Week 5

This week was quite eventful. I will give you a day-by-day play-by-play :)

Sunday: I was "on clean-up" which means I supervised the team of girls who cleaned the dining hall after each meal. That was my first time being the only staff member with the girls. It was fun! I missed industrial dish cleaning haha...but I am kind of serious. My boss (Sarah, who is AWESOME--she reminds me of my friends Anna and Carolyn put together. She's fun.) has a bear hunting dog named Missy. We saw Missy walking up to campus with some sort of animal in her mouth which turned out to be a baby deer's head and front legs that a mountain lion had killed... disgusting and really sad. After work a few other staff and I went down about 10 minutes from campus to watch fireworks from the towns down the valley. It was cool to see the stars and there was a lunar eclipse that we watched happen. The fireworks were about the size of a quarter from that far away but eh, the stars were cooler anyway.

Monday: The other staff and I dressed up really crazy for Fourth of July. We had the girls make "floats" for a parade out of cardboard boxes and art supplies. They loved it. We had Tri-Tip and other bbq goodness for lunch and strawberry shortcake for dessert. It was SO good. I am hungry thinking about it. ahhhhhh. Then we had the girls do their parade. Some of them were HILARIOUS. One of the girls dressed up as Obama and put tape behind her ears to make them stick out because Obama has very prominent ears (i.e. he's got Dumbo ears :) ). The staff did a parade last and threw candy at the girls. They were quite excited about the candy. hah We then went out to our field/track area and some of the staff were hiding and ambushed the girls with water balloons. We then had a water balloon and shaving cream fight. It was fun. I don't advise swallowing shaving cream though. It hurts. Bad. We then went to our pond for a couple hours and swam and laid out tanning. I don't want to think of all the organisms living in that frigid water. Sick nasty. But it was fun. Then we had dinner and some sort of dessert...I think... (the girls don't get any kind of sugar or dessert unless it's a holiday or someone's birthday). We told them we were done for the night at that point and went back to showers and FOB time (FOB="Feet On Bed"). They were a bit disappointed that they couldn't see fireworks.... heh heh heh... we had one more surprise coming.. FIREWORKS! We drove to a flat space about 10 minutes from campus and watched the Redding fireworks. The girls had fun. It was a great and EXHAUSTTTTTTTTTTTING day.

Tuesday: I don't think anything substantial happened Tuesday... But there is a Bible Study we have for the girls on Wednesday nights and I was thinking "Man, I am SO glad I am not in charge of Bible Study because that sounds incredibly intimidating and I don't really feel any motivation right now to seriously study the Bible..." I don't know WHY I think these things... You will understand. Keep reading.

Wednesday: During our staff meeting I was asked to co-lead the Bible Study. Duh. DUH. God is a FUNNY one and I immediately knew I needed to because of what I was thinking the day before. haha woooooo PRAY FOR ME.

Thursday: I drove with Sarah (My awesome boss) and two other staff members (Matina and Jessica who are awesome as well) to drop Sarah off at the SAC airport and then Matina, Jessica and I were going to hang out in SAC for a while. Instead, we drove the extra like 40 minutes to San Fran. IT WAS SOOOOO FUN. SOOOO FUN. And exactly what we needed. This job is great but it is really draining emotionally, physically, spiritually, etc. We got to goof off and act like normal 20-somethings rather than moms. We also talked about Jesus and how each of us is doing. I realized just how much I miss talking with people about Jesus and real issues in their hearts/lives--so I am even more excited about leading the Bible Study. :) I had been feeling sad for a while now because I feel most alive when I am talking about Jesus and real things with people and the nature of my job limits the amount I can. God has been teaching me to not look to my "ability" to counsel as my identity but as something he is going to use me to glorify Him with. I like Him. A LOT. :) On the way back up to Redding from SF I had an overwhelming thought: I have been in the process of walking in obedience to God without knowing what He was doing and I have been learning to do this hard walk without complaining or expecting it to be "fun" all the time/at all and He is giving me an opportunity to do what I love most (talk about Him) and He gave me a really FUN day.

I am going to go to church tonight for the first time since I have been here. I am working nights this week so I don't have to be on campus during the day tomorrow so I will go to church in the morning too, I think. I called the counselors I talked to a while ago to set up appointments with them.


I love you all and miss you.