Hello!
Wow! It's hard to believe that over two weeks have passed since I last posted on this blog. I apologize for my tardiness. These past three weeks have been filled with projects, errands, and priorities that scratched two weeks of Internet off my list. Over the past two days I finally got caught up on my emails and can now make some forward progress.
These weeks have been filled with several challenges that have been very draining. The team went through another week of turmoil that required several days of communication before anything got resolved. In the process though, the team had to work through a lot of frustration and disappointment. We are finally in a rebound just in time for our final Sunday of services before the team finishes our summer and begins to head our different directions back home to school and work. It has been such an enormous pleasure to have been a part of this team. I have been spending a lot of time with the team working through the thought of getting back to civilization and our various home situations--in most cases, a Christian environment where each of us can recuperate from our summer of ministry. This has been an incredible summer.
In the midst of team drama, I battled two different fevers that sapped my energy to do anything but sleep when off-duty. I am feeling much better, but this made a big impact on my past two weeks.
On a much more positive side, after my last blog post, I lost my small point-and-shoot camera that has been taking all of these photos. It sounds strange to think of this as positive, especially since I had to live without a camera for an entire week! Talk about torturous. Through this experience though, I was able to get a replacement camera, a Canon A4000 similar to my previous camera except with 4x more zoom and nearly 4 additional megapixels. The part that is most spectacular though was that my sister, Cherie, read my Facebook post about the lost camera, and bought me a camera--a Canon T2I! I had been looking to buy this camera for nearly three years now, so I cannot believe it's here now! Unfortunately, with all the rush of these past two weeks, I am only now getting the opportunity to begin playing with it. The manual is 180 pages long, so I have a lot of reading ahead! LOL
My past two weekends have been spent with Drew on some great adventures. During the first week of August, we drove to South Dakota to retrieve his motorcycle in Rapid City. Along the way, we visited Wind Cave National Park and the Crazy Horse Memorial. Both were awesome experiences. I was particularly thrilled with Wind Cave: it's the fifth longest cave in the world, and fourth longest in North America! Unlike the dampness of most caves, this one is fairly dry, preserving a rare cave formation known as "Boxwork", which was formed before the cave existed, but becomes exposed through the slow erosion of the surrounding stone. The other treat about this place is that I now claim it as my twentieth national park that I've visited! Only another thirty or so more to go.
The second weekend was spent here at Yellowstone enjoying Drew's motorcycle as we took it along the 125-mile loop that forms the Grand Circle of the park. This was the first time I had ever been on a real motorcycle trip. Along the way, the most exhilarating experience was riding through a bison jam while sitting on the motorcycle exposed to the bison within 15 yards! We didn't stay to enjoy the close proximity as we were content to look at the bison herds at a safer distance. The perk about being a passenger was having the ability to take photos while passing through though.
A long day awaits me, so I need to go now. I have two sermons to post. Hopefully the Internet signal will be stronger tomorrow and allow me to upload them. Photos from the past two weeks are posted on the "Photos of the Week" page. Enjoy!
Blessings!
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