small update!!!

Ms. Vandyke got smart and moved me to second soprano--it's still high, but within my range. And Ms. Vandyke wants me to take voice lessons to learn how to sing 1st soprano so I can be moved back up and I'm fine with that. :)

We perfom in 4 weeks!!!!

Yes I realize it has been 23 days since my last post, and I apologize deeply for it. It's been extremely hectic around here with the start of school and job begging and what not. So I'll catch you guys up.

I moved into my dorm a week and a half ago, and it's been wonderful. I'm living with the most amazing friend i could ever ask for, and two other girls who i'm hoping to make amazing friends out of! It's been fun being dumb and not having parents around to yell at you for it!! And my scooter has been a huge hit on campus. It's so funny.

Last weekend (the 15th) Joseph and Joel spent the weekend with us. it was heavenly! I love those boys! I made Joseph a red velvet cake in celebration of his birthday, and i have to say, it was delicious! and saturday we went to the ZOO!!! I've never been to the Memphis Zoo before and it was so much fun! We saw elephants and rhinos and hippos and polar bears!!! It was so cool. i loved it! I've convinced the boys to buy themselves scooters and they claim that it won't be long before they're putting around Starkville and Jackson. I can't wait to see that. OH! And Joseph got another tattoo--i helped design it. It looks really good. We had such a good time hanging out together and playing the Wii and going to haunted churches. Fun times. I miss those boys a lot.

The day after Joel and Joseph left, school started. I'm taking 20 hours this semsester, and it's really stressful, but I know i can handle it. Mondays are the worst, I have class at 8,9,10,11, choir at 12, and then a lab at 1, so I don't get a break from class until about 3 pm. I'm really hungry and tired and cranky on Mondays. Today was okay though because it rained and i played in it. It was so much fun. I loved it.

I'm finally in choir and I love it--most of the time. I've been told that I'm mezzo-soprano, or 1st alto--right there in the middle somewhere. Ms. Vandyke, the el stupido choir teacher, has me singing FIRST SOPRANO!!! the highest in the ranges. HOLY MOLY, it's hard. my poor little voice can't go that high and sound pretty, and it's a little intimidating to sit next to these freshmen with the most amazingly beautiful soprano voices. But, Ms. Vandyke thinks i can do it, and I know i can do all things through Christ who strengthens me... I just have to get over that fear. :)

ESTA BIEN!!! Well, to be completely honest, nothing else has happened in the last 3 weeks that is worth writing about. :) Plus I have 2 lit tests to study for and some philosophy homework to do...

Be Grateful.

At camp over the summer, I was known for my phrase, "Be grateful." I loved it, but to be honest, I only said it to stop those kids from complaining about everything. lol. I wasn't really aware of all I had to be grateful for.

So since I've been home, Elizabeth and Mallory and I have been asking each other EVERYDAY to list 5 things that we're thankfull for. You have to say them out loud and you have to have something different each day, and you have to be specific. It really makes you realize how GOOD God is!

So here are my 5 things that I'm grateful for today:

1. A country where I can freely talk about 5 things God has blessed me with.
2. People who prove that this world is not completely lost
3. A creative God. No two people are the same, no two trees are identical.
4. A colorful world--I couldn't come up with His colors!
5. A gracious God. We don't deserve these blessings, but He gives them to us anyway.

Your turn!! What are you gratefull for?

Small update!

The scooter is LEGAL!!! And I haven't stopped driving it yet. It's so much fun to drive around town and have people honk and wave at me. I love to toot my own little squeaky horn right back. I drove it up to Walmart the other day and I had a bunch of people saying that they were going to look into getting themselves a scooter because of gas and such. It's such a blast! I can't wait for school to start so my classmates can see it. I can't wait to get teased about it because then I can tease right back about not having to spend $40 to fill it up!! Oh! I just can't wait.

Since I've been home from camp I've seen 3 of my co-counselor friends on a daily basis, and I've talked to every single one of them almost every day. But this week, my friend, Elizabeth, and I will be making a special trip to Starkville to visit one our favorite sweet heart, Joseph. (I call him sweet heart because he absolutely HATES it. He's a marine, and it ruins his reputation). I am sooo excited to go! I can't wait to just get away. Not that I don't just love Senatobia and being home and stuff, but camp gave me an opportunity to miss home, and now I miss having to miss it. So i'm going to run away to Starkville just long enough to miss home. lol. I'm making no sense at all, but I don't care. That's the only picture I have of the three of us--we're doing some kind of crazy cheer at camp. This week is going to be so much fun!

Missing...

Holy moly, man! I'm totally missing these guys. They were some of the best people I've ever met in my life. That's Miles, Joseph, Joel, Blake, Me, Mallory, Brienne, Ms. Veda, Elizabeth and Emily. They're so wonderful.

And I miss them.

An AMAZING story...

Summer is almost over--we have about 3 weeks before school starts back up. And let me just say that this summer is going to the be one of the most memorable summers that I've ever had. I've made some wonderful friends and met some wonderful children. I've really been loving my life lately. I loved camp so much that I started thinking about changing my major to elementary education. I love those kids and I long to teach them everything. So I've really been considering it.

We left camp Saturday afternoon and we all promised to stay in touch. I cried on the way home just because I know it doesn't work that way. Anyway, after being home for about 2 hours, I got a call from the sweetest sister counselors, Emily and Elizabeth, saying that they wanted to come spend time with me. So about 3 hours after that, I was in the company of my counselor friends. I told them about wanting to change my major and I asked for them to pray for me. Then, they called Joel, another counselor, and he wanted to come visit us all in Senatobia. So by 4:00 Sunday afternoon, 4 of the 8 counselors were together again. It was wonderful!

