Slightly homesick...

Yes, I knew the time would come when I would start to miss home. This is my first experience living anywhere but my own house for more than two weeks. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have a brand new, beautiful nephew that I'm dying to hold. I look at pictures of him every day and it kills me that I can't be there.

Besides that, I love it here and can't believe it's already been almost seven weeks...

The Battle on the Beach went really well and was a lot of fun. The evil team (dressed all in black) walked down on the beach and the good team (dressed all in white) walked up by the road. We walked all the way down to the pier, which probably took at least 30 minutes. On the way people would shout things like "Go evil!" and we would shout and grunt back at them. It was really funny and it was more fun because everyone stayed in character. The good team would shout down at us a couple times and we would shout back up at them. We eventually got down to the pier and had our battle. We would have liked there to be a lot more people but it was still a good time. Afterward we talked to a group of college students that had been playing volleyball but took a break to come watch our battle. It turns out they were a group of Christians and they loved what we were doing and wanted to take the idea back to their school.

When we got back from the battle most of us went swimming for awhile and then I went with a group of about 10 people to Famous Dave's. Then we came home and hung out for awhile before going to bed.

It's so hard to get up on Sunday's...I have to be out in the parking lot every Sunday morning by 7:30 because we have to be there at 8 to help set up. Also, I can't be late because my leadership role is for Church (our ministry location). Good thing I really love my church here :) I always help set up Crosswalk. We basically turn the cafeteria into a nursery/pre-school/kindergarten rooms. We just separate them by curtains. So we had church and then helped them tear down and headed home. Then I relaxed for awhile, talked to the parentals on Skype and then headed to Woman's time at 3. The first hour we had a sunflower seed spitting contest and then Megan grilled us cheeseburgers and we had those, watermelon and root beer. The second hour we had our study on our Fantasy books and then we went back to our rooms. Eventually a bunch of us headed down to the beach with our volleyball, football, and frisbee. We hit the volleyball around, threw the football around for awhile, and then played Ultimate Frisbee. It was tons of fun but it wore me out. Ultimate Frisbee is basically football with a frisbee. So imagine running back and forth on the sand...yeah. My team ended up winning and we even had one less person.

After Ultimate Frisbee some of us decided we wanted to take some pictures by the water...


















As you can see, we had a great time. A group of our friends from Cov Pres came and joined us on the beach. They brought stuff to make smores but we didn't have a fire so we just ate them without roasting the marshmallows. The Queen Mary was supposed to put on this big amazing show and there was supposed to be fireworks that were stars and smiley faces and hearts...but something happened and they weren't able to put on their show. So all the yachts that were parked in front of the Queen Mary ended up putting on their own show for us but it was about like McCook's fireworks show. I would even say the McCook finale was better, so we were slightly disappointed. But we still had a lot of fun. I don't really remember what we did for the rest of the night.

Monday I spent the day with Jenny and it was great to just be able to talk and get to know each other better. Monday night was Family night and we had cheeseburgers and hot dogs. We played charades (guys vs girls) to start out. I think the guys ended up winning, but we beat them at Jeopardy last week so it's all good. Then we heard Nate Klaus' testimony which was really good. Then we had worship and Lead did the talk for the night. After that we did some more worship. Jenny and I went to Wal-Mart after that and then headed home.

Yesterday was our training/ministry day. We went to Cov Pres at 9 for our training and Nate Klaus did the talk. He taught us about discipleship and gave us tips on how to be a good discipler. Then we had our leadership meeting (social team, family night team, outreach team) and then our leadership role (the leaders of each ministry/leadership teams) meeting. Then we headed back to the BPH and got ready to head to our ministry locations. Yesterday at FOL we had our two hour Mark study and then for the last 3 hours we got to help paint the pictures for the upcoming VBS. It was a lot of fun. After we got back we decided to go to In-N-Out for supper. Then when we got back from eating, 6 of us decided we wanted to go play volleyball on the beach. So at the beginning of the summer I was horrible at sand volleyball and I always got picked last when we chose teams...haha. But now I can hold my own. We played 3 on 3 and my team won 3 of the 6 games. It was a lot of fun. we walked back to the BPH and a group of us went to Yogurtland. I hadn't been there for almost 3 weeks! Haha. When we got back a bunch of us sat outside and talked and told funny stories. Then I watched the end of a movie with a couple of people before going to bed.

Today, I went to prayer at 9, took a shower, and went shopping for food for teh social tonight. We're having a beach extravaganza. We're serving tacos for dinner. There will be tug-of-war, limbo, bean bag toss, 3 legged races, and a water balloon toss. It should be great fun! Afterward a bunch of us might go watch Jurassic Park III that will be playing on the beach.

