rollin' rollin' on the river!

this is the mississippi river...it looks a lot different here than in memphis!

you can go right down to the river

riverwalk

more riverwalk

There will be more pictures in the coming days!

these are kinda rough but whatever. i will have some pictures from downtown and the riverwalk soon. enjoy!


kyle...he should be wearing a tweed jacket

patrick (facing the camera) and kyle smoking in the basement/outdoors

it took quite a few matches before kyle and patrick got the hang of it :)

father/son bonding - basically rex is teaching kyle how to put tobacco in a pipe

sunset from the deck...basically it's really pretty here and this doesn't do it justice

definitely farm country...nothing like having a John Deere in your front yard

view from the deck of the Rains' home

up close and personal with chelsea and me

this is the baseball field where "Field of Dreams" was filmed. exciting huh?

Just to update the temperature, the high today was 51 around 8 tonight. BRRR! oh well.

I now like coffee. Ok, not coffee straight up but there's this coffee shop called "One Mean Bean" and they have the most amazing!! Beanuccino's ever! It's 2 espresso shots, a little milk, ice and caramel syrup. YUM! Plus, it helps me to stay up late :) Seriously though, I had 2 in one day (about 3 hours apart). I'm addicted.

Church today was really good. We met in the cafeteria for our service because it was a celebration service - kinda wrapping up the 40 Days of Purpose the church just completed. We had food and what not. I really like the closeness of the cafeteria. I mean the auditorium is really, really nice, but it's too huge for the amount of adults that we have. Rex gave a good message too. He was passionate about the topic which is taking what we learn about God and actually doing something with that and sharing the love of Christ with those we encounter. It was good!

I feel at peace here. It's nice to finally feel that. I don't think I realized how unpeaceful (is that a word) and restless I felt until coming here. It's weird but very cool. One thing that I love here is that I have seen several rainbows now. Like when I woke up from my 2 1/2 hour nap today :) there was a rainbow outside waiting for me. It's just a sweet reminder to me that God provides what we need even when we may not know that we need it.

God is teaching me some things about ministry. I felt as though I knew them before, but I never had actually experienced them. Does that make sense? Anyway, I'm learning how hard ministry is. Before now, church (as I have experienced it) ran pretty smoothly. the reason for this though is that Bellevue is a very established church. Here at New Life, everything is a new experience, everything is a trial. It's difficult. Also, I'm being shown when to use discernment in speaking, when to be very honest, and when to walk away. Last night was definitely a test of that. I had some interesting conversations with a guy (a friend of kyle's) whose personality is very much like mine only more abrasive (at least I hope I'm not that abrasive). I had to bite my tongue at some points, be truthful at other times, and finally I had to walk away. Nothing wrong with that...it's just difficult for me. I have the gift of prophecy and exhortation. In other words, I see problems very clearly. I also see how to fix them. However, it's a daily thing that God teaches me of when people are ready to hear and when I need to back off. Quite an interesting lesson that I wish I didn't have to learn :)

Anyway, I'm excited about tomorrow. I get to go with Devin to Mediacom and learn how to use their cameras. I'm talking really nice mamajammas that are high quality. Kinda excited. Kinda not so excited because Devin is way more familiar with this stuff than I am so I'll probably feel like an idiot. Oh well. What else is new? (besides my name of course). haha. Nathan asked me the other day, "what's new" and I replied with "my name". It took him a while but he got it. It made me laugh.

I think I'm going to bed soon. All this lack of sleep is catching up with me. It's just the family as a whole are night people and I'm so not. I feel like I'm missing out on something if I'm not hanging out with them, but I also don't want to be cranky. We know how cranky I can get without sleep. Right savannah, linzee, mom? ok well probably everyone reading this knows. :) so goodnight dear readers. Thanks for keeping up with me.

Ps...I dropped off my film tonight so hopefully by tomorrow afternoon I will have pictures up! YAY! here's hoping they turned out good. til we meet again, parting is such sweet sorrow. or something like that!

God is teaching me 1) patience and 2) that leadership/ministry is a hard job. Two hard concepts. Pray for me...

It's JUNE and its 47 degrees outside. Did you catch that? FORTY-SEVEN!!!! Brrr..

I'm in LOVE!

