Well I can't believe that it has been a bit over a month since project ended! The last couple weeks of project were a whirlwind of lasts---finishing work, last small group time and women's night and MNL and adventure days and outreach. And then the final weekend I stayed up all night twice in order to spend more time with people. That last Saturday night we had a banquet that a few staff members came back for, so we were able to see them again before the end of project.
And then the goodbyes took place---saying goodbye to 52 amazing friends in one morning is a little crazy, but the emotions were definitely a testimony to the ways that God brought us all together over the summer. To think that I went from knowing nobody on project to getting up at 6am just to make sure I could see them all off is pretty amazing. It is hard to describe just what God did over 10 weeks in Branson Missouri, but I know without a doubt that He changed my life forever and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
hello again
Hey everyone!
life is still going well down here in Branson! It's crazy to think that we only have about two weeks left here on project. I can't decide how I feel about that: I miss people at home, so it will be nice to see them, but I am definitely not ready to leave project yet! I'm going to miss everyone here--miss the people and work and project in general. Strange to think about...
Anyway, nothing too out of the ordinary has been happening the past couple weeks. Been working as usual---Silver Dollar City is still awesome, though it has been rather hot the past few days. (that is one thing I will NOT miss when I head back to NH) A couple more of our co-workers came to dinner/Monday Night Live last week, which was pretty neat! Hopefully a few will come next week since it's the last week!
This past week for adventure day we got to go to Silver Dollar City! That was a lot of fun!! I was with a group of people that stayed there from open to close: 9:30-7:00. We got to ride a ton of rides, which was pretty neat!! I still have not decided what my favorite ride is, though I did ride one of the roller coasters six times in a row--lots of fun, though gave me a bit of a headache from going upside-down so much.
On Saturday, we had a cookout thing during our normal outreach time. People invited coworkers and random people in the area and we just hung out for a while, tossed the frisbee around, ate food, and had some worship time. It was a lot of fun!! That evening, we had a Christmas in July party. It was a pajama party, so we all wore our pajamas (makes sense, right?) and had a white elephant gift swap and made gingerbread houses and listened to Christmas music.
Sunday was a good day just to relax. I got to spend some time chilling with people and having good conversations, and got my laundry done, and I saw the movie Inception! (At least I think that was the night I watched it...I seem to have lost track.) If you have not yet seen Inception, you definitely should. It's a great movie!
Monday's highlight was Monday Night Live, which was very good (as usual). After that, I watched the rest of Titanic with my roommate and a bunch of random people. (We had started it on Saturday night after the Christmas party.) I feel like that was an important accomplishment because I had never seen Titanic before...and now I have.
Nothing really out of the ordinary happened yesterday or today...went to work, had growth group yesterday and women's night tonight. Today we were planning on checking out the Branson zipline after work, but unfortunately it was closed for repairs or something. Hopefully it will be up and running by tomorrow!!!
Well, I believe that's all the highlights! this weekend is the last normal weekend--our last adventure day, last prayer & praise, last Monday Night Live, etc. etc. etc.
So if you have been praying for project, you could pray for the 'lasts'...pray that we stay focused on God during the last couple weeks, and that no one gets overwhelmed with all the planning that needs to be done.
Well, that's all folks! See you soon!
life is still going well down here in Branson! It's crazy to think that we only have about two weeks left here on project. I can't decide how I feel about that: I miss people at home, so it will be nice to see them, but I am definitely not ready to leave project yet! I'm going to miss everyone here--miss the people and work and project in general. Strange to think about...
Anyway, nothing too out of the ordinary has been happening the past couple weeks. Been working as usual---Silver Dollar City is still awesome, though it has been rather hot the past few days. (that is one thing I will NOT miss when I head back to NH) A couple more of our co-workers came to dinner/Monday Night Live last week, which was pretty neat! Hopefully a few will come next week since it's the last week!
This past week for adventure day we got to go to Silver Dollar City! That was a lot of fun!! I was with a group of people that stayed there from open to close: 9:30-7:00. We got to ride a ton of rides, which was pretty neat!! I still have not decided what my favorite ride is, though I did ride one of the roller coasters six times in a row--lots of fun, though gave me a bit of a headache from going upside-down so much.
