A Look Back at 2011

Israel got in trouble for forgetting God’s faithfulness. Forgetting what had happened. I don’t want to forget. A look back at 2011:

It is hard for me to remember things that happened last year. Luckily I am a journaler. I went through 2 journals this year, one of which I cannot find… which makes me want to panic and kind of cry at the same time. I will find it. But at the end of every journal I do what I call ‘A Journals End.’ I write themes of things I journaled about, major events, phrases that were meaningful. Along with my journals I recently added the new facebook timeline. It is kind of creepy, but I can look back at 2011 and it is also a reminder of the year, what has happened and what I am so thankful for. What a year.

Best Book I read: I wish I could say I read more than I did, but I would say the most meaningful book I read was the devotional I did this year for Advent called Preparing For Jesus by Walter Wangerin.

Best Movie I saw: Horrible Bosses. This scene still makes me laugh out loud:

Really good short film: Butterfly Circus. See the full film here.

  Best Memory: This one is not hard for me. November 22nd when Justin asked me to be his wife.

Best Adventure: RMR Backpacking with Fossil Ridge Upperclassman in the Never Summer Forest! See more on this at 11 things I learned Backbacking

Best Party I hosted: Nathan Salley’s welcome home party Themed Mustaches from Around the World. The party had pin the mustache on the Salley, mustache brownies, and guests who sported mustaches (girls with paint) for the night!

Most Thankful For: Got a few. The people who have supported me in Young Life. Could not do it without that. My Fiance. Who moved across the country around this time last year, without a job or any community here purely to pursue me. In one sense he was completely crazy. But I am overwhelmed with thankfulness. I never demanded, never thought that how it happened would be how it happened. And I am so thankful for a group of women I started meeting with in a small group who have become dear friends. I don’t know what my year would have been without them.

Best Find: Immanuel Community Church. Justin and I are SO excited about it. It is how it is supposed to be and I am so blessed to get to be a part of it.

Best Internet Find: Easily. EASILY. Pinterest. I am obsessed. Although Spotify is up there as well.

Themes and Major Areas Of Learning and Growth this year: Set Apart, Rest and Solitude, KNOW HIM, The Greater the Struggle the More Glory the Triumph, Abundance, Hineni, Isaiah 43:1-7, Zephaniah 3:17

Cheers to the year behind us! Let us not forget all that it was.

Cheers to the year to come! May it be full of stories worth telling!

A Much Needed Update Post

Lets just say I have been thinking of this blog post for weeks in the back of my head. I want to tell specific stories from camp, I want to share stories since camp, I want to share stories of what I have been learning and what has been happening. I want to share stories. Being a person who skims over long posts, I am going to by-pass the stories and give glimpses of what has been happening in my life and ministry.

SNOW CAMP: We took a whole bunch of girls. Many of them it was their first time. The weekend was awesome, the speaker, Landon Lynch was great and the weekend was a huge blessing. I had break through with some girls, and have deepened my friendship with many of them as well. Thank you for praying.

NOVEMBER 22nd, 2011 I got Engaged!!!

Right after I texted a bunch of my younglife girls and got a ton of responses. Several of them said they were crying. Several of them texted me 14 times and called me. For many of them I am the only person they have ever known to get married. At least of people close to them. Its so sweet to get to share life with them. Im not just their leader, I want to really do life with them.

THE DAY JOB (s) I have been working a lot. At several different places. I got a part time job at starbucks. Woo hoo! I also have been teaching painting classes at picasso and wine in Windsor. Im still doing Young Life staff, and still fundraising for that. And I am still painting. I recently painted a commission for an Album cover for a friend who produced a Christmas CD for charity. You can see the Painting here and check out the album here.

ADVENT: I have been reading through a advent devotional this season called Preparing for Jesus by Walter Wangerin Jr. I can honestly say I have never participated in anything for advent, and this active preparation has been so awesome. I feel like in my life and ministry the Lord has been pulling me back to simplicity. Knowing him. Immanuel, God with Us. In my ministry He is inspiring me to pray and hope for people. I am not great at it. Easily distracted, wanting to complicate things and lean on my own direction. God with Us. Changes everything.

