change of season... change of pace...

Well it seems that winter is forcing its way in on us. Just the other day God sent a white blanket to cover the ground and saturate the trees with beauty. Taco, Sarah, myself, and the Cline girls (Marla, Rose Mary, & Lily) enjoyed the afternoon playing, sledding, and slipping in the snow. Within a few hours we were freezing from the wet snow. So we headed inside for some good'ol hot chocolate! Later that night we had the little Cline girls over to pretend to be Cinderella's and help us clean our house for our loft inspection today from Matt. Sarah, Taco, and I all went back to the Clines for pizza and ice cream where we shared many laughs (especially Sarah) about random things like nose hair trimmers=) By the end of the evening at the Clines, Taco had his fro hawk done up all nice (compliments of Rose Mary & Marla). Now when I say,"done up all nice", I mean Rose Mary went to town by placing as many hair ties, clips, and bows, as she had in hand and Marla dyed his hair hot pink (don't worry it was temp dye!!). We ended up staying up till midnight finishing up our house cleaning so that we could win the competition!

This past weekend I had the privilege to be TNT host! My TNTers were... Kirby, Spike, Katie, Morgan, & Emma (Emma only stayed for b-fast because she home work). I had an awesome time working along side each one of them=) It was amazing just getting to spend time with them and learn about their lives and talk about their trials through life, joyful times, and relationship with the Lord. I enjoyed our time during devo's sharing about how we can/should bring God glory in everything we do (Col. 3:17) and What prayer and worship is and why we pray to God and worship Him. The 2nd devo on prayer and worship was actually an audio recorded dialogue that all of us interns put together for RVR's full time staff group devo's this morning. Speaking of devo's this morning, it was an awesome time of reflecting on our heavenly father and just turning off all the distractions around us and giving the Lord our full attention. The mood of the room was set by dimmed lights and burning candles in the shape of the cross. We all listened to the voice recording with Bible verses in the back round, sang praise songs together and ended by coming together with clasped hands in prayer to our Father.

A few work projects we have been working on in the last couple weeks was painting the filly cabin/winterizing it, doing a photo shoot for our new internship brocure and web site page, and typing up/printing out a book of group inititives.

Since the fall season has come and gone we are now moving into our winter months, which means more work projects, indoor classes, and colder days. It's sad to see fall go, but we are all excited to have a change of pace with more academic learning; which means being indoors when its freezeing!

Wow I can't believe how much God is working in the lives of all the people I get to talk to. Just the other week Ryan, Taco, and myself were running the outdoor climbing tower for an outdoor ed group. It was so amazing to see God working as we talked to the teens and their leaders. Always after each activity we have a "debrief" in order to apply life principals to each high element that they just completed. Taco was leading on this particular day because he had struck up a conversation with some of the teens right before we ended. Therefore, he just feed off of what they were discussing and expanded on their discussion. Taco was able to have a long debrief with them because we were ahead of schedule. God defiantly had that all planed out in advance! God opened the door for Taco to share Gods love and the gospel with them. It was amazing to see God work through Taco to encourage and challenge these kids in what they were living for. When Taco was finishing up, the leader asked if we would be willing to pray with the group because he felt the power of the holy spirit there dwelling among us. We all joined hands and Taco lead us in prayer. Once the leader sent all the teens to their next activity, he stayed behind and we all shared about how we got to the ranch and how God has been working in our lives. It was such a blessing to minister and show the love of Christ with the outdoor ed group! Another amazing experience was last night. Matt (the intern director) Hannah, Taco, Ryan, Bill and myself all went to Baltimore for what is called "Baltimore blast". It was put on by the radio station 95.1 Shine FM. We put up a display in order to hand out summer camp flyer's and talk to people about the ranch. Of course our main attraction was the indo board! It was fun watching everyone and trying myself to balance on the board. =) Thank the Lord no one got hurt (at least not to bad). It was so cool to talk to kids, teens, and parents about what RVR has to offer for the summer. This one kid was really interested in working at the ranch! We may have recruited a new TNT'er!!! YEAH! Each of us took turns to go watch a little bit of the soccer game while the others stayed at the RVR display and continued to hand out pamphlets and talk to people. Once the game was over we were able to stay to see "chasen" and "Kutless" in concert! It was an AWESOME concert=) Hannah and I got really into it by going up front, jumping around and just being crazy! It was so awesome to see two christian bands in a public building talking about God with a mixture of people with various back rounds and religions. I think that is what made it so much more amazing to me! Every person was there to see the same sweet bands and experience great music. But only some were there to worship the Lord! It was so awesome to be a part of that concert! The Lord really used what the lead singer from kutless said to encourage me. He said that he would not be were he is in his life, if it was not for his salvation in Christ. He said he would be no were if he doesn't put his faith and trust in the Lord. This really hit me because sometimes it's hard to ONLY trust the Lord for your strength. Lately I've been thinking of the passage of the Bible that talks about only trusting God and not relying on your own strength. Prov. 3:5-6 "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." I need to in every situation trust God to get me through things and not rely on myself to get the job done. I need to learn that I can do all things through Christ because he gives me strength. The Lord has been speaking to me about this through various situations and people especially the past 2 weeks. It seems like where ever I turn God is sending me the same message. Not on my own strength, but through HIM!