On Saturday, we had a cookout thing during our normal outreach time. People invited coworkers and random people in the area and we just hung out for a while, tossed the frisbee around, ate food, and had some worship time. It was a lot of fun!! That evening, we had a Christmas in July party. It was a pajama party, so we all wore our pajamas (makes sense, right?) and had a white elephant gift swap and made gingerbread houses and listened to Christmas music.
Sunday was a good day just to relax. I got to spend some time chilling with people and having good conversations, and got my laundry done, and I saw the movie Inception! (At least I think that was the night I watched it...I seem to have lost track.) If you have not yet seen Inception, you definitely should. It's a great movie!
Monday's highlight was Monday Night Live, which was very good (as usual). After that, I watched the rest of Titanic with my roommate and a bunch of random people. (We had started it on Saturday night after the Christmas party.) I feel like that was an important accomplishment because I had never seen Titanic before...and now I have.
Nothing really out of the ordinary happened yesterday or today...went to work, had growth group yesterday and women's night tonight. Today we were planning on checking out the Branson zipline after work, but unfortunately it was closed for repairs or something. Hopefully it will be up and running by tomorrow!!!
Well, I believe that's all the highlights! this weekend is the last normal weekend--our last adventure day, last prayer & praise, last Monday Night Live, etc. etc. etc.
So if you have been praying for project, you could pray for the 'lasts'...pray that we stay focused on God during the last couple weeks, and that no one gets overwhelmed with all the planning that needs to be done.
Well, that's all folks! See you soon!
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Massive Update
Hello!!
Once again it has been way too long since I updated this blog. Sorry!
Life here in Branson has been very good but very busy. (thus the lack of updates...)
So much has happened since I last wrote, so I will do my best to not leave out too much!
I'll start with work because that takes up so much of my time: Silver Dollar City is (as always) pretty awesome. Most of my days there I end up driving the tram most of the day because at this point we have a bunch of people who are signed off to conduct on the trams but not to drive them, so most of us who can drive and conduct end up driving. I don't mind that, though! I do like driving! And it is nice to still be driving something while I'm down here since I don't have a car--so driving the trams and the occasional valet car takes care of that. Also, it has been good to get to know everyone who works there more and be able to hang out in the "P.L.O." (parking lot office) and play cards with people or talk to them.
Life outside of work has been good as well!
The weekend after my last post was the mens & womens retreats. That was a lot of fun! Us women went down to Eurika Springs Arkansas. We did a lot of hanging out and talking, and we walked around town a bunch (it was a really cute town-looked almost European or something) and did a bit of shopping (window shopping at least...the only thing I ended up getting was ice cream) and we made jewelry at a cool little store. Saturday night we had a hang out/party time where we did manicures/pedicures, (which was very interesting,) and a dance party. Overall, lots of fun and a good time to get to know all the girls on the trip better.
Our adventure day two Fridays ago was pretty intense--it was hiking and the trail ended up being sorta harder than people expected. But I loved it! We hiked down and had lunch at a waterfall, which was gorgeous, then we went to a deeper part of the river and went swimming, and hiked back up, which was the intense hard part. (the hardest thing was that we ran out of water partway back, so we got wicked thirsty...but everyone made it!!)
That was on the 2nd...since that weekend was the 4th of July weekend, a bunch of us decided to shoot off some fireworks, which was a lot of fun!! I had never shot off fireworks before, so it was a great new experience for me! A few of us went on Thursday (the 1st) and then a bigger group went out on that Saturday--the 3rd. It was basically awesome!