How are you doing this Christmas season? Where have you seen God with Us? What would your ‘update’ be?

Snow Camp 2011

Hey Friends! So I have had so many things I have wanted to blog and have been down right terrible at being consistent with this. I am planning on spending some time and sharing what has been happening in my life and ministry. That time is not now because I was supposed to be somewhere… 11 minutes ago.

I made this sheet of the girls that are in my cabin. I have leading with a new leader named Elle who is sooo wonderful. We are taking 29 girls from Fossil, and I wanted to make pictures for all of them but again… I didn’t have the time. Elle and I are bunkin up with 17 underclassmen (16 sophomores and 1 Freshman). Please Pray!

Cick HERE for the Fossil Underclassman Girl Prayer List.

Updates to come.

 

The Broken Hearted

Things with Fossil Young Life have been going so well! We have officially been doing things for almost a month now and its been crazy to see what is already happened. We had somewhere around 90 to 100 kids at our first Fossil Club of the year. We had 55 kids at our first Campaigners group. We are growing, new people are coming, and it is so exciting.

In the midst of all this though I have been acutely aware of the pain that my friends are going through. In the last month I know that kids are being bullied to the point of not wanting to come back to school. Brothers are suicidal. Parents are drinking, getting kicked out their houses, and leaving kids feeling like no one cares about them. Car accident takes the life of a Fossil student who graduated in May. Heart break. I have been acutely aware of it. I have spent the last few weeks sitting with kids while they cry. And I have been acutely aware of how I am unable to help them.

My reaction is to want to fix it, to make it better. But I can’t. I can sense the Lord leading me to LISTEN. DON”T SPEAK. LISTEN. So I do. I listen, then pray. And that is what they need.

“God is close to the Broken Hearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18 

Praise the Lord that He is with them. That he understands the depths of their pain, and he shares the passion of their hurt. Praise the Lord that he is with us. Praise the Lord that He is close. I can do nothing. He can do mighty things.

What is truest about us, about me and you and my friends in pain, is not what others say about them. Its not what their parents say or how they make them feel. Its not what the kids say who bully them at school. What truest is not what they say about themselves. What is truest is what God says about them. I am praying they would know that voice. That they would believe those words.

Hilarious Radio Talk about Young Life

So yesterday morning I get a flood of text messages from some of my high school friends, who listen solely to one radio station (Kiss FM 96.1), saying YOUNGLIFE IS ON THE RADIO, JON JAY AND RICH ARE TALKING ABOUT YOUNGLIFE. So I turned on the radio, and sure enough they were talking about Young Life. And it’s hilarious. Jon Jay, one of the hosts, spent the weekend at Lost Canyon for Family Camp. It was miserable for him. And hearing about it is hilarious. I wanted to share, so click HERE for the audio bit.

Lost Canyon

This post has been a long time coming. Forgive me for the delay.

Young Life summer camp is always amazing. Our week at Lost Canyon early this month was no different. I laughed a ton, and I got to be very real with kids and have kids be very real with me. I am always so blown away by the Lord at Young Life camp, really in Young Life in general. I genuinely feel like the Lord lets me be a part of things he is doing. Its incredible.

Here is the video I made from footage I took over the week:

I could tell a bunch of stories. A bunch. But I want to just tell you a couple:

There is a Fossil boy who came to every event we had last year. He is an incredible kid, very insightful and very genuine too. He is not the kid in the center of attention, if anything he is the kid who isn’t noticed very often. At our final event at the end of the year we had an opportunity for kids to get up and share about what Young Life at Fossil had been to them over the year. He got up and shared about how Young Life gave him friends. He said he didn’t have anyone before he started coming to Young Life. At camp him and another leader entered the blob competition. He was the blobee if you will. Everyone from the camp gathered around the lake and watched the contestants blob. I was standing on the other side of the lake watching everyone from our school and from Northern Colorado in general cheer for him. NOLAN! NOLAN! NOLAN! He lit up. He won the blob competition. He beat the really athletic competitive guys from Kansas. He won a metal and stood in front of everyone while they cheered for him. He wore that metal all week. For celebrity night, his celebrity was the Blob Contest Winner. And everyone noticed him. It is Young Life camp at its best.