Now, before you get too excited let me explain...I'm in love with Iowa and Wisconsin!!! HAHAHA Who would have ever thought that those words would proceed (figuratively) out of my mouth!?!? But it's true. It's sooo beautiful here. I just got back from Wisconsin where I went with Kyle, Kurt, and Samantha to see Sam's game. She lost but it wasn't too bad of a game. Anyway, on the drive up there (to Wisconsin) Kyle brought Kurt's guitar and so we had live music and a huge 1 1/2 long kareoke (that's not how you spell it is it?)night. We had fun. Anyway, I can now add another state to my list so that hopefully I can achieve my goal of visiting all 50 states by the time I'm 30.

It's funny. Being here is straight out of a movie. You know how they always depict rural towns going to baseball games and driving and being completely random? It's true! I've already been in 3 days to 2 softball games (I'm learning to love them) and it's just relaxing here.

The cool thing though is that I also accomplished a lot today. Devin and I set up a time and place to do a car wash and a bake sale (These Iowans are in for a treat!!) We also set up a time to be trained so that we can do movies and stuff through a company here called Mediacom. It's weird and I don't understand it, but we get to use all of their amazing equipment free because of some agreement between them and the city. Anyway, that's cool. Maybe I'll become a video and editing genius (or at least begin to kinda understand it). Oh yeah, I also designed a shirt and now just have to call some places and get price quotes. I think my new found hobby is t-shirt designing.

Anyway, because my body is mean and likes to wake me up early no matter what time I go to sleep, I'm about to head to bed. You should be proud though. I have stayed up until at least midnight every night since being here. I'm not sure I'll make it tonight though. :) Goodnight.

One more thing before I go. I was just handed a package that came in the mail for me. Dottie, I know you're trying to keep up with this. Please tell the girls THANK YOU!!! I literally have tears in my eyes. Please let them know how precious I think each and every one of them is. Also, tell Anna thank you for the reminder "No Boys". I had to smile at that one :)

Hey everyone! I kinda feel like a loser for not having any pictures up yet but oh well. I have taken some pictures, just not the whole roll. So you're going to have to wait to see the amazing rainbow I saw Tuesday (assuming of course the pictures turn out). Anyway, it was really cool and you could see all 7 of the colors and it started from the end of the horizon and arched over and faded into the clouds. It was cool.

Yesterday was good. I was able to sit down with Devin and map out what we want to do for the youth group this summer. Hopefully all goes well with that. We are planning to do a car wash in July to raise money so that later that month we can go to a water park relatively nearby. Today, Devin and I are going to go look at places and try to get them to let us hold it in their parking lot. (Ps..it's weird to me to be doing this since Bellevue has never done this and doesn't need to - that's just my random thought).

I think I'm going to the Great American River Festival this weekend. I'm pretty excited - I'll get to see the Charlie Daniels Band (for free) and Stix. Sweet! That should be fun. Right now, I need to go and find the prices of the "nearby" waterparks and also try to design a shirt for Ignite! Ciao (as they don't say in Iowa)

it's cold today! it's like maybe 55 degrees outside with the wind blowing. Brr..what happened to summer? oh well. i went and looked with Rex and Chelsea at a couple of potential places to move the church that might be less work each Sunday since currently that is the outcry of half of the core group - too much work=too tired to worship. interesting concept (that i don't really agree with).

Today I went to New Life and although I'll normally be helping Devin with the children's church, today I got to sit in on the "big church". It's really nice though, because Rex is really trying to ease me in slowly to this whole summer missionary thing. For instance, all I had to do today was run powerpoint (well actually a program called easy worship). But, I have my first weekly meeting with Rex and Devin Tuesday so i'm sure there will be a little more expected of me in the weeks to come. The church is really nice. We meet in a middle school that just opened in the fall so it's very nice auditorium. The children meet in the cafeteria. They have pretty good equipment and what not so it looks really good. Everything is really well organized and they're averaging between 65-85 people any given Sunday! They even have a worship band so that was nice. I'm looking forward to helping with children's church. it should be fun - they usually have about 10-15 kids each sunday. Anyway, I'm off to watch Beauty Shop with Chelsea (Kyle's sister who is going to be a junior)...catch ya later