My favorite time of the year

Today, I leave for our student ministry's camp. We are taking 240+ students so I am happy with that I guess. I was hoping to hit 250, but I think we have a good group going. Our church will be meeting up with another group and together will have 450+ students so it should be an AMAZING week.

While I am sad to leave Clay, I really can't wait for camp! It is my first time in 5 years to go to one...I can't believe it had been that long.

Most of my work is done on the front end and in just a few hours we will find out how good my organization skills really. I have a few things to print this morning, but finished all of my pre-camp work at 11:59 last night. Yay for being done the day before!!! okay, so it was 1 minute before the day of, I am still counting it.

I have been working a lot of long nights trying to get everything done and was a little worried I would oversleep this morning. But, like a kid on Christmas, I woke up early. In fact, I dreamt that I was at the office, printing out my files for check-in. Andy (my boss) came in and was saying something about excellence, value and quality work. Then, Stephanie came in and said "You better hurry. Kids will be here in 15 minutes." Finally, Greg said something about how I really needed to get going. Then, I woke up. I half expected the dream to meant I had overslept, but it was still 30 minutes before I ever intended to wake up!

Sorry for such a boring post, but I had to find something to do with that extra thirty minutes. Please be praying this week (thru Wednesday) for the students going. Pray that they will be opening to hearing the message God has intended for them. Also, please pray for our adults going. While camp is always a lot of fun, it can be exhausting for those of us who aren't quite as good at functioning on a few hours of sleep as we used to be. Please pray that our adults would be well rested and that God would truly pour into them this week.

Talk to you when I get back.

ps- sorry for any spelling errors...it is kinda early for me!

26 hours on a van, 3 days in the most beautiful snow ever

Last Saturday, at approximately 5:30 am, I left out the front door of my cozy home on Durango Root Drive. After a quick stop at Sonic for a Java Chiller and about 30 minutes of registration, our group of 25 kids and 6 "adults" were off to Colorado for a few days of winter wonderland. Unfortunately, my wonderland was a 13 hour drive away.

Honestly, I had been dreading this trip for a while. Really, since we canceled the charter bus and decided to take vans to cut down on the costs. However, by some miracle, I got a van full of wonderful kids who were an absolute breeze. Also, 13 hours provides ample time to go through every song on the ipod. As much as I like to pretend I am trendy and cool, I really am not an ipod person. I have had my ipod since 2004 and the last time I updated it (prior to today) was more than 8 months ago. I know this because Fergie's Glamorous is the most current song I could find on it.

On Sunday, we went out to the slopes. Here is what I learned: I am not a snowboarder. I took a lesson. I tried really hard, but I faced the fact very early that I should just ski. On the positive side, my friend Stephanie did a great job learning to snowboard. After trading in my board, I spent the next few days skiing. It was great. The mountain had some really great trails. All of our kids had a great time (even the one who broke his collar bone). I had a great time on the trip, but after another 13 hours on the van, I was more than ready to just spend a few days at home with Clay. Below are some pics of the mountains:

The Bucket List

Perhaps, you have seen the movie, The Bucket List. I haven't seen it, but I hear it is quite good. Apparently, it is quite the inspiration. You see, several weeks ago, while wrapping up another Wednesday night at United, my friend Matt found a lost wallet. After playing a quick game of "Guess what is in the wallet" we found it to contain 1)A toys 'r us gift card 2) 10 pesos 3) A bucket list! The bucket list was created by 2 ninth grade boys. Below are a few of my favs from the list:

4. impact a strangers life for good
10. find joy in our life
11. have sex with a model (I like that this one follows the finding joy in life)
15. do a girl from each continent
19. wear thongs to a chick flick
22. meet George Lopez
27. go to Jerusalem
32. drink a keg of beer together in one night
41. fart while making out
56. beat the heck out of Carlos or Harold

There were many, many more funny ones. Some were a little too much for this blog. Thanks to Matt for making copies of the list before the student came to claim his wallet. Maybe I should start working on my bucket list. I think #1 on my list would be: never let another person see the list.

Lesbians and Conga Lines

Last night, we had our first middle school night at United. To give you some background, for years our student ministry had separate programs for middle and high school students. At the beginning of this school year, we combined all students for one big Wednesday night deal in the hopes of getting everyone on the same page and building energy. It worked great and we decided that this semester we would launch a brand new Middle School program. Since early December, I have been working with my half-boss (as I like to call him) Matt to design a program that specifically targets where middle school students are at. Last night was the kickoff.

Matt and I were really unsure of how everything would go. We kept saying "well we know it works on paper but what happen when you throw 200 kids into the mix?" Thankfully, God step in since we had 280 middle school students and it worked way better than we had thought. Sure it has some areas that need work...Sure we had girls making out (with each other) and a conga line--both during worship but it was a really cool night.

If you had asked me at any point, if I thought I would like working with middle school I would have said no! But I really can say that I love my job. I get to design really wild and crazy games. I work with some amazing people both in personality and talent. I have a boss who isn't scared to let us try and fail. Most importantly, I get to watch students who may be kissing other girls this week come face to face with a God who adores them. Maybe it won't be next week that her life changes, but each week I know she is getting glimpses of the life God wants for her. Maybe in a month or two those kids who are running around in a conga line will realize that at some point it stopped being about running around crazy and it became joyfully worshiping the God they love in a way that is as uninhibited and as wild as they. And that's totally okay...in fact, I gotta believe that God loves it. In fact, I think it is one of his favorite things to watch his kids do...young or old.