This past week we have had a slightly different schedule than normal. The staff left on Wednesday, so on Tuesday we had a goodbye banquet thing for them. Then on Wednesday instead of going in to work, we all helped to move stuff out of the Honeysuckle and set up some of the rooms like they were when we got here. Since the staff left, some of the students switched rooms so that we would all be in the same part of the inn, so we spent all day taking apart and setting up bunkbeds and moving mattresses and stuff like that. It was a long day, but lots of fun!! (and I got to stay in my own room!!!) Since we didn't work on Wednesday, we ended up working on Friday, so we did not have an adventure day. But Friday night, the prayer team put on a bonfire where we sang a lot of worship songs and had some prayer time and a message and stuff and then did s'mores and a dance party/game time. That was a lot of fun!!! Oh---and side note about that: I am now one of the two prayer team leaders since the staff has left: they chose two leaders, so me and one of the guys on the team are co-leading that for the rest of the summer!
Let's see...what else has been happening...outreach has gone really well! The weekend of July 4th we did outreach on Sunday instead of Saturday because we did it at a place where they were shooting off fireworks so we knew a lot of people would be there. I walked around with someone in my growth group, and we ended up having a good conversation with a couple ladies (started with the solarium thing I mentioned before). That was pretty cool!! Then yesterday our outreach was basically free-form: they told us to do whatever we wanted and go with whoever we wanted. So I went down to this place called "the landing" where there are just a lot of small shops and stuff. We went around and asked people if they had anything that they wanted us to pray for. It was pretty interesting. There were some people that said that there was nothing that they needed prayer for, but a few people actually let us pray for them. We didn't really have many deep conversations, but God really helped me personally to be less nervous about walking up to people and talking about Him, which is neat to see!
I'm trying to remember what else has been going on--I saw Toy Story 3, went to the cave at Silver Dollar City, went on a group date where my growth group was asked out by one of the guys growth groups, bought a dress, played a bunch of cards (learned a new one too!!!) and just basically had a bunch of fun! I found a new place where I've been going for reflection time, so that's really exciting! It's on a lake and at the time when we go the sun is always setting, so it's BEAUTIFUL!! :)
I think that's about it, and you are probably tired of reading at this point anyway! Thanks for sticking with it!
Once again it has been way too long since I updated this blog. Sorry!
Life here in Branson has been very good but very busy. (thus the lack of updates...)
So much has happened since I last wrote, so I will do my best to not leave out too much!
I'll start with work because that takes up so much of my time: Silver Dollar City is (as always) pretty awesome. Most of my days there I end up driving the tram most of the day because at this point we have a bunch of people who are signed off to conduct on the trams but not to drive them, so most of us who can drive and conduct end up driving. I don't mind that, though! I do like driving! And it is nice to still be driving something while I'm down here since I don't have a car--so driving the trams and the occasional valet car takes care of that. Also, it has been good to get to know everyone who works there more and be able to hang out in the "P.L.O." (parking lot office) and play cards with people or talk to them.
Life outside of work has been good as well!
The weekend after my last post was the mens & womens retreats. That was a lot of fun! Us women went down to Eurika Springs Arkansas. We did a lot of hanging out and talking, and we walked around town a bunch (it was a really cute town-looked almost European or something) and did a bit of shopping (window shopping at least...the only thing I ended up getting was ice cream) and we made jewelry at a cool little store. Saturday night we had a hang out/party time where we did manicures/pedicures, (which was very interesting,) and a dance party. Overall, lots of fun and a good time to get to know all the girls on the trip better.
Our adventure day two Fridays ago was pretty intense--it was hiking and the trail ended up being sorta harder than people expected. But I loved it! We hiked down and had lunch at a waterfall, which was gorgeous, then we went to a deeper part of the river and went swimming, and hiked back up, which was the intense hard part. (the hardest thing was that we ran out of water partway back, so we got wicked thirsty...but everyone made it!!)
That was on the 2nd...since that weekend was the 4th of July weekend, a bunch of us decided to shoot off some fireworks, which was a lot of fun!! I had never shot off fireworks before, so it was a great new experience for me! A few of us went on Thursday (the 1st) and then a bigger group went out on that Saturday--the 3rd. It was basically awesome!