preschoolers instead of push-ups

So the other day Matt decided to cancel PT(physical training) "just for fun". I was somewhat Ok with this since my schedule was slightly different then my normal Wednesday. You see I got to work with Betsy all day!!! She is in charge of all the special events here at RVR. So we got to host about 60 preschoolers for the afternoon. They just came to play on the sweet playground, take a hayride, and pick a pumpkin. Well they did all this with the addition of the mine shaft zip line. This is a ton of fun for the little kiddies and was fun for me too. Also it kept me warm cuz it was freezing outside. This is were the physical part came in... I had to lift each 2 1/2 foot child in and out of the cart. So i decided that this took the place of the 100 push-ups that we didn't have to do in the morning =) Once Betsy and I waved goodbye to the little ones we made lunch. After lunch, was the part of the day when I really felt like I started to do some work (mostly because I got dirty and ended up smelling like a gas station.) mmmmmmm good times! We got to put diesel gas in about 50 tiki torches for the times we have the corn maize at night. Later last night Betsy and I hosted a night corn maize for grace bible churches girls/boys pioneer clubs. It was really chill, literally! So I attemped to start a fire.....then once I decided it wasn't catching to the wood I left it and sadly told Betsy that I had failed to complete my mission of building a successful camp fire. BUT.... When Betsy and I came back to see my pitiful fail, guess what?! Yup U got it! IT WAS A BLAZING!!! I'm so proud! I started it on my own =) So while the group got lost with their flashlights in the maize, Betsy and I tried to help them through the maize by shouting directions from the tower. Once the group left Betsy and I chatted by the fire for a while and then both called it a night. Right now I'm in class working on writing group initiatives/name games and writing on my blog! hahaha k bye =)

Time is flying by......

O my word! Time has been going by so fast here at the ranch. I love every second here even though sometimes life is challenging in many areas. Tomorrow is the first day of RVR's annual Maizefest. I get the honor of working 4 different parts, including; ticket and pumpkin sales, the corn bins/wagon, and the pumpkin painting station. I'm so stoked to be part of the fall festivities here=) The past 2 weeks have been awesome! However, it's been really really busy. I'm working on sending out my prayer/support letter prolly on Monday or so. I've been using my evenings the past few nights to work on my homework and just catch up on daily things that I don't seem to ever get done. Tonight I decided I needed a break from work, so Beth and I ran 3 miles before we made ourselves a fresh chic salad! umm ummm good! Then we went into town with Hannah to run some errands. Tomorrow, Matt is taking us to a REI attic sale to check out and maybe buy some merchandise. You never know when you'll need some camping supplies! I mean, come on I only am working at a camp! yeeeesh! haha Well I need to go so I can spend some much needed time with my Father. =)

