Link to my China blog!

http://kyleschinaadventures.blogspot.com/

dance camp, volleyball, fishing, lessons learned, and home sweet home

Here's Jenny, Canal Street's awesome administrative assistant, and her husband Michael. And just in case you were wondering, they're not that tall! We were on the church steps and I was about 2 steps below them.

Pastor Mike himself giving me one final sermon before I took off for the airport!

Ever since Mikey got bit by that spider he's never been the same... oh yah and that's Rusty in the middle - the volleyball player and fisherman that provided me with a healthy break from the 50+ hours a week of interning. He's a champ!

Probably the best intern picture we took together. Mike actually smiled!



Well my time in NOLA came to an end Tuesday afternoon as I departed from the New Orleans airport gripping my forehead as the plane left the runway and praying that the steak burrito I had just inhaled for lunch from Juan's Flying Burrito wasn't going to end up in my lap. As usual I felt nauseous and tired during most of my 5+ hours in the air, but I thankfully held down my food. (This motion sickness deal will be interesting when I go to China considering we have 5-6 flights within a 2 1/2 week period.)

Anyways, the last few weeks of my time spent there were busy but enjoyable. The second week of dance camp thankfully ended up being a lot easier than I expected. It was a smaller group of older kids who didn't need as much supervision as the group of 30+ grade schoolers did the week before. Our primary role as interns was to take care of check-in/check-out, share with the kids a devotional based on the dance instructors' themes for each day, and to make lunch for about 50 people. Therefore we gave devotionals on the themes of Identity (in Christ), Family (of God), Rebuilding (house/life on a Rock instead of sand), and Faith (in God's faithfulness) and made spaghetti, clucks and fries, hot dogs, red beans and rice, and pizza. Everything went smoothly and almost every day we had the exact amount of food necessary which was awesome. We also fortunately had a lot of help in the kitchen from Jenny, the church secretary, and some other "mom volunteers" from the congregation. Aside from those roles there really wasn't a lot of other responsibilities we had so we spent some of our time writing thank you notes to all of the people who helped and provided meals for us during the summer, and made "Interns 2008" T-Shirts out of puffy-paint (boy did I feel like a girl but they turned out cool!). Oh ya and we told the kids we were professional dancers and taught them a "very difficult" dance routine which consisted of three moves to this video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOxR7rTYuSI
It was great.

I also concluded the "volleyball side of my summer" victoriously. I was given the opportunity to play on a coed 6's volleyball team during the Friday night league all summer at Coconut Beach with Rusty and his wife Cassie, Jenny and her husband Michael, and a girl named Krista. We played on the second most competitive net on the beach - Court #2 of about 15 courts. Our win last Friday night secured us "Best of the Net" which means that I should be getting a champions t-shirt in the mail here shortly. =P Furthermore, I also played in a men's doubles tournament on Saturday from about 4pm-10pm. I played in the AA bracket which had 13 teams (I usually only play in the A bracket) with a 20 year-old guy named Nick who I had met through Rusty. We had never played together but our similar style allowed us to gel well together. We went undefeated in pool play and battled our way to victory in the play-offs where we played 3 tough games - 2 of which we only won 25-23 and 25-22. As a prize I took home $110 pair of Bolle Sport sunglasses and a thankful heart for God's faithfulness in giving me the grace to play the sport I love for this brief season of my life.

Sunday morning's church service was also an important part of my last few days down there. Pastor Mike had asked the other interns and I to share with the congregation what we had experienced and what we had learned during our 10 weeks of serving. I spoke for about 8 minutes and talked a lot about how a theme for me this summer was really about looking for Jesus in the eyes of the people we served as Grant, the intern from last summer, had encouraged me to do when he was down there with his home church during our first week in the field. I can honestly say that I was able to understand what Jesus meant in the parable of the Sheep and Goats in Matthew 25 when Jesus, talking about helping those in need, said "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." The look of gratitude and joy I saw in the people's faces was what kept me focused and kept me going amidst exhaustion. After the service we ate cake in the fellowship hall and said our fair wells to people in the congregation. Soon after, Candace and her boyfriend Lindo and Anna and her parents took off for home on their 24 hour road trip back to Colorado. I, on the other hand, stayed until Tuesday and spent some quality time with my host family and with Mikey before heading home.