I have to start cooking food for tonight soon, so I might take a quick nap.

**Last night both Nate's and I had a talk with two of the girls on project. They went to Long Beach State yesterday (their ministry location) and were out sharing when they encountered a group of students that are from the International Church of Christ. I don't know a lot about it but from what they were saying we thought it sounded like a cult and they ended up talking with a bunch of the girls from the group for about 3 hours. They got my friend Jill really flustered. They were getting her to doubt her faith and beliefs and she kept thinking maybe she wasn't really saved. They were trying to tell her she had to be baptized and because she hasn't been yet that she is going to hell because she hasn't received the Holy Spirit yet. They did some weird Bible study with her and said "When you come back tomorrow we will tell you if you're saved or not..." It was just very strange. Anyway...both the Nate's were giving really good advice and reassuring her and we prayed about it. But they are going back today to talk to them so please be praying for both our students and theirs and that the Holy Spirit would be present and that the truth would be revealed**

Now the real fun begins...

Saturday night we had our staff banquet. It was nice. We each gave our disciplers an award and said some nice things about them. We gave Casey the "Shepherd" award because she calls us her "little baby lambs". We gave her a picture frame with a photo of us, made her a card and got her a little baby lamb.

Before the staff left they gave all of us our own leadership role for the last half of project. I am the leader for my ministry location (Fountain of Life church) which I'm pretty excited about. I -love- our church.

Women's time seemed better this week without the staff. Everyone opened up more and it just felt like a group of friends and it was just really good. Our women student directors challenged all of us this week to NOT wear any make up. So far it's gone really well and pretty much every girl has gone all this week without make up. It's really great because all the guys are supportive of it and it's encouraging to see. God created us and that's why we're beautiful :)

I feel really scatter-brained right now so writing this is proving to be quite difficult...

I forgot to tell you guys last week we had this guy, Todd, come and talk to us for two nights. He's with the Traveling Team and he's a missionary and he goes around to a lot of colleges and talks to college students about being missionaries. He was amazing and hearing him talk just pretty much reassured me that God wants me to do something with missions.

Bee-tee-dubs (for you older folks that means "by the way"): if you don't know what the 10-40 window is go look it up right now and please be praying for it <3

For those of us that don't have jobs we're doing full-time ministry at location of our choice. I'm doing mine at Cov Pres and I love it. I seriously just get to play with kids all afternoon. Love it! It's tough though...these kids come from really rough backgrounds. They all have really bad attitudes and can be really naughty. Most of them are just dying for the attention though because they don't get it from home. Sometimes their parents will be drunk when they drop them off or pick them up...sometimes they are uncontrollable but I just try to love on them as much as I possibly can. Please be praying for them as well. The little guy on the left side of the picture is Eddie and the one on the right is Daniel :)


I don't know if I've mentioned the Mega church yet, but on Thursday nights some of the students go to a church in LA. It's the Angelus Temple and it's huge and on Thursday nights it's mostly college students. It's really awesome..I'll try to upload some videos from it on Facebook soon. I've only gone two times but it's great. I was able to go last night and afterward we decided to eat at Pinks. Pinks is this famous hot dog stand that started in like 1939. Supposedly stars love it and we had no idea how popular it was until we saw the line. I would guess we waited in a line out in front of the stand for at least 45 minutes, maybe an hour. The line wrapped all the way around the building. It was worth the wait though! I got a bacon burrito dog. It was two hot dogs, bacon, chili, and two slices of cheese all wrapped up in a giant tortilla. It was delicious!

Umm....

We went to Huntington Beach today! It was a lot of fun. Pretty much everyone went. A few people stayed home. I think I spent most of my time laying out and soaking up the sun. I forgot to put sunscreen on until like 3 hours after we had already been there. I did get a little more sun burnt than I thought I would but it was worth it. We played in the waves, got our tans on, some people played volleyball, and we buried by friend Nate in the sand and turned him into a mermaid. Then some of us walked around the shops near the beach for awhile and then headed home.

Everyone is super stoked for our outreach event tomorrow. We're doing a Battle on the Beach. It's Good vs Evil. I'm on the evil team. We all made armor and weapons out of cardboard and tomorrow we're going to battle it out on the beach. We had a practice run through Thursday morning and it went pretty well. In the beginning the two leaders go midway to the battle field and have a chat. Basically the Good leader tells the evil leader to get his people out of Long Beach and our leader refuses and says "Today, we fight for blood!" and the good leader says, "No, today we fight for freedom!" While they're up there yelling at each other each leader has 3 teammates backing them up and I'm one of the 3 evil ones that goes up there with him. After they yell at each other we head back to our sides and then we charge and battle it out. Pictures and videos will be posted on Facebook.

