Summer 2013

Journey Quest

Alright folks here is my next update. I'll start with where I left off my blog that I wrote over a year ago. I was working at Journey Quest and was loving the time that I had with all of these awesome people!

Left to Right - Ryan, Ben, Elise H, Elise S, Amy, Cori, Me

Guiding a family on a single day float

For those who don't recall, I was about to be on a week long combo trip with Family Life Church in Lake Jackson, Texas.

Family Life Church

Guys tent in progress

Ladies Tent completed

team building activities

Bible Study

The youth pastor Chris and kids

Worship session

Worship Session

Duckies

Rafting

One thing that was awesome for me was because of my years spent with this company, I had the privilege to be the trip leader for all of the rafting portions for this whole trip. This was a fun task because with a group of this size and spending as many days on the river as we did it is important to have the boats and crews organized so that they can be balanced. It also gives the kids an element of surprise for who they'll be rafting with on a given day.
 

Impromptu Baptism

So this photo deserves some explanation. This day was the start of our last rafting/duckie day, well we were all ready and waiting for someone or something, I don't remember what it was, but we were all in our wetsuits dying of heat. Therefore, we decided that we would dunk the kids in the river to cool them off. Well the youth pastor was pretending it was a baptism, but then one of the kids asked if he would do it for real, which is awesome! After this we had a few kids who were baptized for the first time 

Rock Climbing

Elise H.!

Brendan & Ryan Belaying

Smoke from wildfires

More Smoke

Ingredients for Pita Pizzas

Cooking the Pita Pizzas!

Crazy bus rides!!

Group departure = sad day

This group was a ton of fun. We had lots of fun adventures: Duckies, Rafting, Rock Climbing, Rappelling, and great food. An awesome part of this trip was we had many kids accept Christ into their hearts and a few more kids get baptized.

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The rest of my summer was an absolute blast with several other extended trips. One of those trips I actually had the privilege of leading and organizing. This trip was with New Life Community Church from Gardner, Kansas. This group was a men's retreat and it included a day of whitewater rafting, Rock climbing and Rappelling.

New Life Community Church

Campfires!

Rappelling

More rappelling

yup... more rappelling

Grime from the rope

Here's one of the guys rock climbing

And another one

yup and another one climbing

One of the most awesome things about leading this group of men was that through all the adventurous stuff we did, it challenged each and every man. Someone may ask, but they're grown men. And my response would be that yes they are, but we are all human each with our own fears. Some may have been scared of heights and so climbing was challenging or they may have been afraid of water and so rafting was challenging. No matter what we did they were challenged, but the awesome thing is that we were able to be there to encourage them in that challenge and they were all able to overcome.

The rafting trip we took was a full day Royal Gorge from JQ to Pink house, it was an awesome time and the men were thrilled!!

Rafting - Sharks tooth rapid

Breakfast!! Bacon and French toast

Evening Talks

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Overall, my summer was awesome! Though it did end shorter for me than I was planning. I'll go into this in great length in my next post.

JQ 2013 Staff taken at Anderson's

This photo was of all the staff at the Anderson's for a New Year's party!

 

My Crazy Life and Adventures

Hello all, it has been over a year since I have updated my blog, which is a very crazy thought. I'll be honest, my life has been jammed packed with all sorts of events. All the way from amazing river trips with Journey Quest, injuries, a friend's wedding, working at Glen Eyrie as well as this past summer of working as a counselor with Eagle Lake Camp.

 So for the sake of clarity and to speed up the process of sharing what is going on in my life, I have decided to break my life down into several different posts going mostly in chronological order from where I left last year. Expect to see my next post about the rest of the 2013 summer in the next couple of days. Here is a preview of it.

Sporting wetsuits