Two weeks before we left for camp I met Carlye. She was invited to camp by another girl in our cabin. She works at Qdoba and brought me free nachos. I love her. Not because of the Nachos, although that was awfully sweet. She moved here a year ago from Georgia and we had a ton of fun talking about the differences between the South and here. I wouldn’t say I earned a ton of relational equity with her before we went to camp. But for whatever reason the Lord allowed me to be trusted by her. We spent a lot of time together at camp. We talked for several hours in the white rocking chairs overlooking the lake and and she talked to me about her life. We laughed, and cried, and talked about how life and brought her right to that very moment. The week after camp every morning I met Fossil girls at Panera to talk about how to have a quiet time. It was me giving them scripture, and something to think about while they read. All aimed at trying to give some framework and guidance  as to how to spent time reading the bible on their own. Carlye texted me all week about how much of a difference she saw in her relationships with her family and her friends. She, like many of the girls I am friends with, has a very broken relationship with her dad. She shared with me all the things she wanted to do to mend that relationship, and what a big deal that is for her.

Sometimes I think ministry works like a formula. Really that life works in a formula. I spend x about of time with a girl and then the lord meets me in the y to equal the end. But life and ministry don’t fit into formulas. Camp again proved to me, that so very little of what God does is because of me. Its usually in spite of me. But He does things and lets me be there for them. All I do is show up. And keep showing up. And continuing to show up. And ask for him to do big things in the lives of my friends. And He does.

Thank you for reading. For praying for my friends and for me while we were at camp. Praise the Lord.

 

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Lost Canyon

I am getting ready to leave for our summer camp trip to Lost Canyon. For me that is meaning a crazy amount of things to do, but I am so so so excited to be there. You can expect to get some fun updates for me when I get back. But for now, will you join me in prayer? Click the link below to see the names and faces of girls that will be in my cabin this week.

Fossil Girls

Also if you are wondering what it is I am doing this week, you should check out this sweet video tour of Lost Canyon. It gives a great picture of Young Life summer camp.

VBS

 

 

This week has been super fun because I am teaching Vacation Bible School with my boyfriend, Justin Matthews the great, and one of my young life kids Lorena.

Recently I’ve been thinking about what we are able to invite people into. I know that at the end of my life I want to be able to say that I lived an epic story with my life. I want to live a life for Christ that impacts the Kingdom in big ways. I want the same for my Younglife kids. Sometimes it easy to spend all of my time in ministry taking kids out and talking to them about their lives. I love that. I love doing that. But I also want to invite kids into an epic story with their lives. I want to show them what live could be beyond going to Starbucks or walking through Charming Charlie, and I want to invite them into it. I think that is what we were made for. To have a purpose for the Kingdom.

I am still dreaming about what that could look like. Praying about what the Lord would have us do to serve the community, and the world through us. Its exciting, and I would love it if you joined me in praying about it.

This week has been a week where I have gotten to volunteer teaching vacation bible school, loving on the little ones, with one of my young life girls. Its been a blast. And I it is just the beginning.

Girls Night Campaigners

Last week I got a text from one of my younglife girls who just finished her freshman year in high school. It was something like, “Hey we are gonna have a young life girls night campaigners hang out night sunday at my house can you come?” and I responded “heck yes!” She then texted, “Can you run it?” Of course I can.

So without knowing really who all would be there I prepared something small to share with a group of girls. It ended up being a huge range of kids that showed up. We had girls who just graduated and are getting ready to go to college and one girl who is going to be a freshman next year. It was beautiful. We shared, prayed, worshipped, and laughed a whole lot. I didn’t get the event together. I didn’t do very much convincing to get anyone there. I just literally showed up.

I am continually thankful for what the Lord lets me be a part of.  15 girls and myself in a basement praising the Lord and being in it together. Praise the Lord.

Some Pictures from the Backpacking Trip

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