This past week we have had a slightly different schedule than normal. The staff left on Wednesday, so on Tuesday we had a goodbye banquet thing for them. Then on Wednesday instead of going in to work, we all helped to move stuff out of the Honeysuckle and set up some of the rooms like they were when we got here. Since the staff left, some of the students switched rooms so that we would all be in the same part of the inn, so we spent all day taking apart and setting up bunkbeds and moving mattresses and stuff like that. It was a long day, but lots of fun!! (and I got to stay in my own room!!!) Since we didn't work on Wednesday, we ended up working on Friday, so we did not have an adventure day. But Friday night, the prayer team put on a bonfire where we sang a lot of worship songs and had some prayer time and a message and stuff and then did s'mores and a dance party/game time. That was a lot of fun!!! Oh---and side note about that: I am now one of the two prayer team leaders since the staff has left: they chose two leaders, so me and one of the guys on the team are co-leading that for the rest of the summer!
Let's see...what else has been happening...outreach has gone really well! The weekend of July 4th we did outreach on Sunday instead of Saturday because we did it at a place where they were shooting off fireworks so we knew a lot of people would be there. I walked around with someone in my growth group, and we ended up having a good conversation with a couple ladies (started with the solarium thing I mentioned before). That was pretty cool!! Then yesterday our outreach was basically free-form: they told us to do whatever we wanted and go with whoever we wanted. So I went down to this place called "the landing" where there are just a lot of small shops and stuff. We went around and asked people if they had anything that they wanted us to pray for. It was pretty interesting. There were some people that said that there was nothing that they needed prayer for, but a few people actually let us pray for them. We didn't really have many deep conversations, but God really helped me personally to be less nervous about walking up to people and talking about Him, which is neat to see!
I'm trying to remember what else has been going on--I saw Toy Story 3, went to the cave at Silver Dollar City, went on a group date where my growth group was asked out by one of the guys growth groups, bought a dress, played a bunch of cards (learned a new one too!!!) and just basically had a bunch of fun! I found a new place where I've been going for reflection time, so that's really exciting! It's on a lake and at the time when we go the sun is always setting, so it's BEAUTIFUL!! :)
I think that's about it, and you are probably tired of reading at this point anyway! Thanks for sticking with it!
Friday, June 25, 2010
picture
hi! here's a random picture of me with one of my roommates when we had a costume roller skating party! We all dressed up for different decades. :)
Thursday, June 24, 2010
the past couple weeks....
Hi all! Sorry I haven't updated recently!! Lots has happened in the last couple weeks, so I'll do my best to remember everything.
First on the list is work, I guess. It's been going very well! I like it a lot still, so that's a plus! We all passed our driving tests, so I've been driving or conducting trams for most of my days monday through thursday. I'm starting to get a very good farmers tan because we have shortsleeved shirts, and i believe one of my arms is tanner because I drive more often than not. The people we work with are very nice, although most of them are guys over the age of 60 so I sometimes feel a bit outnumbered when we're in the break room. Overall though, work is great!! Tomorrow I think that I'm going to head over to Silver Dollar City for a bit with another girl I work with and we're going to check out the cave tours that they do. That should be fun to actually spend some time in the park instead of just in the parking lot!
Last time I posted, it was right before project olympics. Those were a lot of fun! I was on the purple team, and we came in second! It was a lot of fun. We did things like dodgeball and kickball and relay races and family feud...it was a good variety. And during our lunchbreak a bunch of us played Ultimate Frisbee, so that was exciting! I haven't had a lot of time to do that this summer, so it was good to get a chance to get my frisbee fix.
That night a bunch of us went to a baseball game in the area, so that was a lot of fun!
We have also started some outreach stuff on Saturdays. We have done two outreaches so far. The first one started out with a survey where you basically just asked people where they were spiritually or what their opinions were on things. This (sometimes) started good conversations where we could learn more about the person and possibly share the gospel with them. The outreach that we did this past Saturday is called solarium. Solarium is basically a picture survey: there are about 50 pictures of random things, and you ask the interviewee which ones represent their life, their spiritual life, their view of God, etc. This should start up a good conversation as well. It's been pretty cool to be involved in these outreaches and just see how God can use them to start conversations about Him.