If you want to watch last years battle on the beach here's the link...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5blRkN9zAvs

Oh, how He loves us

It's been ages since I last updated. Almost 3 weeks to be exact. It's been so busy and to be honest, I just haven't really felt like sitting down and updating my blog.

I can't believe how quickly the weeks are going by. It's already the staff's last week here. They leave early Sunday morning and then it's all left to us. We all take over leadership roles and they already announced our 4 student project leaders. If we don't have a job by this week, our job is to work in full-time ministry. I'm going to be volunteering at Covenant Presbyterian and working with the kids in their after school program.

If you remember Sunday's and Tuesday's are spent at our ministry locations, mine is Fountain of Life. I love it so much. Sunday services are so good. John is so easy and interesting to listen to. We go to the Family Center on Tuesday's and help out with whatever they need. The second Tuesday we helped clean out the garage at the Family Center. After that some of the kids showed up and I helped them do their Spanish homework. The third Tuesday we started a Mark Bible study and did that for the first two hours. The next couple of hours were spent helping out and doing whatever they needed and walking around the city and praying for the people and the community. The fourth Tuesday (yesterday) we had our 2 hour Mark study and then we went and handed out flyers for the Family Center. They are hosting a variety of different classes, Bible studies, and a VBS this summer, all for free. After handing out flyers we went down a couple blocks and walked around Wow Jam. It's this huge even that churches in the area host and they give out free food, bikes, groceries, and electronics.

Wednesday nights are our socials (aka parties). The Staff Hunt was the first social, the second was a volleyball tournament with pizza, the third was a movie night, and tonight we're going to be playing sardines at Cov Pres. If you don't know what sardines is, it's basically backwards hide-n-seek. Instead of everyone going and hiding and one person trying to find everyone...one person goes and hides and everyone else tries to find that one person. Once they find that one person, they hide with them and eventually most everyone will be hidden with that person. I'm pretty stoked. The church that we're going to be playing it in is huge so it should be really fun.

Saturday are our outreach days. For our first outreach we went to Huntington and went evangelizing on the beach. Our second one was giving out PB&J to the Homeless and talking with them. The third one was walking around the park and we had a booth set up for people to come write secrets down that they wanted to get rid of and put them in a trash can. This Saturday we're doing some kind of skit. I believe we have a Battle on the Beach coming up for the following Saturday. I'm pretty excited about that.

There have been so many good training sessions and great fellowship times and nights where a bunch of us just gathered and played guitars and sang worship songs. So many new friendships are developing and it's just amazing here. Please pray for continued growth in our relationships with Christ, dedication to our daily quiet times, continued community within the project and that the Lord would really allow us to become part of this city. Also, please pray for all of us students as the staff is about to leave us and we are going to be taking over the project as a whole. I love you all, hopefully I will update a little sooner next time :)

It's almost been two weeks!

Sorry, I haven't updated since Saturday. Today is Thursday and it's been an awesome week so far. I'll try and go through the days...

Sunday-we all went to our specific ministry locations for church. My group's church is called FOL (Fountain of Life). We had to leave the hotel at 7am...that was a little tough. So we got into two vehicles and drove to our church. I forgot to mention my church is located in Compton...so that's pretty awesome. I love my church here. There's so much diversity. There's all different kinds of people--rich, poor, blacks, asians, whites, and they all love each other. The feeling of community is overwhelming and they all worship so freely. We leave so early because the church is only 5 years old and they don't have a set location; they do church in a middle school so we go early to help set up and we stay to help tear down. This last Sunday was Family Sunday so we stayed for the potluck afterward and it was cool to sit and talk with some of the people. When we got back from church we just chilled until 3. At 3 the guys and girls split up and we had our girl bible study while they had their guy one. After that we had self-reflection and quiet time to ourselves for a few hours. That was really good.

Monday-I don't really remember the morning. Just the usual 8:30 morning group prayer. Then we probably got ready and went job searching. Monday night was awesome because it was our first Family Night. We had a slide show of pictures from the week, ate some Subway, did some worship, heard a testimony, and Bruce did a little lesson thing.

