It's Thunder Mountain Charlie!!

Haha. That's the mountain I climbed today but more about that in a second.

So. I have two days off a week while I'm out here Fridays (for project group) and probably Saturdays.

Yesterday was my first project group day and it was awesome! John Drage taught our group a seminar from Sunlife. It was awesome. One of the coolest things that he said during the seminar was "If God needs to tell someone well done, He'll use our tongues. If someone needs money, He'll use our wallets. We are the literal hands and feet of God. He works through us for His purpose. God loves people through people." Such a cool concept and something I have definitely taken to heart.

This year's theme is evangelism. I am WAY beyond excited about that. I can't wait to learn more about the best way to show others the love of God. I really want to show people His love just by loving them. I think this is a great idea but there are some things I definitely have to work on when it comes to this. One being affection. I'm not very good at sharing how I feel about the people I really do care about. I really hope to grow in this.

I am so glad that God is already working in my life to change me and mold me into a better person. It is also cool how much God is already answering prayer. I really didn't feel that I was growing closer to people or building true friendships and so I prayed about it and the next day I had a really good talk with a few people in my project group and I am making so many friends out here that I know I will have for a lifetime. God has also blessed me with the best roommate ever, Karissa! She is just so amazing and we have so much in common. I am very excited that I get to spend the summer with her! We are also on the worship band together so that's cool too :)

So enough about Friday. Today I went on my first hike. I went to Thunder Mountain with Karissa and Default (Justin-my project group leader). It was a pretty intense hike up and I wanted to stop so much but I just kept pressing on. I am so thankful that Karissa and Default were so patient with me and allowed me to take so many breaks (GAH! I'm so out of shape). Summiting was the most satisfying feeling in the world. I couldn't believe I actually made it up this mountain and didn't die of an asthma attack haha. We ended up walking the wrong way down the mountain so it took forever to get back to the YMCA but that's alright. It was such a fun time! Then I went down to the town of Estes Park and we checked out all the cute little shops and stuff that are down there and had a delicious dinner at Poppy's Pizza. It will never replace Chicago style pizza but it will suffice while I am out here. Oh man. Just so many good things happening out here and it has been less than a week!

Well, I have work at 6am for the next 5 days so I should probably get some good rest. More later, beautiful people :) Praise God Always!

Estes Park, COLORADO!!!

Oh my goodness gracious. I am here. In the big CO. Pretty much in the mountains. Oh wait, not pretty much. DEFINITELY IN THE MOUNTAINS! Awesome sauce. 

So. We arrived here on Sunday after a long 16 hour car ride. Felt like forever and I was definitely happy to get unpacked. I settled in and then headed to registration and check in, all that good stuff. I am working at the Rustic Cafe which is this little coffee shop in the admin building. Openign at 6am everyday, people! Which is a significant improvement from my 4:30am open time. 

Either way. Epic. I am pretty much living in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. The pictures I have been taking on my less than average camera phone do no justice to the beauty of this place. Even pictures on nice cameras just don't show the depth of AWESOMENESS that is here.

This is a view from my room!

Like I said, no justice.

Anywho. Yesterday I spent 8 hours at orientation learning that people ask questions like "When do the deer turn into elk?" and "Who mows the tundra?" Seriously? Seriously... It is times like these that I am thankful my hair color does not affect the amount brain cells I have. Praise the Lord haha

There was a mini blizzard the day I got here. The beginning of the day was sunny and 60 degrees. Then the temperature dropped and all of a sudden as I was walking outside in shorts and a t-shirt, BLIZZARD!

Then today, I had my first day of work. I worked cleaning instead of at the Rustic because of mis-communication but no big deal. I'm there tomorrow. Sooo yea!

Honestly, this is going to be an amazing summer. Challenging for sure. Difficult, yes but completely rewarding. God has already pointed things out in my life that I need to work on... 1 DAY of being here! And I have 80 more days to go.

More tomorrow!

The Final Countdown

I officially have 2 weeks left of my freshman year of college. That is nuts... I haven't blogged since Tuesday which I did not mean to do because now I have a lot to talk about! yay! except I don't remember everything I wanted to say so I will be brief.

Well, basically on Wednesday I stopped fasting because I was almost fainting every time I went to stand up. Not good. Then, that night I went to my friend's house and cooked dinner for her and her kids. I made enchiladas with homemade tomatillo sauce. It was awesome! I ended up staying from like 4-11:30pm because I made dinner and then stayed for American Idol and got to hang out with the girls that come over. It was a fun time.

Thursday was Homegroup which was actually really really good. We talked about whether or not we were satisfied in God. It was just a great conversation and I really enjoyed it. On the walk back Molly, KK and I talked about speaking in tongues and prophesy and what that looks like today and then we looked up a bunch of stuff when we got back to the dorm. Like I said, great conversations this night

Friday I went to classes and then KK, Katie Zarletti and I went to Max's for the weekend. We had a TON of fun. I feel like I finally got a real college experience.

