The first month of my summer has been filled with awesome people and water levels. Our staff is blending well thus far. It is incredible to see how a group from so many different backgrounds can meld well when their focal point is centered on Christ. We are able to love one another as Christ loved the church. It is awesome!!
The
water has come up and it is such a huge blessing for me to be able to be here
for another summer to help my team become acquainted with how the river works
at higher water than what they saw it all summer long last year.
School loan
As I live this summer I am constantly reminded of God’s
awesomeness. One of these times happened at the end of May, but to lead up to
it I must give some back-story. In January, I had enough money saved to be able
to pay off an unsubsidized school loan I had, so I went ahead and paid it off.
This left me with one subsidized loan that would not begin earning interest on
it till the beginning of June. Well, after paying the first loan it looked like
my second loan was going to take a long time to pay off because at the time I
was not making any money. But then I got the job at Glen Eyrie and my
Grandfather blessed all of the grand kids an undisclosed amount of cash that
they had been saving. With these two things added up I determined that with the
very few expenses I have this summer and the amount of money that I had in my
bank account, I decided that I would go ahead and pay off my school loan in
full. This means two things, one, I did not have to pay any interest on it.
Second, I am now debt free!! Thanks to Jesus for His provision.
Bible study
We are going through a book called “Good News for Those
Trying Harder”
We are three weeks into this study and the discussions that
come from it are very interesting. The main focus of the book is to teach
people that the Christian life is not about trying harder or completing a set
of steps to be a better Christian because God already has our life worked out
and we don’t have to try. We just have to believe.
Training
Our new staff training has been going well. Two of the three
new staff became certified. First was Ryan a couple weeks ago and has taken
about 3 or 4 commercial trips. Next was Amy and she was certified late last
week. We will now be focusing our time with Ben to get him certified before too
long.
On the 7th we took our staff and rafted Brown’s
Canyon. We will be taking a group from Texas on a 5-day raft/climb combo trip
and this is the one of the sections that we want to take them on. Brown’s
Canyon is like Bighorn Sheep Canyon in that the rapids are all class 2-3. This
means that it is a fairly easy section to learn and will be a fun trip for the
group we have coming in.
Impactful trips
My desire and goal with the trips that I take for Journey
Quest is to provide people with an adventure that they will remember and be
positively impacted. Now it is not on my power that people will be impacted,
but when I give the trip to the Lord that He will use me to be a light to the
people. When I let God move in and take my place it is a wonder what
conversations will be had. An example of this is as follows. On the morning of
the 15th I took Nita, Mindy and Jan down the river. I knew not at
the time that they would actually impact me more than I think I impacted them. As
we were going down I began to share with them how one of the rocks in the
canyon looks like a lamb watching the river, and how it points to the Lamb of
God Watching over us. Nita then tells me that as my name is a different form of
the name Jesus, that they were rafting with Jesus and were completely
surrounded and protected by His love. This really made me think about how my
name is a representation of Christ and how I live my life will either represent Him or myself.
Week of June 17th
This is the week I will be on a 5-day trip with Family Life
Church. We will be doing 3 days of rafting/duckies, 1 day of rock climbing and
a day of team building activities. I am super excited, as this will be my first
extended trip this year, it will also be our first completely offsite trip. Meaning that the entire trip will be distraction free and we will not have connection with many people outside of our trip. I am excited to see what the Lord is going to do in
my life as well as the life of the kids that we will be taking with us on this
trip.
Please be praying for Steve, Elise H., Amy and myself as we will be the guides on this trip. Pray for guidance, strength and wisdom as we lead this group of students this coming week. Also, be praying for the kids that will be coming that God will do a mighty work in all of their lives.
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