On Monday Mikey and I got the incredible opportunity of going on a fishing trip with Rusty on his 22-foot fishing boat. We woke up at 3:45am and after an hour drive and a 15 minute boat ride we were fishing literally in the area where the eye of the storm hit from Katrina in 2005. We primarily fished in the marshes in about 2-5 feet of water and experienced what Rusty said was probably the rainiest and windiest day he'd ever fished. The winds were at times blowing at 35-45 mph and the rain drenched us multiple times. With just board shorts on, mother nature delivered the coldest weather I experienced all summer long. Thankfully I could sit on the side of the boat and keep my feet warm in the murky 85 degree water while I casted. We used raw shrimp for bait and ended up catching over 150 fish, though many were small salt-water catfish or red fish that were too small to keep. By the end of the day we had 6-7 red fish keepers which were 2-5 pounds each. This for Rusty was considered a horrible day, but Mikey and I were just grateful to be out on the water and had a blast fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Finally, while I'm pretty sure this experience will be one I continue to learn from as the Lord reveals things to me (right now it in some respects just feels like a really long dream), here is a list of what I learned:

• I gained a fuller understanding of what true sacrificial hospitality looks like. As I have mentioned before, the host family I stayed with had 2 boys – 16 and 18 years old - who gave up their air conditioned room for 10 weeks and slept in the basement that was gutted after Katrina (no lights/sheetrock/AC/etc) which is basically like sleeping in an old musty garage (3rd John 5-8 comes to mind regarding their hospitality)
• I learned to eat cereal fast. For if I didn't, the 85 degree kitchen warmed the milk and ruined the bowl.
• I learned to delegate tasks to teenagers and adult leaders that I hardly knew, and to improvise when things “weren't going as planned"
• I have began to grasp the challenges and the tension that exists in a small Presbyterian church (around 40 members) with a tight financial budget and differing views on church government and procedures. (my home church growing up was 1500+ people)
• I learned that the “strawberry” and “wedding cake” syrup flavors mixed together with ice and creamy ice cream in a snowball makes any bad day better.
• I learned to establish friendships quickly with people on the various work teams. To pour myself out and genuinely care for them and try to get to know them with the full knowledge that in less than a week I would say goodbye to them and likely not see them again until we reminisce in Heaven of our week serving Him together in New Orleans. (This was challenging because one team of 25 would leave Saturday morning and 10 hours later a team with 45 new names and faces would arrive.)
• I learned (and will continue to learn no doubt) to be flexible and patient. I had no car which greatly limited where I could go and when I could go there and leave there. I also learning to be frugal. Living on a ministry budget helps differentiate between “needs” and “wants” quickly.
• I learned to see God's sovereignty in the midst of brokenness. I saw how families and friends are uniting to work on each others' homes, and how the body of Christ from churches all over the United States are continuing to be Jesus' hands and feet helping those in need.
  

Alright I think thats all I will say for now. I hope you all have enjoyed reading this blog. As of today I have 3 weeks to rest and recuperate until China comes and provides a whole new definition of "culture shock." So if you're in the Seattle area please call me or text me so we can catch up! I will definitely be blogging during China as well and I will either keep this blog site or provide a link here for my new blog.

Kyle

My friend Kristen and I were waiting for a train to go by behind this beautiful truck. I thought it would be a good idea to take a picture to portray the loose regulations Lousiana has for "tying down your load." If you look closely enough you can see a washer, a red car bumper, and an air conditioner window unit amongst other random items.



Here's a picture of the interns out on Rusty's boat soon after my foot was impaled by the boat cleat.



Here is a picture we took with Miss Bobby and Mr. Alfonso. We've probably put in around 1000 man hours at their house with the various work teams this summer.

This is the side of Miss Bobby's house after it received two fresh coats of paint.

