Road Trip Across America... thus far.

So many of you may have seen through my facebook updates that now that camp is over, I'm heading on a little trip to see some of my favorite people, whom I haven’t seen in awhile. On August 1^st I’m singing in a wedding in Texarkana (which so originally got its name because of its location on the border of, you guessed it, Texas and Arkansas). My friend Kim, who worked Fuge with me in 2006 and was one of my closest friends while I lived in Dallas, is getting married and so I get to see her AND our friend Lauren. I’m so excited! It’s been too stinkin long!

Anyway, Kim’s wedding is the real reason for this crazy trip. I decided, that instead of driving home from TN to Virginia and hopping on a plane, I’d just drive to the wedding. Soooo here I am now, in Nashville hanging out with friends. I’ve been staying with my friend Laura, who was an incredible friendship that came out of my time in seminary, and it’s been so much fun to spend time with her. Monday, while I was waiting for Laura to get off work, I also got to see Stacy and hangout with her for a few hours, before I crashed on the couch in her husband, Lace’s office at the church. Sheesh, I was so tired. It was like, all the sleep I missed at camp, all caught up with me. That was the best, short nap I’ve ever taken. I’m excited to see Stacy again today for lunch and then I’m also going to stop by the fuge office for the first time and drop something off and then hopefully see a couple more people, before I head to Memphis to see some friends.

I love Nashville. I should try harder to find a job, so that I can move here and hangout with these amazing people all the time. Last night, it was so much fun… Our bass player and drummer from this summer are in another band, Reverie, and theydrove up from Chattanooga to play a show at the Rutledge here in town. Seth, our worship leader, heard that I was going to come, and since the 24 hours we’d already spent apart, had been hard on him, he decided to come to and hangout with me at the show too. It was great to see them, even though I had just seen them the day before… knowing they were coming to Nashville made it a million times easier to say goodbye when they left Caron Newman on Sunday. The show was great. I also saw this other band that I’m going to check out on Itunes and you should too, “Dinner and a Suit” and I thought they were pretty great.

Sooooo, from here….

I’m heading to Memphis to see Blake (a Fuge friend) and his wife Joy, and Rob (another Fuge friend)

Then Thursday morning I’ll head down for the wedding.

Then Sunday I’ll drive down to Dallas to see all my girls from seminary. I’m super excited about it too.

Tuesday, I’ll head to Longview Texas to see my friends Ashley (friend from elementary school) and her husband Tony (friend from seminary)……

Wednesday, I’m heading to Birmingham where our band from this summer is leading worship for a youth event and our program director is preaching one of the nights.

THEN… holy cow this is a lot of driving…. I’m going from Birmingham to Atlanta to see my friend Wes from seminary, and hopefully one of my best friends from high school, Kacie.

Eventually, I’ll be heading home to Virginia.

So that’s where I’ll be the next 2 weeks. I’ll probably be in my car a lot, so maybe you’ll get a phone call from me… so get excited… and get excited about pictures… because you know I’ll take some!

Last day

So, it's here... my last night at camp. Everyone is asleep, except for good ole Molly who still has some packing and cleaning, and work to do before she can get in bed. Oh well, such is life. It's a good thing I'm more of a night owl anyway.

Today was a hard day. The band guys had to get back home to Chattanooga this afternoon because they had practice for the worship service they're going to start playing for in a couple weeks, so they left a day early, as did Courtney and Jeremy. We all went to lunch together and that was really fun. This summer, Alex and I have spent many car rides listening to pop music, and one of our favorites is O-Town's "All or Nothing." He even learned it on the piano and we sang it with the staff in the auditorium :) So today on the way to lunch, when we had our last "All or Nothing" moment, I may have cried just a little.

After lunch we came back here and helped everyone pack up... and then I cried some more as I said goodbyes. Thankfully, most of the girls are sticking around until tomorrow morning, and I'll see 3 of the guys tomorrow night in Nashville because Drew and Steve are playing a show downtown. Soooooo my tears were able to be held at bay at least a little.