This past Friday we went caving for our adventure day. That was a lot of fun! The caving itself didn't take a whole lot of time, but the day involved a hike down an old stream bed to reach the cave, scaling across part of a cliff underneath a waterfall, and swimming in a "water hole". It was a great day :-)
Every night at dinner, a few students share their testimonies at dinner, and Tuesday it was my turn! I was a little nervous, but it went well, and it's over now! It's been really cool to hear about how God has worked in the lives of everyone around me, and it was very neat to sit down and think about all the ways He has worked in mine!
Well, I think those are the highlights of the past couple weeks! This weekend, instead of having an adventure day, we are haveing men's and women's retreats! So I will be in eurika springs Arkansas from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning! it should be fun, though i'm not really sure exactly what we're doing. Then Sunday, I'm going to be a part of a group date: the guys' small groups have been asking out the girls' small groups, and mine was just asked out. So that should be fun! :)
I think that's it...hope things are going well up in New England!
Love you all!
If any of you want some things to pray for....
-Safety while we do all this cool random stuff
-The people that we talk to at outreach/work/etc...that they will be open to learning about God
-All of us to just focus on God all the time and live for Him in all we do
First on the list is work, I guess. It's been going very well! I like it a lot still, so that's a plus! We all passed our driving tests, so I've been driving or conducting trams for most of my days monday through thursday. I'm starting to get a very good farmers tan because we have shortsleeved shirts, and i believe one of my arms is tanner because I drive more often than not. The people we work with are very nice, although most of them are guys over the age of 60 so I sometimes feel a bit outnumbered when we're in the break room. Overall though, work is great!! Tomorrow I think that I'm going to head over to Silver Dollar City for a bit with another girl I work with and we're going to check out the cave tours that they do. That should be fun to actually spend some time in the park instead of just in the parking lot!
Last time I posted, it was right before project olympics. Those were a lot of fun! I was on the purple team, and we came in second! It was a lot of fun. We did things like dodgeball and kickball and relay races and family feud...it was a good variety. And during our lunchbreak a bunch of us played Ultimate Frisbee, so that was exciting! I haven't had a lot of time to do that this summer, so it was good to get a chance to get my frisbee fix.
That night a bunch of us went to a baseball game in the area, so that was a lot of fun!
We have also started some outreach stuff on Saturdays. We have done two outreaches so far. The first one started out with a survey where you basically just asked people where they were spiritually or what their opinions were on things. This (sometimes) started good conversations where we could learn more about the person and possibly share the gospel with them. The outreach that we did this past Saturday is called solarium. Solarium is basically a picture survey: there are about 50 pictures of random things, and you ask the interviewee which ones represent their life, their spiritual life, their view of God, etc. This should start up a good conversation as well. It's been pretty cool to be involved in these outreaches and just see how God can use them to start conversations about Him.
This past Friday we went caving for our adventure day. That was a lot of fun! The caving itself didn't take a whole lot of time, but the day involved a hike down an old stream bed to reach the cave, scaling across part of a cliff underneath a waterfall, and swimming in a "water hole". It was a great day :-)
Every night at dinner, a few students share their testimonies at dinner, and Tuesday it was my turn! I was a little nervous, but it went well, and it's over now! It's been really cool to hear about how God has worked in the lives of everyone around me, and it was very neat to sit down and think about all the ways He has worked in mine!
Well, I think those are the highlights of the past couple weeks! This weekend, instead of having an adventure day, we are haveing men's and women's retreats! So I will be in eurika springs Arkansas from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning! it should be fun, though i'm not really sure exactly what we're doing. Then Sunday, I'm going to be a part of a group date: the guys' small groups have been asking out the girls' small groups, and mine was just asked out. So that should be fun! :)
I think that's it...hope things are going well up in New England!
Love you all!
If any of you want some things to pray for....
-Safety while we do all this cool random stuff
-The people that we talk to at outreach/work/etc...that they will be open to learning about God
-All of us to just focus on God all the time and live for Him in all we do
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Fun Stuff :)
Hello again!
I just realized that I keep finding time on Wednesdays to update this. Random, but handy!