VBS, painting, and a puncture wound

Time has gone by unbelievably fast down here and it’s crazy to think that I’ll be heading back to Seattle in a little over two weeks. Before I talk about heading home however, let me summarize the last week and a half or so.

As I mentioned in my last post, the group of 46 from North Carolina has proven to be our most challenging group to date. It was just a lot of people and organization of the entire team was frustrating. Yet looking back now, I can see that it was a rather successful week. The Vacation Bible School went smoothly and the numbers stayed constant around 40 kids each day. Also, by the end of the week, seven kids made a commitment to Christ and I believe that seeds were planted in others which will later be watered to fruition. Furthermore, the exterior of 2 houses were almost completely painted! The work teams were troopers in the sizzling 95 degree weather and worked their tails off. One of the highlights of the week that happened on my worksite was when the group’s bus driver, who worked for the charter bus company and had no connection with the church, began to help out painting the house. He was an older gentleman (probably 65) named Al who was only required to drop off and pickup the work teams which meant that him and his wife (who was along for the ride) had 6 days of vacationing to themselves in New Orleans. Yet Al, who used to run his own painting business, saw that we were all rookies at caulking windows so he spent a day and a half doing that for us while his wife helped paint. This was a big help and it was just cool to see them give up some of their time to serve with us.

This group took off last Saturday morning and a group of 9 adults from Colorado Springs got in Saturday and left Friday the 25^th. While the Charlotte group was our hardest group, the Colorado Springs group was probably our easiest. They were all apart of the 1^st Presbyterian Colorado Springs’ “singles group” called bridges and ranged from 18 to 35. There was a plumber named Jim who we kept busy all week running around to multiple houses and a contractor named Mike who worked well with our Mikey teaching the group how to mud, tape, and float drywall which I have learned is quite an art. We spent the week working on Miss Bobby and Mr. Alfonso’s house. They are this cute African American couple in their 70’s who were trapped in their home in 8 feet of water during Katrina. Miss Bobby is one of the nicest most grateful ladies I have ever met. She also has a gripping story of how her and her husband were rescued in the storm. The short version is that she and Alfonso were trapped up in their attic for three full days in the middle of the atrociously hot August heat where they managed to get in contact with their two sons just before their cell phone went dead. Her sons, who had access to a boat, were able to navigate through the devastated neighborhood that was under 8+ feet of water which took 2 hours because there were so many obstacles (cars, houses, street signs, etc) to maneuver around and because the names of the streets were underwater. When they finally found the house they had to tear through the roof to get them out. (This brief description doesn’t do justice to the way Miss Bobby tells the tale and explains how God’s providence allowed everything to work out, but you get the idea.) Anyways, we spent the week finishing the exterior painting and getting a significant portion of the drywall done. Unfortunately we only have one more work team in for the summer so we won’t be able to complete the entire house, though Mikey (who lives down here full-time) will be able to get most of the work done within the next few months with the help of a few friends.

This next week should be very interesting as it will be our first week of “dance camp.” There is a group of 12 dance instructors from a professional dance studio who will be here for two weeks teaching neighborhood kids how to dance. Accompanying this group will be a group of 15 (11 high schoolers and 4 adult leaders) from Lookout Mountain Presbyterian church in Colorado who will be assisting the camp and also doing some relief work as well. As much as I know I could use dance lessons, Mikey and I have decided to lead the work team while Candace and Anna will stick around the church to help run the camp. The following week, however, there is no work team coming and Mikey and I will be “forced” to help out at dance camp. While I can already envision how embarrassing it might be, perhaps my future wife (Lord-willing) will appreciate it!