I say this every year, but seriously, the real world just cant comprehend how close you can get to people when you spend all day, every day with people... doing the same things, living together, praying together and for one another, when you're ministering together and your heartbeat is the same. Each summer I'm so blessed to add members to my Fuge Family, those relationships who in just 8 short weeks have become lifelong friends.

This summer taught me a lot about myself, how I love people.... I've never worked with such an intentional group of people, who encourage and think of others way before themselves.

I know I need a grown up job, but maybe I'll do just one more summer...

Oh Alex.... you're great.

So, all summer long, we've had a secret weapon to fight off gloomy days... and that would be "Madison," a song written by my pal Alex. It's about a guy who falls in love with this girl Madison but becomes a bit creepy, stalkerish. It's hilarious. So before the summer ended we had to get that junk on video........ and here it is. Enjoy it! It's copyrighted so don't try and steal it and make lots of money off it. :)

Enjoy the greatness that is, Alex. I hope it makes you smile as much as it did us this summer.

Reality... it's not always fun.

Oh man, tomorrow is our last full day of camp for the summer. That stinks! Tomorrow is also when our pastor Ryan leaves to head home for a wedding... boo to that mess.

How sad.

This last week has been great though. We've got a great group of students and the small size of the camp has allowed us to be super intentional, and I think the adults and students have really enjoyed getting to know us, and see us loving on their kids.

Since it is the last week, we've got to do inventory.. and inventory is my job as the financial director. woohoo. sike.

We have two main places where our junk is stored during the year. 1. Heritage Hall basement and 2. The Rec Closet in Baker.

Our rec director has been doing an awesome job cleaning and clearing out the rec closet so she can count everything and then store it in the organized way that she was trained to do.. Heritage.................. oh snap. At the beginning of the summer that closet was PACKED with hardly any room to move. Now, it look beautiful. There was stuff in there that hadnt been opened since 1990... crap that didnt work or we never used. It was ridiculous. Alex, Seth, Courtney, Olivia, Megan and I spent hours inhaling rat pee and mold fumes... but at least it looks a million times more organized and clean now.

So since I'm technically supposed to be doing inventory during track times, I havent had to teach a track A this week and since our camp is less than 100 students, and I had 50 in the battleball track at the beginning of the week, Battleball didnt make for round two... so during track A I decided to take a little trip that I've wanted to take all summer. After geting permission from Megan, Seth (our worship leader and my partner in crime) and I headed over to the Boys and Girls club to hangout with Courtney and her missions track. We were only able to stay for a hot second because Seth had to lead the table games track, but oh man it was fun to hangout with those precious kids. It was a huge highlight of my day.

Week 6 day uno.

So today was a mixture of emotions for sure. This week we're doing inventory here at camp, which means everything needs to be boxed up, labels, inventoried, and then stored away until next summer. As the Financial Director, inventory is kind of my thing.

Let me just say, this is a learning process.
How does a tiny staff of 14 get all our junk inventoried and still be accessible to students during freetime. Things are getting worked out, but today, the practical side of me took over instead of the ministry/intentional side of me... and I regretfully feel like our students missed out on building relationships with their bible study leaders. I'm kind of bummed about it. BUT tomorrow, we've fixed it and hopefully the rest of the week, our bible study leaders will have more time to be intentional.

You live and you learn.

Dude.. this week we only have like, 105 people here. That's including adults. Bible study groups are between 12-15 people.

THATS INSANE

Insanely awesome.
I mean, discussion might be harder to facilitate, but how great would it be as a bible study leader to get to be that dang intentional. Its crazy.

Worship was pretty quiet today though.
Quiet amongst the students.... crazy loud in my head.
I think tonight I came face to face with some realities that I wasnt expecting. After worship I trapped our pastor and my friend Ryan in the car as we drove to Subway... and I may have cried a little. I have a lot of anxiety about life after camp. I have a lot of anxiety about things i feel have been revealed to me this summer.
I'm glad Ryan is our camp pastor this summer, because let me tell you, that joker is REAL. He is gonna tell you how it is... but the thing that makes him an incredible pastor (and friend) is that when he hits you with truth, it might hurt a little, but it never leaves you wounded. He's thoughtful in what he says, and so you know if he's being bold enough to speak it to you, it's because he's thought about it beforehand.

