a right relationship with our Father, he knows that we are weak and he knows how to clue into our temptations, struggles and appear as "fun and easy." And unfortunately the only real way of knowing is dancing the dance of life. Trying you hardest and running to the cross in every situation but we are human and we do make mistakes. Falling isn't fun. Falling victim to our sin is not anything that anyone should go through but we all do it. We all give in to the mysteriousness that is the enemy attacking the children of God. He knows how to appear alluring and seductive. He's the mysterious attractive guy leaning on the bar, he's thinking that we can take care of ourselves, he's the girl that is giving you attention when you are feeling lonely, he's the sweet taste of another glass of whiskey, he's in our desire to be noticed by the wrong people, he knows what our struggles are and he knows how to use them to get us to fall. And as fun as it may seem at the time and how sucky it becomes afterwards, sometimes that's how we learn. We have to be broken to be made new. The line in the song that says "You might have to crawl even after you walk" relates to just that. Most people think that the Christian life is a track that looks like this:

Where you are on a high for awhile but then make a bad decision and you feel like crap and then you try to come back up for a while but can't hold on any longer and it's a back and forth of being good and being bad and not realizing they can do anything about it. It also holds more weight because we feel like this shouldn't be happening because they want it to look like things are getting better all the time and we should just be going up.                                                                             

                                                                            When in reality it looks like this:  -->      

We are constantly moving and constantly growing in our life and in our faith and walk with the Lord. There are going to be times where we take a step back and go through some really tough stuff and some really bad mistakes and decisions but we will never be back where we started. In everything that God is teaching us he is letting a part of us that shouldn't be a part of us die and left in the valley. As long as we are seeking Him and running back to the cross in our broken states, even in states where all we should do is praise Him we will keep growing.  
  
     Earlier we talked about how when learning a line dance you need to have people on all sides of you to watch and learn from and ones who are going to help you learn. The same goes for any other situation. The last couple days have been extremely hard and if I didn't have the friends that I did, who I knew I could call and wouldn't judge me and would know what to do to take care of me and be with me for 3 hours that they could have been doing homework or something anything else besides literally waiting for me and letting me spend the night at their house and just the friendship that I have built with these 3 girls is unbelievable. God calls us to live in community and this is why. We need people on all sides of us who we can watch, and who are going to help us get through whatever it is that we are going to get through no matter if you are just feeling bad or just made the biggest mistake of your life. No matter what wall you're on, someone else is going to be there surrounding you and guess what, when you rotate walls, now they are looking at you and count on you just the same. In leading YL that is one of the biggest changes I've seen. It's almost the "dirty little secret of younglife" that we do it because of the lives we know we are impacting but mostly because of how our lives are being impacted thought this process. 

[KATIE]

[SHANNON]

[ADRIANA]

   

  You can't worry about the next step in the dance. You can't worry about what you don't know, all we can do is hold tight to Christ, watch out for the enemy and his attacks and learn as we go! 

"Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow" {psalm 51:7}

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. each day has enough trouble of its own." {matthew 6:34} 

Til the next new day ♥ ,

You're Gonna Miss This

      So I figured out that while waiting for the bus my iPod gets internet! From where, I have no idea where it's coming from but it's great!!! Anyway Corvallis is beautiful today! And warm too!!! I am about to go on an adventure with my friend Neil. We met freshman year at the University of Oregon and have stayed really good friends even after I moved to Corvallis. I'm excited, our adventures are always amazing. Our freshman year we were able to get into the steam tunnels under the campus and the city. Who knows what we are doing today. I will miss him though, I'm moving and he's going into the peace corps, so I will miss him. Along with everyone else.

   It is getting a little bittersweet now that more and more prices are getting put together. I was talking to a friend in dance class today and we realized that we are only going to have about two more chances to really swing together. He was my "original" dance partner and who I've been able to learn a number of tricks with. We both have been able to branch off and teach the rest of our friends, invite new people to Eagles (or Bushwackers depending on the mood!) and learn new things but we definatley have our own style and it's always fun to go back to that every once in a while .
     Then there is my roommates, it's been an interesting year for sure but I love all three of them. Me and Hannah have become especially close, and honestly if you would have asked me about a year or so ago, I would have thought you were crazy. Same with my friend Thomas, for one reason or another I really didn't like either one of them when we lived in the Courtyard together but now they are probably the two people I spend the most time with. It took a while too. I think that is what I am worried about the most. I have no problem making friends, I'm not shy what so ever. But I love intimate relationships and that closeness and it took me a couple years to find that but I love that and I thrive on that. I know I'll have those connections when I leave here but I also know that it's going to take a little while. I'm ok with that though and I think my internship is really going to help that. I am really excited for the people that I am going to meet this summer!
  
      But it doesn't stop their either, there are 4 of my girl friends I've just started to really get to know this year and I love them all so much! Sometimes I am a tad jealous because they all live together but that doesn't really matter. We have become a dancing machine the 4 of us, and we are all involved in younglife so I've been able to lead with one of them and have many Washington Family Ranch adventures with the other two and one of our other guy friends as well. Just thinking about all the connections and traditions we've developed. Like trips to the Ranch and Monday night pool at McMenamins happy hour and country line dancing! I feel like everything started to really fall into place this year and now I'm gonna have to start all over again. The traditions, the inside jokes, even the comfortability level you have with someone takes such a long time to develop. Case and point, one of my absolute best friends right now, I use to hate his guts about 2 years ago. Now I spend almost too much time with him but love every minute. My friends really are great. From family dinners to dancing, I know that they've got my back and love me as I love them!

   We had a Younglife team meeting tonight and even then I realized this whole other family that has been created in Corvallis! They are going to do such great things, I am so excited to for what this area is going to accomplish as they let God work in them and through them to love on some of the best high school kids I know! We really are a family and tonight was so evident in that.
     I think also to the friends that I have back home in Washington, from high school and such and I am grateful that I've been able to keep in touch with them over the last couple years. It's been a little challenging at times but I do know that the ones that have stayed in my life will stay there forever.
  
  I will never forget my friends here and the traditions we put in place but I am excited to develop new ones and see this adventure God has for me! Thanks to todays technology (and yes I will bring my Facebook back when I move) as well I know I'll be able to keep in touch with all of them. I mean just look at my zip/swing crew from summer staff this summer.

All 9 of us are spread out over 5 states and they are one of the closest group of friends I have right now. I truly believe that the people that are going to be in your life are going to stay there forever. One of them is the reason this whole moving thing came about. Another is like a sister and is coming to see me in a couple weeks!! Another is the goofiest kid I have ever met but is so intentional about keeping a relationship with you and wanting to know what's going on in your life that he will drive across 3 states just to pick you up. All of them are so great and we've loved staying in each others life. It's been about 7 months since we were able to spend that month with each other and it's about now that things start to fade out and people loose touch but I would say they are the 8 people I talk to the most! Not to mention other connections I made on summer staff as well.

 I didn't even know I applied and it was the greatest month of my life!

      God doesn't place anyone or anything without intention. I had one major piece of the puzzle fall into place today. God [IS] Faithful! One more real piece left!
  
 Can't wait to see where this goes.

"Friends come and go but a true friend sticks to you like family"

 {Prov 18:24, The Message}

You're gonna miss this
You're gonna want this back
You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you're gonna miss this
~Trace Adkins




Til the next new day ♥ ,