This weekend

Well on Friday I helped belay on the indoor climbing wall, since it was raining outside and we couldn't do the high ropes course which is outdoors. That went quite well and afterwards Matt, Bill, and I decided to have a little fun of our own and all challenged ourselves to a little rock climbing fun!!! After lunch we all had to kick it in high gear to to some major detailing before the weekend group arrived. It seemed as though there could have been another flood since it didn't cease to stop pretty much all day. That made it interesting when Ryan and I tryed to take the trash out on the gater. You see the battery was dead so we all (Ryan, Bill, Beth and I) had to walk all the trash down and across the road to the garbage compost. Therefore, we ended up getting slightly wet. So since we were already in "cleaning mode" Beth and I (since Sarah was hostess for the TNT(teen workers) kids) cleaned the whole apartment before dinner. We got all that done before dinner and then had the evening off to chill. I believe I read from the book "everyday with Jesus" the book that explains the story and history of RVR. We have to do a book report on it and do an interview with two people that have been involved with the camp in the past/present. Let me just say that I have a passion for hating writing and sometimes reading, so this doesn't help the situation any. But I believe the Lord is working in my heart and he is gonna use the home work to help me learn more about Him. I made the commitment while on my SOLO to read the whole new testament during my year here. I know it doesn't seem like a lot of the Bible since a lot of people make the commitment to read the whole Bible in a year but for me I will take it a step at a time. This weekend has been going great except for one exception I will tell u about shortly. On Saturday all we did was detail and work on our paper about the emergent church. Once we were done with work at 5pm we get to have off till Tuesday at 8am. !!! =) That night we all chilled and played skipbo of which I didn't win =( sad day! O well. Sunday Beth and I headed to this 20 person church. It was nice, but I do not feel like God wants it to be my home Church while I'm here. Now this is the part of the day when things took a a spin for the worst. However, I'm not going to write about it because of the persons wishes. I will say though that you can be in prayer for the one girl here at the ranch that works full time. She has some broken body parts and is in the hospital. Just keep her in your prayers for a quick and full recovery! Thanks=)

yesterdays long adventure

So yesterday was a pretty long, but awesome day! It all started with PT Thursday at 6:30am. It's basically an hour of physical activity in which we stretched, did a short jog, and played basketball and knock out. Then we had an hour to grab a bite to eat and freshen up a bit. On Thursdays, we also have an in depth Bible study. We went over theology and did an overview on what else we will be studying through the year. By now it's only 9:30am and we are all wide awake and ready to start detailing..... aka CLEANING!!! yeah that's right we like to call it detailing to make it not sound like work! =) Once we got that done, we helped set up/cleanup and eat lunch. My job in the afternoon was to help Zac facilitate the giant swing! That was fun!!! For dinner I was on dish duty with Sarah. I got the easier and less wet end of the deal that night since I was on the clean end of the dishwasher. Right after putting all those dishes away we ran to the wagon wheel (snack shop) to get a crash course (on the job training rocks!) of how they run things during snack time here at the ranch. That went really well since my only job was to make all the kids fat by making them double fried french fries!!! lol haha Then everyone went over to Doug's (aka the cook) to watch some football. However, since I don't even understand how the game works I ended up just talking to Lisa, his wife most of the time. One day I will understand and learn to love that sport, but until then I'm a lost cause. Well that about called it a night and then I went to zzzzzzzz land around 11pm ish. I'll have to update u on today tomorrow! hahah I hope not every post is from the day before. O well......

Everyone is saying it...... FALSE!!!

Our fist week part 1

This is written by Beth, during our first week here as interns. I'm a little behind on blogging, so I will cheat and copy and paste from my fellow interns blogs!!! thanks guys=) We have done so much stuff already and it has only been a week. Well, there was a massive flood here at the ranch and so a lot of our first day was cleaning up. We have been training on all the different activties and playing on them too..shhh, don't tell. =) Our boss is Matt. What an awesome man of God who is soooo chill! He is married to Michelle, who is such an awesome woman, and they are expecting their first baby in October! It's a little girl! We have also done a lot of outdoors stuff like hiking, horseback riding, climbing, and a SOLO. So I know you are wondering what a SOLO is. Basically it is 24 hours in the woods alone, just you and God with no other distractions. It was an amazing experience that challenged me and allowed me to focus on spending time with the Lord and spending time in His word. I was able to talk to God with no other distractions on my mind. It was something I needed so bad. We also were shown around town the other day. It was so much fun. We have already hit Rita's up twice. We are running outta time cause they close in October!! I can't believe how well the group gets along. It is a blessing for sure. I know there will be tough days, but I know we will work through things. =) The full-time staff here are such wonderful people. I have felt so welcome and loved from day 1! So we have already compiled a huge list of quotes and inside jokes and stories.. love it. =)
Boomstang!! (our group saying!)

Behind on the times...

Hey guys=) I figured I should start a blog in order to keep ya posted. But since I'm a week behind on what has been happening here at the ranch, I guess I'll just have to copy and paste from my fellow interns blog pages from this past week..... hahaha