This week we're also doing a time in the morning and at night where we go around the group and individually encourage one another. Everyone of us says something.
Tonight was my night.
I don't mean to say this so cavalier... I really do mean this when I say that I feel like those moments where everyone on my staff went around and shared what they saw in me this summer, I really feel like some of the things that were said, had a pivotal affect on my life. I still have to process things, but holy cow, talk about overwhelming. There were things that were said about me, that I always hoped people saw in me, but just assumed my overbearing, loud, crazy personality overshadowed those things. It was incredibly encouraging...

I really am going to miss these people more than I ever thought I could after only 6 weeks of camp together. I feel like I've grown closer with this staff in its entirety (not just specific people) than any other staff... because of its small size. Blah.. I dont want to think about saying goodbye................. Ryan Warren just needs to start his church so we can all work there.

Plain and simple.

I cant say it enough.. this summer has been awesome and I really truly love my job.

Uh oh... We're on YouTube.

These two videos make my heart happy and they're probably only funny to the people who are in them... but thats okay. :) Our jobs are very tiring... pop music is how we unwind. Get excited.




Camp pastor, worship leader, and the financial director..... The Proph3tz

Christmas Recap.

So, like I said before, this week was our Christmas week. I absolutely love that each summer, we get to celebrate Christmas together. My secret Santa was great and I knew pretty early on that my person was probably a girl, but other than that, I had no idea who it might be.

All throughout the week we did stuff together during the evenings, like make hot chocolate and decorate the office, or have a Christmas tree decorating contest, decorated cookies.. and then on Friday we did "Pimp My Mega" which is when your secret Santa got to pick out the most ridiculous outfit for their person and then force you to wear it in front of 200 people at Mega Relay. We had some hilarious outfits for sure. It was so much fun.

Yesterday, after camp ended, we took some time to rest and then met up for dinner. We headed toward the interstate and ate at Outback together. After dinner, we got back to campus and dispersed for a few minutes. While everyone was getting their gifts together, Megan, Whitney and I headed to the office to get some surprises together. Over the last few weeks, Whitney had made some phone calls to our parents to see if they would send gifts for us to open, as well as a pair of paJAMa pants. Soooo we set out everyone's gifts and let everyone in the office.

Everyone sat down where their gifts were, surprised to see packages from their families back home. So the first thing we did was open those boxes. Uh, my parents are ridiculously embarrassing. All the girls on staff got cute PJs... you'll see in my pictures what my parents thought would be a goood gift. Jerks. ;) THEN after we opened gifts from our parents, we opened up our stalkings, which we had each left "Intangibles" in for everyone on our staff. Intangibles are basically gifts you would give someone if money weren't an issue. For instance... I got a few "hot boys with big muscles who love the Lord." "Adam Lambert, uninterrupted for an entire hour" "Chapstick" (Which I will not expound upon) and a couple other things. It's really special because for every one that is just silly and goofy, there's another card that reminds you that someones been paying attention to who you are this summer, and wants you to have the things that you hope for or are passionate about. It was funny, but really special too.

Then after that we got to give our gifts to the person we've been secret santa-ing all week. It was great to see people try and guess who their person was. I got mine wrong twice! My secret santa was Whitney.. and she gave me, The People Magazine covering Michael Jackson's death (because that was clearly a hard thing for me this summer), "Where the Red Fern Grows" on DVD WOOHOOO!!, and Babysitter's club books AND an Itunes giftcard. She stinkin rocks!

And of course, we finished the night off by reading the Christmas story together.
It was one of the more special camp Christmases I've celebrated in my camp experience.