So a fair amount of stuff has happened since my last update! Last week we had our first adventure day! We went on an 8 mile canoe trip down in Arkansas! it was a lot of fun!! The river we were on was gorgous, with a lot of trees and rocks and hillsides along the way. The place where we stopped for lunch had a cliff overlooking a deep spot on the river, so a bunch of us climbed up on that and jumped in. That was exciting! :) Overall, the day was wonderfully relaxing, and a lot of fun! I did get a bit of a sunburn, but that's fading now, so not bad at all.
On Saturday night, we had a tacky bowling evening. So everyone got some pretty wacky outfits and we took over a bowling alley for the night! That was a lot of fun as well!! It was pretty crazy to see the outfits that everyone came up with.
Sunday, I got to go to the church that I will be attending for the rest of the project. It's called Harvest, and it's an Evangelical Free church just like my church back in NH. It is a lot different than I am used to--more traditional--so it's neat to see how they do things differently down here. After church and lunch, I got some laundry done and helped another girl from the prayer team plan a prayer & worship service that we will be leading every week. We had the first service later Sunday evening, and it went really well!
Since Sunday, most of my time has been taken up with work at Silver Dollar City! That has gone well! We have been training all this week so far--learning where to park people and how to drive the trams. Tomorrow we should end up taking our tests and then we will be allowed to drive the trams without a trainer on board! That's pretty exciting! I think pretty soon I will be getting together with the others who are taking the test tomorrow so that we can go over the manual and quiz each other. So if you read this before tomorrow, any prayer would be appreciated! :)
The rest of this week looks quite promising! Tomorrow we have work and then reflection night, where we just find some nice pretty spot in the area and spend a couple hours alone with God. On Friday, our adventure day is project olympics, which should be pretty fun! After that, a bunch of us are going to go to a baseball game! I'm getting pretty excited for that! And then it will be the weekend again!
I hope everything is going well back in NH!
Let me know if you have any specific questions about anything going on down here!
Have a fantabulous day!
I just realized that I keep finding time on Wednesdays to update this. Random, but handy!
So a fair amount of stuff has happened since my last update! Last week we had our first adventure day! We went on an 8 mile canoe trip down in Arkansas! it was a lot of fun!! The river we were on was gorgous, with a lot of trees and rocks and hillsides along the way. The place where we stopped for lunch had a cliff overlooking a deep spot on the river, so a bunch of us climbed up on that and jumped in. That was exciting! :) Overall, the day was wonderfully relaxing, and a lot of fun! I did get a bit of a sunburn, but that's fading now, so not bad at all.
On Saturday night, we had a tacky bowling evening. So everyone got some pretty wacky outfits and we took over a bowling alley for the night! That was a lot of fun as well!! It was pretty crazy to see the outfits that everyone came up with.
Sunday, I got to go to the church that I will be attending for the rest of the project. It's called Harvest, and it's an Evangelical Free church just like my church back in NH. It is a lot different than I am used to--more traditional--so it's neat to see how they do things differently down here. After church and lunch, I got some laundry done and helped another girl from the prayer team plan a prayer & worship service that we will be leading every week. We had the first service later Sunday evening, and it went really well!
Since Sunday, most of my time has been taken up with work at Silver Dollar City! That has gone well! We have been training all this week so far--learning where to park people and how to drive the trams. Tomorrow we should end up taking our tests and then we will be allowed to drive the trams without a trainer on board! That's pretty exciting! I think pretty soon I will be getting together with the others who are taking the test tomorrow so that we can go over the manual and quiz each other. So if you read this before tomorrow, any prayer would be appreciated! :)
The rest of this week looks quite promising! Tomorrow we have work and then reflection night, where we just find some nice pretty spot in the area and spend a couple hours alone with God. On Friday, our adventure day is project olympics, which should be pretty fun! After that, a bunch of us are going to go to a baseball game! I'm getting pretty excited for that! And then it will be the weekend again!
I hope everything is going well back in NH!
Let me know if you have any specific questions about anything going on down here!
Have a fantabulous day!
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