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**
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 :)