Life outside of work has been awesome also aside from a recent injury I incurred (that I’ll explain eventually). I have been fortunate enough to go out twice on the 22 foot fishing boat that Rusty (the 27 year old guy I play volleyball with) owns in the swampy Louisiana rivers and lakes. The first time I went was on my day off two weeks ago. I went with Rusty, his sister Katie and two of her friends from Michigan who happened to be in town and wanted to go for a ride. We went through a bunch of fishing camps (cabins along the river that are only accessible by boat) and spotted 4-5 alligators during our adventure. The second time I went was Friday afternoon after work which was with Rusty, his other sister Jenny (the church secretary) and the other three interns. We took a similar tour of the fishing camps and then went out into a large lake where we decided to swim in the warm, muddy lake water about a quarter mile off shore (Rusty’s thermometer literally read 85 degrees which makes sense considering the entire lake is 6-8 feet deep!). It was here that my rather painful injury took place. This is how it happened: Rusty and the other three interns and I were standing on the bow of the boat before anyone had jumped in while Jenny was taking a picture of us all. Once the picture was taken, no one really wanted to go into the murky water first so Rusty gave me a forceful push and the bottom of my heal basically got bayoneted by the cleat on the top of the boat which left a nice half inch deep gouge in the bottom of my foot. It hurt like hell but I still swam in the swampy water for about half an hour (probably not the best idea with an open flesh wound). Once we were done I got some gauze from Rusty’s first aid kit and monitored the bleeding until we got back to the boat launch. Now of course Friday night is the night of our volleyball league and there’s no way I was going to sit out. It turns out Cassie, Rusty’s wife, is a nurse and so when we got back to Rusty’s house with the boat, she rinsed out the wound with peroxide, put some Neosporin over it and bandaged and taped it up to keep the sand out. I popped 3 Tylenols and played. Jumping hurt a lot but I was still able to jump high enough to hit a guy in the face with my spike which helped keep me motivated. =) It was a really close match and we came back in the third game from an 11-7 deficit to win the match 15-13. Afterwards I rewashed the wound with peroxide and bandaged it up. On Sunday it wasn’t looking too good so I went to an after-hours clinic and got a tetnus shot, some anti-biotics, and some ointment. I figure the best way to look at the situation is that I’ll now probably have a nice scar to remember New Orleans and Rusty by.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, my time down here has flown by. And while I know there’s a whole new adventure that lies ahead of me with my trip to China, I really have grown to love it here and will be sad to leave. I’m doing my best to “live in the moment” to “be present” and “breathe it all in” because I don’t know if the Lord will lead me to Louisiana again.

Well I’ll update in a few days about our glorious dance camp and my unpleasant puncture wound. I’ll also get some pictures up once those crazy girl interns decide to upload them. Ah… the frustration of not having a camera.

Kyle

Critters, water fights, and paint

So last week ended up going great despite the fact that only 5-7 kids showed up each day to basketball camp. This meant that on Monday we had about 12 leaders from Indiana (who were expecting about 40 ballers) and only 5 kids came! Thankfully 5-6 of the leaders were flexible and Anna and I ended up switching off taking them to a variety of different worksites throughout the week where we worked alongside them until the other half who stayed for basketball camp joined us in the afternoon. On Tuesday we did demo work on Dennis’ house who is an older widow that I have been working with throughout the summer. Parts of his roof blew off during the storm and water came in and rotted the walls (which happened to already be probably 50 years old). It’s been neat to see the progress we have made with the multiple work teams who have helped him out.

On Wednesday we went to City Park and did yard work all day. We pruned trees and pulled weeds. The thunder and lightning tried to scare us away before lunch, but we waited it out beneath a large plastic tent that was once used for weddings before the storm. One exciting discovery within this tent was hundreds of Antlions. These crazy insects dig small holes in the sand known simply as “sand pit traps” which they use to capture their unfortunate prey – usually an ant as their name implies. When one of the high school boys identified one of these pits, we all of a sudden had free entertainment for a solid hour as we ate lunch and waited out the weather. We found multiple victims consisting of ants and spiders and dropped them into the “Pits of Doom.” They scrambled for their lives, but were often sucked under and eaten alive by these ferocious creatures. It was epic. Once the storm subsided we worked for another hour or so but were again bombarded by bad weather. We waited it out for about 45 minutes under a rundown bathroom shelter as the thunder roared only a few miles away. When it was nearing 3pm we decided to call it a day. It was during our trek back to the bus (oh I forgot to mention that the Indianans brought a school bus…well they did) that I foolishly got myself into a water fight with some of the high school girls. I must admit that I got pretty drenched, though I’m pretty sure I won the battle when this 6’5’’ tenth grade boy held captive one of the girls while the pastor’s oldest son assisted me in dumping the remaining half of a 5-gallon water jug that was half full of ice and water on top of her head. (just picture a football coach getting dunked after winning the super bowl). = )

