My Summer

Hey guys!  Wow, look at the uber cool posts from Kara and Billie!  I have taken off my construction boots after getting home from that summer-long mission trip.  Time to share some highlights with you!

First, two weeks of "Boot Camp" in muggy Merritt Island, Florida (near the Kennedy Space Center).  An obstacle course for team building, sleeping in tents, mosquitoes, bathing and doing laundry using buckets and swamp water, classes, eating outside on logs, nightly worship rallies, a 500 gallon milkshake... these are all things I experienced during my second year at camp.  And by the end, our team was ready to hop a plane to Ireland.

(Our team about to run the obstacle course)

After touching down in Dublin, we lived in tents again and did some construction work for two weeks at an evangelistic outreach center.  We dug trenches, did some extensive weeding, and mixed and poured concrete using only shovels and wheelbarrows... I felt like a stud :)

                                                                                         (With Mike, our leader)


Then we spent two weeks in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a gorgeously gorgeous city.  We slept in a Presbyterian church's sanctuary using pew cushions as mattresses, and during the day we did Vacation Bible School for adorable Irish children.

(85 kids on the first night!! Whoohoo!)

A word on sightseeing: We toured the utterly jaw-dropping Titanic museum in Belfast, the puzzling octagonal rocks of Giant's Causeway, a medieval castle, the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge over the cliffs of the Irish Sea, and the Belfast City Hall (kind of their D.C.).  And man, were the fish and chips yummy!

                                     (The Rope Bridge.  Sheer drop below us into the ocean!)

At the end of things was a week of debriefing back at boot camp.  This involved more classes (but this time in the air conditioning), going to Wet 'n' Wild and Cocoa Beach, and an end-of-the-summer banquet.


God answered SO MANY prayers for me on that trip, and gave me the most wonderful team I could possibly imagine. I feel blessed to have gotten to be a part of the work that went on. Now our leaders have recommended me to be an assistant leader for a team next year, and I think that's what God wants me to do.  Stay tuned, sports fans :)


So yeah, now college! What a crazy whirlwind time!  Got a job at the "Hub" cafeteria and have been offered another way to make some extra money by making phone calls for the Alumni department.  My classes sound fastastic, and my roommate is super nice.  Time to become a "Uni", as one dear Northern Irish friend calls university students.  This is Eliza, signing out.