I have had amazing God Time this week! YAY!!!!

Note to Self....

Reading the fantastic food blog I found during Celebration of Hope... bad idea.

Day 1

I am doing the Celebration of Hope this week. Basically I can only eat plain rice, oatmeal or cream of wheat. small pieces of vegetables and meat the size of a small chicken nugget and drink only tap water. It's pretty intense but so far has been really good.


Yesterday was the first day that I was doing this challenge. It was much harder than I thought. All day, everything looked delicious and I couldn't eat any of it! By the end of the day I had one carrot (which was all the veggies I could have for a day) and that carrot tasted fantastic especially compared to the cream of wheat I had for breakfast. It has been a very interesting experience so far. The hunger was on the forefront of my mind all day yesterday and in some strange way it made me focus better. It made me appreciate the fact that I can walk down to the dining center whenever I want and get food. 50% of the world's population eat like I am eating now or worse. 50%. That is a staggering amount. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and went to bed early. I can't imagine doing hard labor on this diet, it would be so grueling. According to August, I looked as though I was going to pass out but no such luck. I have never actually passed out before which I suppose is an interesting fact about myself.

I also got to go to coffee (or in my case water) with Amy, my Homegroup leader. She has an amazing story and it was very cool to see how God brought her to the place she is at now.

This morning, I woke up feeling much better. Completely refreshed and not groggy at all.  I think it has something to do with the fact that I have decided drinking the proper amount of water I should be drinking in a day is important. It's a TON of water. I used to be lucky if I drank 3 glasses of water a day. My body is definitely cheering right now haha. Went to Religions and Cultures this morning too. I was in a discussion group with 2 guys who are both Seniors. They were talking about how they are going to graduate and then they turned to me and asked when I was graduating. I told them I was a freshman and they were dumbfounded. They both thought I was a senior! This has happened to me so much this year. So yes, for those of you wondering, I still am a 30 year old stuck in a teenagers body but I'm slowly catching up.

www.toms.com

If you've never been to the TOMS website, you should go. It's really an awesome shoe store with an even greater purpose. For every pair of shoes they sell, they send a pair to kids who have no shoes. That being said, they had "One Day Without Shoes" day yesterday. I did it all day. It was quite the experience. I really didn't think that not having shoes all day would affect me that much but I was proven wrong. The ground was freezing all day because the sun was not out and walking on the pavement felt like there were needles going into my feet. I can't imagine walking around like that all day. And your feet are so susceptible to gross and nasty things and being cut up and stuff. KK and I walked back from our friend's house which was only about 3 blocks away from our dorm at like midnight but it was awful. We were thanking God that we had shoes the whole way home. It was just a powerful experience. I think one of the highlights was getting to wash my feet when we got home from our final walk outside without shoes. It was happy for me that I got to wash away my day and have clean feet once again but then I thought of all of the kids that don't get to do that and I thought about all the shoes that I have that I don't use. I need to donate them. Soon.

This past weekend was Easter weekend which was so exciting. I mean, seriously, how can you not be excited about someone coming back from the dead... on their own. CRAZY! This weekend was really good because I got the best of both worlds. A little bit of family, a little bit of friends, and just an overall happy weekend.

I got to spend time with my family which was a lot of fun. We had some great discussions, crazy comments and everything else in between which made family dinners quite...interesting. I went to Saturday night service at Willow Creek in Barrington. If you've never been to the Barrington campus I highly recommend going because first of all the pastors that speak there are incredibly insightful and they somehow make it feel like they are speaking directly to you each week. Also, it's just a sight to see. The worship center seats over 7,200 people. It's quite amazing to sing with 7,200 other voices in praise to God.

I also got to spend time with friends. I went to Duda's house on Friday night for a bonfire which was a lot of fun. I was nice seeing people but it was also eye opening for me to see people and realize I was never really friends with them or I had no reason to talk to them anymore. It made the night even better because then I just spent it with the people that I actually wanted to see and talk to. Tony and I had an awesome talk. If you don't know him, you should. He is such a great guy with an even greater heart.

Yesterday was a little hectic, re-choosing classes, trying to make decisions I know I can't make, thinking of all I have to do this week and doing none of it. It was frustrating but I did get girl scout cookies from the girls who were selling them on the quad. Smart parents!

That brings me to today. Today is much better as you can see, I even have time to blog so clearly a less stressful day. I just finished laundry and it is sprawled around my room so I didn't have to spend more money on the dryer. Now I should be doing something but listening to Jason Robert Brown sounds like a much better idea. I'm off to attempt to get something done. Later.