On Thursday I was able to take the day off. This meant that I got to sleep in, though I spent half the day writing my “Mid-Term Reflection” essay that I am required to complete as a part of the Lilly Summer Internship Fund. This was actually kind of enjoyable and beneficial as I reflected on the first half of the internship and thought of how the next month or so should play out. I also got to play some competitive double’s volleyball with Rusty (my friend from the church who helps out with the youth group), and some of the best players out at Coconut Beach. Even though we only played an hour and a half, this made my day. On Friday we went and painted at the schools again with the group from AmeriCorps. It was interior work and therefore air-conditioned which made it amazing.

On Friday night we joined the group at church for dessert, and Mikey and a couple of his friends led the team in worship in the sanctuary for about an hour which included a time of praying aloud for the city and the church. We concluded it with the whole team of 24 laying hands on the four of us interns and praying for us – for the rest of our summer here and our futures. This was a powerful and intimate experience. (The first group from Chicago also had done something similar to this where just the leaders laid hands on Mikey and I and prayed for us when we came to see them off the night before they left.) We also were each given one of the shirts they had made for the mission trip which was pretty cool. Overall this was one of my favorite groups thus far. Both the leaders and students showed genuine interest in interacting with us (the interns and I) and getting to know us, and I was able to have some great conversations with a few of them.

On Saturday morning this team left, and less than 12 hours later a group of 46 arrived on a charter bus from Charlotte, North Carolina. This group will be our largest (thank God). Over half of them are putting on Vacation Bible School for the neighborhood kids, and the other half have been doing relief work. Thankfully our attendance for VBS has been much better than basketball camp. We have had a pretty consistent group of 40 little kids. My job this week has been to be in charge of about 10 of the work team volunteers as we have been painting the outside of a house and shed for a man who lives alone with his cute German Shepherd puppy. This has included scraping off chipped paint, caulking the siding and windows, and painting two coats. The siding is a plain white and the window trim and awnings are a deep royal blue. I’ll try to get a picture soon. This group is proving to be our most challenging group yet, partially because of the size, but also because some of the leaders are total control freaks who have a million questions that I unfortunately can’t answer. To give an example of their controlling mentality, lets just say that they somehow commandeered a church map of all the rooms and had walked around throughout the entire church and set up signs and air mattresses for who will be sleeping where before we even gave them our tour of the facility telling them what can and cannot be used. Don’t get me wrong, I do admire their efficiency, we just would have liked them to wait for us to give them the rundown before they took action. Anyways, they haven’t been too bad and we have gotten a lot done on the house and will likely finish painting both it and the shed by tomorrow.

Alright that’s all for now. I’ll probably post some lessons I’m learning or random stories/highlights this weekend or early next week.

Here's a picture of some of the work team from last week. I unfortunately have yet to take action photos. I'll have to convince Anna to bring her camera out to the job in the next few days.



Here's a picture of half of the workers we had at City Park from the Indiana group. We were waiting for further instructions from the Park Supervisor. That sombrero works wonders for keeping my head cool when I'm in the sun.

Pensacola, waterslides, and lessons in patience and flexibility

You know those really awkward senior pictures by trees and lakes and fences and stuff? Well this was our attempt at reliving the glory days.

