weekend update

I figured it was time for another update on my daily events for the past week, so here goes!

• I attend a church called Calvary Fellowship, and the first week that we Project people were there, they passed around a sign-up sheet for people in the church to have us over for lunch after the service. Last week, we went to Erik & Moriah's house. They are a married couple in their younger 20s who have also gotten involved with Cru on the UAS campus, and Erik is the main speaker for Cru. They grilled King Salmon for us as well as fried (ish) halibut. Now, if you know me, you know that I am not a huge fan of sea food. I admit that I liked the halibut - the breading helped change the texture of the fish - but I still am not keen on salmon. It was such a blessing, though, to go to their house and hang out. And they live right on the shore, so they have a beautiful view of Auke Bay and the mountains.

• Some of us have not started our jobs yet, so we hiked Mount Juneau on Monday! This is a 3576 ft mountain and one of the five major peaks here in Juneau. It was exhausting, scary, and so much fun! The trailhead is at Perseverance Trail, which was an appropriate name. There was a group of 13 of us who went (which was a large group for hiking), and it took us about 3.5 hours to summit. The last hour was going straight up, at which point I was using both my feet and my hands to sort of crawl. Once we got to the top, though, the view was breathtaking. We spent about 45 minutes eating lunch and hanging out, and I got the chance to go sit by myself and just praise God for His creation. There's nothing like entering the Lord's presence when you are on top of a mountain. The way down was somewhat scary, at least for the first stretch. Because it was so steep, I ended up just sitting and sliding down on parts. We strategically alternated boy/girl/boy just in case anything happened, especially because I was so nervous about it. I don't have the best balance in the world. But we all ended up safely at the bottom and with very sore muscles the next day.

• Our "theme" for this week on the Women's Project is "life-giving." We were able to spend time on Tuesday night affirming one another, and it was really encouraging. It was easy to see the good things in other people, a reminder of how close we have all gotten, and it was definitely a blessing to have others point out things in you that they admired or had noticed.

• For our service project on Friday, we all split up and went different places. I ended up at a rustic Methodist camp. The couple who ran the camp were really nice and had lots of things we could do to help them out. Kelsie and I ended up going around the camp with the wife and using an electric drill to hang new directional signs on the trees. Our method of transportation? A riding mower pulling a little trailer. It was hilarious.

• Then, last night, we had a lock-in at a local church, mostly for high school students. I haven't been to a lock-in since high school, definitely, and wasn't quite sure if I would be able to stay up very late, considering my bedtime during the school year is normally 11:30, midnight at the latest.
  

One of the things we did was a dating forum in which they sat a married couple, a dating couple, and two singles on the stage and had the students (both the high school and the Cru college students) write questions on index cards, then gave them to those on stage who gave their opinions and shared from their experience. I was given the opportunity to be the single girl on stage. First of all, it was really awkward whenever we went down and introduced ourselves and our status! I tried to word it as naturally as possible that I am not in a relationship, but it still produced ribbing from the crowd, which was funny. There was a boy there who was probably 12 or 13, and I heard him yell something like, "I've still got a chance!" However, it was a lot of fun to be up there and share a little bit of my heart for singles and some different things I have learned about emotional purity and coping with friends pairing up.

At 1 a.m., we had pancakes, and after that people started to crash. However, I stayed up talking to a couple of really sweet high school girls, Ellen and Shanae'a. Both girls seemed really solid, and talking to them made me miss working at camp a little.

Then, around 3 in the morning, the boys playing DJ with an iPod turned on country music, and those of us from Arkansas started two-stepping and teaching the poor unfortunate people who do not go to school in the South and therefore didn't know how. We worked on some awesome spins and twists and even flips and lifts! All I can say is, watch out Fall Retreat 2010 - we are gonna be showing off! This continued for about an hour, then we took a break - then we resumed for another hour! Two-stepping is one of my favorite things, and being the girl is great because you get to be the one who is twirled and flipped.

At 5:30 a.m. (yes, I was still awake! and I never had any coffee!) we had a worship service, which was really neat. About halfway through I started feeling a little weak from exhaustion, so by 6:15 when we finished I was definitely feeling tired. We finished up worship then started cleaning up the church. The students headed home, and so did we around 7:15. I came back to my apartment, showered, and was in bed by 8:00 a.m., and then proceeded to sleep until 2 p.m., which I have never done in my life!



**I start my job at Fred Meyer on Monday, so you can be praying for that to go smoothly. There are probably 10 of us or so who are all working there together but will be spread out in different departments. Pray that I will be able to transition easily into this job, that I will have good conversations with co-workers, and that my heart will have the right attitude no matter where I am placed.