Tuesday-Tuesday morning we had Solarium Training at Cov Pres. Solarium is this awesome outreach tool that we'll be using. It's just a bunch of pictures you spread out and you ask someone if they will take a quick picture survey. They pick out some pictures that describe their life and you ask them questions and it's really neat. Tuesday afternoon we headed to our ministry locations. My group went to the FOL Family Center and learned a little bit about that. Then Red (one of the guys that goes to the church, he's probably about my age) took us on a tour of the area. He told us that he was an ex-gang member (he was a Crypt) but he got out of it and came to Christ. He was telling us that the kids get into the gangs when they don't really have family they can count on. They turn to the gangs because they are more like family than the kids' real families. He told us about the public park where they have a lot of gang fights and showed us a lot of tagging. Tagging is where the gangs mark their territory. We just walked around for awhile and went back to the Family Center. When we got back John Teeter ( the pastor of the church) told us a story about how a guy was killed at the liquor store across the street just because of tagging. The kid was only 22 and the guy shot him, point blank, in the head. John told us some more facts about the city and about the church and then we went to his house. We had a Bible study for a couple of hours and it was amazing. It was very interactive and just really good. Then we headed back to the BPH. I'm sure Tuesday night consisted of going to Yogurtland and hanging out around the hotel.

Wednesday-Yesterday we got up and had our 8:30 prayer and then went back to our rooms to get ready for the day. We were supposed to get ready and go out to look for jobs but my room got a little distracted and broke into a dance party. Eventually we got ready and Katie and I went to the Pike together to look for jobs. It was another day full of rejection and the famous "We're always accepting applications" line. We eventually made it back and chilled with our peeps until 6. So, I am part of the party planning committee and every Wednesday night we have a party (social as they like to call it) and last night was our first one. Last night we did a staff hunt. So we broke into 7 groups. Each group had one camera and 6 or 7 people. All the groups had the same list of things to do (my committee came up with these things) and so you have to go around town and do this crazy stuff and take pictures. One of the things is to find staff members around the city. Our staff was dispersed randomly throughout the city, but they were all in crazy costumes so you couldn't recognize them. Each thing was worth a certain amount of points, but finding staff was 500 points per staff member. So that was the main thing you wanted to do. Some of the things we had to do were get pictures--on a roof, in the ocean, in a fountain, jumping in front of Yogurtland, on a boat, in front of a mural. Then we had to take pictures of our team doing crazy things like--human jump rope, playing chicken in a store, wearing cowboy hats, giving a stranger a piggy back ride, picking a stranger's nose, eating a stranger's food, popping a stranger's pimple, kissing a dog, fitting our whole team in a shopping cart, wearing clothing of the opposite sex and other crazy stuff. If you haven't already go check out my Facebook pictures...I put all the pictures up of us doing that. Then we had to take some videos--of our team having a dance party on the bus and a team member eating a live fish. Only two teams actually did this (and one wasn't a fish, it was a live squid...nasty, I know). So we all had to be back by 8 and turn in our cameras. The winning team all got $5 giftcards to Yogurtland. My team came in 2nd place...we only lost by 20 points! The Staff Hunt was soooooo much fun. Then to finish off the night a group of us went to In-N-Out Burger...yum! Then when we got back we hooked up some speakers to someone's laptop and watched House. It was great. All together, Wednesday was a blast.

So like I said, today is Thursday and it's now 12:25. After my roommates and I get ready we're going to go get groceries and then look for jobs...again! But, I just heard someone shouting in the pool area that he got a job so this is good! Please pray for the rest of us (the majority) that don't have jobs. Pray that the Lord will open doors and provide us with opportunities to get jobs so we can be even more a part of the city. Also please pray for the relationships that are forming here and that we will continue to grow closer to Jesus as we grow closer together. I love you all and will try to update again soon!

So begins the job searching...

So I was totally going to get up and go to yoga at 6:30 this morning but I didn't make it. We all met at the bus stop at 8:25 and took it to a small church area. We had a little meeting where we learned the history of Long Beach Summer Project and learned somewhat about why there is so much diversity in this city. Today I learned that if you put Long Beach and Los Angelas together is the second biggest port in the world next to one in China. I also learned that Long Beach has the second largest population of Cambodians next to Cambodia. Interesting, yeah? We got put into leadership groups today. I'm in the Community Group and we get to plan the Tuesday night parties! I'm so excited :)


....


So, I started writing this blog like 6 days ago and never got back to it. It's so easy to be distracted here. With 50 other college students there's always something going on. Plus, we conveniently have a pool right outside all our rooms. Anywho...I love it here. I love making 50 new friends. Not only that but 50 new Christian, God-loving, friends. -Real- friends. It's amazing. It's so encouraging...I'm not used to having friends that want to pray immediately when there's a problem or someone is feeling down. We pray so freely and openly, it's pretty much the greatest feeling ever.