Sorry if these white sandy beaches make anyone jealous... perks of ministry work I guess? =)

As I mentioned in my last post, the interns and I were given the opportunity at the beginning of our week off to head to Florida for a few days to relax on the white sandy beaches of the Gulf Coast. This brief excursion was filled with multiple new experiences. Unfortunately Mikey wasn’t able to partake in them due to his spider bite, and therefore I was forced to endure 8 hours in the car (4 there and 4 back) listening primarily to loud rap music as we made the trek through Mississippi and Alabama. Along the way, there were a couple of interesting sights worth noting that confirmed we were now in the Deep South. First, right after we crossed the Alabama state line on our way there, I looked out my window to see a full-grown cow eating the grass on the side of the Interstate about 30 yards from the far right lane with nothing to prevent it from meandering its way into 4 lanes of traffic. Then, about a half an hour later I saw a 5 by 10 foot Confederate flag flying 50 feet in the air about 40 yards off of the highway for every car to see. This was my first encounter with such blatant bigotry and it left me thinking about what a horrible first impression that creates for anyone who happens to stop in that town and meet its residents. Finally, I knew we were in the Bible Belt when we came across a 7 by 10 foot sign that said “Heaven” on top with a picture of blue sky and fluffy white clouds and “Hell” on bottom with a picture of flames and dark smoke, and a caption in the middle which read “It’s Your Choice.” Needless to say, this isn’t my favorite approach to evangelism.

We arrived in Pensacola on Friday night around 7:30pm and enjoyed the last hour of daylight on the beach where we ate a healthy dinner off of the Burger King Value Menu. We headed to Gulf Breeze Presbyterian after sunset where we waited for the pastor to let us into the Youth Room which turned out to be well-furnished with couches for beds. We watched part of a movie on their TV and then crashed. In the morning we got to the beach around 10am and spent most of the day lying out. The girls of course loved this, but I on the other hand am not much of a passive vacationer and found myself needing to do something after about half an hour. There was a volleyball net set up a couple hundred yards down the beach so I decided to check it out. The group there was playing men’s and coed doubles and I considered asking if I could get a game in but decided otherwise after realizing that they already had 4 teams of 2 that were rotating games. I watched for about an hour and then rejoined the girls.

We tanned (or so I thought until I got back to the church that night and realized how red I was… apparently putting on 50 spf twice wasn’t enough) and body surfed in the warm waves all afternoon. The only other exciting (or treacherous) event worth writing about was when I got viciously attacked by a jelly fish! I was gracefully body surfing in the warm waves minding my own business when all of a sudden my left elbow began to sting and I felt as if I had just received ten red fire ant bites all in the same golf ball sized area on my arm. It began mildly swelling and when I told the girls, Candace offered to pee on it. This obviously wouldn’t have been appropriate and so I kindly declined the offer and decided to lay down for awhile to rest. After about half an hour I was restless once again and since I was still feeling the sting, I decided to go for a walk along the shore to get my mind off of it. I walked down the coast about 20 minutes as the waves gently crashed against my feet before turning around and heading back. I was only about 5 minutes into my return journey when I came across a group of three ambulance EMT’s from Alabama who were drinking beer and smoking cigarettes together at the waters edge. As I was walking by, they struck up a conversation with me by asking me my name, where I was from, what I was doing in Florida, etc. I explained how I was an intern at a church in New Orleans and a student at Seattle Pacific and that I was just in Pensacola for the weekend. They asked me how I liked the beach and I said I liked it besides the jellyfish sting I had suffered about an hour earlier. That was when one of the EMT’s stood up with his beer in his hand and said “Here. Pour some beer on it. It will make the stinging go away.” I hesitated for a second unsure if he was joking or not, but instead of asking I remained silent and held out my arm. He poured a generous amount of Budweiser on my elbow and within seconds the stinging sensation went away! From there I sat down and talked with them, told them of Louisiana and Seattle, and listened to some of their scariest ambulance emergency stories. During our conversation they offered me a beer and a cigarette (true Southern hospitability no doubt) which I declined, and after about 20 minutes I headed back to Candace and Anna who of course were still sunbathing where I had left them. Who knew that relief from a jelly fish sting would come in the form of beer from three random Alabamans? What a creative and merciful God we serve. =)