I've worked on some massive staffs the last few summers and I've seen how great that can be. I can't tell you how nervous I was to work on a staff of only 14 (15 if you include, which we do, our amazing support staffer, Hannah), but goodness gracious, it is so obvious that the Lord placed us together for a reason. This summer has been amazing, and it's going to be so hard to say goodbye to these people whom I've grown to love, next week once camp ends.

camp is just fabulous.
Enjoy the pictures...

I mean, what other job do you get to go from an awesome time of worship, to the craziness that is Mega Relay?!


Our "Pimp my Mega" outfits.
What a sight we all were!

I didn't know this at the time, but Whitney was my secret santa,
thus the person responsible for my ridiculous outfit!

Jeremy and Courtney.
Jeremy was who I had all week...
I borrowed some inspiration from my outfit last summer.
I think he really liked the pants I got him!

This picture is hilarious because it is the antithesis of what Steve normally wears.

Every friday, before mega, I make the girls line up on the field to do our dance.
Just because we were dressed like crazies, this week was no exception!

Whitney and me at dinner for Christmas,
before I found out she'd been my secret santa all week.

Tacky Christmas sweaters!

Uh, thanks mom and dad.
no really, thanks.

Successful and special Christmas!

Thursdays Rock

Those of you who know me well... you know that I am 100% not a morning person. I love sleeping, and so the days when I wake up thanks to the trusty alarm clock on my phone, it typically takes me a few hours to get it together and find the strength to smile. At camp, I typically have to put on the Fuge Smile, but that smile doesnt usually happen until we're walking out of AM Show and on our way to quiet time.

This year, on Thursdays, things are a little different.

For those of you who don't know, at camp the last 2 summers, our videos have revolved around a guy named Walt and how a company called "Adventure Now" has summoned him to go on various adventures..

DUDE. Thursdays video is hilarious.
I sit back on the computer (where I run Pro Presenter- lyrics, videos, stuff on the screen) and laugh with the light and sound people who are also on the headset.
Thursdays, I rock the smile earlier than usual.

I like Thursdays.

THIS WEEK...

it's also Christmas week. We celebrate Christmas together as a staff and we each have a secret santa that leaves us gifts everyday. Day one was uh... dollar store day and i got a pirate patch and some bubbles... Day two was uh favorite snack... day 3 was encouragement day and I came back at the end of the day to hilarious and encouraging cards on my apartment door. Today is "Homemade gift day" and i came out of my apartment to find a hat with birds glued to it and brownies. Awesome.

I'm looking forward to this weekend and spending time with my staff celebrating Christ's birth and spending time with people I love.

Here are some pictures of the last few days...

Merry Pillow is our code so that churches don't know we're celebrating Christmas.

Santa's Chimney that Alex and I made.

paparazzi

Track Time Rally....
Olivia, Seth, Drew, and me

Alex getting ready to teach my volleyball track so I could go to the bank.
L-I-F-E--S-A-V-E-R
No. not the candy.

They love me... they just forgot that momentarily during the picture.

Missions Mama

Our paparazzi for the summer, Kevin

Dude, we're hardcore.
Don't even mess with Megan and Molly

Courtney is always ready to strike a pose

Alex doing an awesome job running the register.
Did I mention he's a Life Saver?
Not the candy.

Hanging out in the store
Courtney, me, and Heather (director of the coast to coast team,
and one of our special teamers this week)

I was all excited to have a fellow DTSer here this week as a Special Teamer...
and then this is how he turns out?
Ridiculous. :)

Our sound guy Josh striking a pose.

Drew and Molly.. throwing up gang signs

Yeah, I'm glad Alex is my friend.
We made a sweet music video, but my laptop is struggling to upload it.
Coming soon, hopefully.

It's pretty appropriate that this is blurry, given the medication we're on for injuries.
Ryan, the most hardcore camp pastor known to man.

Crazy Steve... this kid can make you laugh like no other.
And you should hear his "All 4 One" impression.

You would, Seth.
Poor Steve.

Life is crazy this week. Week 4 is our biggest week of the summer so it's been busy fo shizzle. It's been a good week though. It's hard to believe we'll be leaving in 2 weeks! Sad!!!

Will post more later.