Hi all! I've been taking a blog break this summer to be able to enjoy the activities we had planned without feeling guilty about not blogging, and now I am back and ready to catch you up on what I've been up to.
- The summer started with Zach graduating from High School in May. I can't believe how fast things went - one moment he was 8 and the next he was 18 and then he was ready for college!
- Two weeks after graduation Shawn and I, along with 15 other youth mentors, went with 65 of our High School students on the annual Go Missions trip.
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| All the students at 6am ready to GO! |
The trip was absolutely remarkable! We have 8 teams of students who, each day, go out to 8 ghost towns in rural Nevada to teach Vacation Bible School to kids ages 5 - 18, and do various community projects in each town. All the students and mentors prepare for 12 weeks for this trip by memorizing verses, studying and journaling, learning skits, learning songs and preparing props for each town. The students do everything at each VBS, and the mentors are just there to basically support and encourage them.
At night, we had our 'Holy Huddle' where we had a sermon and team time and then all of us - approximately 85 total - slept in the Goldfield gymnasium.
My team was based out of the home base town, Goldfield, NV.
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| The Goldfield, NV Team |
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| The "Student Takeover" church service when we got back from our trip - pretty amazing worship! |
I can't even tell you how much this experience changed me. I think I now have a small but better understanding of what it means to ask God to "break my heart for what breaks Yours". Between the kids from the town and the students we brought, I was an emotional wreck from learning more about how they can live and give of themselves in spite of some of the home situations they came and come from. A truly humbling experience.
- The Monday after we got back, Shawn lost his job, which was a little bit of a shock. He's still looking, but we have faith that he will find something soon.
- Three weeks after GO, Shawn and I were two of 17 mentors who accompanied 99 students to our High School Summer Camp, "Camp Cali". We stayed in the dorms at The Master's College and went to 2 theme parks and to the Santa Monica beach, where we ended up baptizing 18 students in the ocean. Each morning and evening the students had sessions with our pastors, and learned about "Running The Race Of Your Life".
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| Baptizing students in some crazy-big waves! |
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| 100+ students & mentors waiting for the buses to go home |
- And THEN, just last weekend, we moved Zach into his new dorm room at Grand Canyon University (Go 'Lopes!):
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| Zach in his dorm room - I'm not sure I'm ready for this yet! |
That's it for now. I'd love to hear from you, so leave me a comment and let me know what you all did this summer!
Sounds like you've had an amazing but emotional summer! The highlight of our summer was a trip to the Pacific Northwest, beautiful!
Yes, it's so hard to see the kids go off to college and life on their own. It sounds like your family is well-grounded in life and beliefs. Blessings to you and yours. As for my summer, it was too hot to do all of my outdoor painting, so I worked on family genealogy. I've "met" some interesting family members from the past. Have a great school year. Cynthia
Oh, Molly, I know exactly how you feel. We took my youngest, Dylan, to his first year @ Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,MD last week. It is 5 hours (or more with traffic) away from our home on Long Island,NY. I still have a hard time believing he is so grown up already and in college. Being a single mom whose daughter is starting her junior year at college over an hour away means more free time after work for jewelry making but many lonely hours as well ahead.
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