The last week at camp, one of the counselors, Blake, told me about the church that he leads worship for and I told him that I was going to come see him. He didn't believe me. But when Joel, Emily, and Elizabeth showed up at my doorstep, we made plans to travel to Oxford to hang out with Blake. I have to say, Blake's church is AWESOME. It's an Anglican church, and the people there were so sweet and so welcoming. We happened to come on a night that they were doing to communion, which made me nervous. But it was nice.

ANYWAY, back to the actual story. During communion I started praying that God would really just show me which way to go with my education. I like those flashing neon lights, ya know. So I was praying. And next thing I know, the President, David, had his hand on my head, praying with me. I heard him say, "God, thank you for your child and thank you that she's following you. God, please bless the people that she will be leading and, God, bless the children that she's going to be leading."

TALK ABOUT A FLASHING NEON LIGHT! I just started trembling and shaking. David had never met me before, yet God told him what to say to me. It was absolutely amazing. So today, me and my counselor friends are going to Northwest to change my major to Elementary Education! Wish me luck!

Camp Lakeside Week 4

What an AMAZING week at camp this was!! We had 52 kids signed up at the beginning of the week--an all-time record for Camp Lakeside. Six kids decided in the beginning of the week that they were bored and they wanted to go home. I hated to see them go, but I also hated their attitudes towards the experience they were getting, so we said good riddance to them and had an AWESOME God-filled week! We had ELEVEN children come to know Christ! ELEVEN!!!! That's an AMAZING number!! What an AMAZING GOD we serve!!! Here are some things that happened this week:

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Me and my very very good friend and coworker stayed in Wildwood cabin, along with 13 of the sweetest girls EVER!! It was so awesome to see and hear how God was present in each of these girls' lives. They were so sweet. And they ALL had something to say--every moment that I was around. I told them at one point that my name wasn't "Ms. Red" anymore, and that they had to guess my new name before I would listed to them. It was interesting hearing the things they made up for me!! The picture above was taken at 11:30 on the last night of camp. We told the girls that if they cleaned up, we had a surprise for them, so they cleaned and we had a DANCE PARTY!!! YMCA!!!!!

The next day, the last day of camp, we had some extra time in our cabins before swim time. We were all hanging out, talking and telling funny stories. Somehow the radio just happened to turn on thanks to one of the little girls and we had yet another dance party. It was so much fun to watch the girls go crazy over songs like YMCA and Wild Thing and Mony Mony. I was tired, so I was chilling on my bed, and I had a few of the girls rubbing my back and talking to me and stuff. Well the next thing I know, those girls who had been so sweet to rub my back, are pushing me on the FLOOR. I hit the ground, and I hear "get her! Get her!" I'm thinking to myself, "Oh dear. This is going to end badly" I look up, and they've all got SHAVING CREAM in their hands, running after Emily, who has been so busy dancing that she had NO IDEA what is about to hit her. Poor thing got creamed--bad. But it was SOOO funny!!!

Also on the last day, it rained like crazy! The sky was lighting up with lightning, so it cut into the kids' swim time. But I don't think it bothered them. We played and danced in the rain like nothing had ever happened. The lightning died down, but the kids were having so much playing in the rain. So the counselors snuck into the gated pool area, locked the door, and waited for the kids to notice. It was so funny watching them bang on gates and scream "We want in!!" hahahaha!! Of course, being the good guy counselors that they are, I got pushed in the pool, fully clothed. It was soo much fun. Oh, and yes, we did finally let the kids in to swim, but not until I got those silly boys back!!!

The talent show was amazing this week. We had 15 kids sign up to do all sorts of talents. There was singing, flexibility demonstrations, piano playing, dancing, and bouncing balls 100 times. It was so nice. At the end of every talent show Mr. Blake, the worship leader, surprises the kids with "Great Balls of Fire" and everyone gets up and dances and it's just a GREAT way to end the week. Then we announce the winners (everyone is a winner at Camp Lakeside!). This week, in the middle of Great Balls of Fire, we were very rudely interrupted. About 10 seconds before the song ended and about 3 minutes before the end of the talent show, everything went silent. Our guest preacher for the week had unplugged our AMP and then proceeded to yell at Blake (in front of parents, kids, and counselors) about how we should all be ashamed of bringing that music into the church (this was a talent show, not a worship service) and we should be ashamed to call ourselves Christians because we listened to that music (heaven forbid he finds out what we were listening to at the dance party!). OH AND he mentioned that we shouldn't bring the world into the church (being a preacher, shouldn't that be your desire? Isn't that how the world gets saved, by bringing them into the church?) ANYWAY, the night ended on a really sour note, and the parents, hearing and seeing the tension between the counselors and what-not, decided to leave. There were no rewards given, there was no "Goodnight, we had a great week" speech. It just ended sourly.

BUT I won't say that that little episode spoiled the whole week. It was an AMAZING week at camp. I can't wait for next week (day camp!). Although it makes me very sad to think that camp is almost over. I'm desperately going to miss the place--and the PEOPLE! Holy moly! God really knew what He was doing when He put us counselors together. I've made some AMAZING friends these past few weeks! (NOTE: I found out this past week that Emily and I will be in the same dorm building this next fall!!! I'm sooo excited about that!!)