I can't really remember the order that things have happened in the few days so I'll just summarize this week. We've pretty much been going out everyday looking for jobs. We've had a few orientation meetings. We also had evangelism training for two hours one night. After that was over we had an hour break before another two hours of training us how to use satisfied booklets. Along with that talk was how to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Alan Toigo did that talk and it was really convicting. After the talk my room came back and some of us were crying so we prayed together and talked about it for awhile. I believe all of that happened on Monday.

The only thing I really remember about Tuesday is that we had a pool party Tuesday night. Our staff bought us pizza and there was like 30 of us in the pool at a time even though the pool capacity says 10...haha. The guys have this love of throwing girls in the pool when they don't want to be in it. So there was a lot of that going on.

All I really remember about the next few days is that we walked around a lot, got rejected a lot, went swimming a lot, and ate a lot of Yogurtland <3 ! Yogurtland is this amazing place where you fill your own little (or big) bowl of frozen yogurt (pretty much just tastes like ice cream) and you can have however many different flavors and toppings that you want. They just weigh it at the end and you pay according to how much it weighs. LOVE IT.

It's Saturday morning right now and Casey, my rooms Discipler, will be here at noon to do a Bible study with us. I love Casey, she's really awesome and sweet and I'm really excited to have her as my Discipler. She will meet with all my roommates and me once a week to do one on one discipleship. I'm really looking forward to that. I'm gonna peace out because I need to take a shower before we have our Bible study.

My New Home

Well after getting up at 4:15, two long flights and a ride in the Super Shuttle...I finally arrived at the BPH. AKA: The Beach Plaza Hotel. This is home for the next ten weeks. I met 3 people that are on this project before I even got to the Hotel. One I met in Denver Airport, one in the Long Beach Airport and one on the Super Shuttle. When I got to the hotel I got registered, handed in the rest of my support, got some ideas for places to apply. I was supposed to get to put my things in my room and relax in there, but our room wasn't finished yet. They had just put new carpet in, the beds weren't made and there were still a few things that needed assembled. I met all the staff and some more of the girls and then a big group of us decided to go to eat. 10 of us took the bus to the Pike and had lunch at Islands (a burger place). When we got back I was finally able to get into my room and the rest of my roommates had arrived.

These girls are awesome. There's 5 of us in our room and I'm really looking forward to getting to know them all over these next ten weeks :) We had a bonfire last night and it was really cool just to talk to everyone and starting to learn about them. I've almost got everyone's names down...there's like 50-60 some people here including staff. I'll get them eventually. So I've been seeing Jeremiah 29:11 everywhere here. It's on a lot of people's stuff and I think it's such an encouraging verse, especially to college students. It's comforting to know that God does know the plans He has for us, even if we don't yet.

I love being here with a bunch of people that know and love Jesus and just want to be consumed by Him. Yesterday I was having a terrible time just standing on the beach. It was windy and the sand shifts and I was having trouble staying in one spot. My friends and I were laughing about it and we were talking to one of the staff members and saying how I couldn't stand on the beach. He replied, "That's because the only firm ground is Jesus and he's the only one you can rely on." It was so neat to hear that. He's totally right. It pretty much fits my life right now. I'm at a point where I really need to stand firm and here is the perfect place to start.

By the way, I'm 20 today! Isn't that exciting?! :)

So it begins...

Last Monday I got the call that I had been accepted to join 40-50 other College students for the Long Beach Summer Project. Summer Projects are state-side and international projects led through Campus Crusade for Christ. My specific project is 10 weeks (May 22nd-August 3rd) and we will be working with the homeless, high risk kids, single mothers and their children, and different local churches. While on project we all are required to get full time jobs which will be our main focus for ministry. All through project we will have small group time, worship time and discipleship and evangelism training. I'm really looking forward to seeing how God uses me this summer and how I grow in my faith. It's also my desire to obtain a deeper relationship with Christ that will only grow stronger throughout the summer and continue to do so when I return home.

I thought it would be a good idea to keep a blog during my summer in Long Beach. I've never really had a blog (or at least one that I actually kept up faithfully) so this will be a challenge within itself. I probably won't write too many entries between now and May 22nd but I will hopefully be able to keep it up while in Long Beach. I will try to update at least a few times a week if not more. I might not even be able to that often. I'm not really sure what to expect, but I have a feeling this summer is going to be full of activities, new experiences, spiritual growth and new friendships! It's such a blessing that the Lord is giving me (and thousands of other college students!) this AMAZING opportunity :)