A final story I’d like to tell about Florida was our interesting experience at the church service on Sunday morning. Since we were only there for a day and a half, we would have liked to have simply skipped church altogether, gone to the beach, and podcasted a sermon or something on the way home, but the pastor had invited us to go to their “contemporary service” at 8:30am and we had agreed to attend. This turned out being one of the most interesting church services I’ve ever been to. Let me explain. The entire church service from the music to the sermon was about American freedom. Now I understand that the 4^th of July was yesterday, but this service was quite over the top. The pastor, who also happened to be the head of the worship team, led the congregation of about 60 in “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which happens to be an American Civil War song, and some other silly song about American independence and freedom. He then gave a 15 minute sermon where he read 2 Corinthians 3:12-18 and in my opinion (and Candace and Anna’s) took the passage completely out of context to preach a politically charged sermon about the freedom we have in America and the fact that our country was founded by God-fearing men and now God is disappearing from our government and schools systems and how we need to do something about it. He read a quote from Jay Leno and about 5 quotes from various former US Presidents and political figures during the early years of our country and then pulled out the banjo to lead us in “This Land is Your Land” (yes I just said that) in celebration of how God has blessed America. Now obviously there is a place for humbly thanking God for our country’s freedom and how we have been financially and materially blessed, but I think the pastor missed the whole point of the 2^nd Corinthians passage. The point, as Candace, Anna, and I agreed on is that we have freedom in Christ and that freedom allows us by the Spirit to become more and more like Jesus as we are being sanctified! Ahh the Bible Belt – what will we ever to with you? Anyways, I could probably rant forever (especially about how ridiculous it was to sing “This Land is Your Land” in church) but this blog post is already too long.

The rest of my week off was quite relaxing and low key. Movies are $4.75 in theatres any time Monday-Thursday so we saw Wal e and Hancock. We also got to go to Blue Bayou – Baton Rouge’s equivalent of the Wild Wave’s water park in Federal Way. Let me tell you, there is nothing like walking through warm, slimy puddles of water that have been invaded by the foot fungi, sweat, and sunscreen of the hundreds of people who venture through them on their way around the park. Thank God for gallons of chlorine. Anyways, the park ended up having some pretty awesome slides and the best part about it was that Whitney Alexander, the Youth Director from 1^st Presbyterian Baton Rouge, bought the $35 tickets for us as a way of saying thank you for an awesome week of serving together with his middle schoolers the week before. The 4^th of July wasn’t anything too special. We were too late getting down to the Mississippi River to see the entire fireworks show, but we saw some of it from the car as we drove around the French Quarter (downtown New Orleans) looking for parking.

I also just wanted to comment on how I’ve been learning patience and flexibility with everything down here. First of all, everything is simply slower than life in Seattle and being a business major who values efficiency, this can be a bit irritating. However, I’m learning to “go with the flow” and enjoy a slower pace of life. Furthermore, I was fortunate enough to have a car during most of high school and two out of my three years at SPU at my disposal to go where I wanted when I wanted. Down here, I am completely at the mercy of Mikey and Candace and three or four other friends (with cars) I’ve made from church to get anywhere. This can at times get frustrating when I really want to go somewhere or desire to leave a place earlier or later than my ride. Yet, it has also humbled me and made me grateful of both my friends who are willing to give me rides and the car I get to drive in Seattle.

Finally, last night we got a team of 24 in from Southport, Indiana. Half of them will be running a basketball camp for 8-12 year olds from 9am-12pm this week and working in the afternoon, and the other half will be putting up drywall at a house with the contractor that they brought with them all day. Anna and I will be in charge of coordinating the basketball camp. Hopefully I can remember how to ball! I’ll update more at the end of the week. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for enduring yet another lengthy blog… I love and miss you all!

Kyle

PS – feel free to leave comments on any of my postings. I’d love to hear from you guys! You can just make it anonymous and sign your name at the bottom of the post. Thanks!

Here is a picture of Mikey and I playing in the volleyball tournament at Coconut Beach a few weeks ago. Unfortunately my photographer wasn't the greatest at taking action shots but you get the picture.















Here is a picture of Anna, Sir Lancelot, and I while we were eating our delicious snowballs after a long day of pulling weeds. This kid was amazing!