For the beauty of the earth

This past Sunday was our first official day of services here at Grant Village. Darcy preached, Rachel led w0rship, and I did prayers and offering. We had 15 people at our first service and 24 at our second, and 8 at our evening service. Some of our support staff from Gardiner came to our second service and brought us a whole bunch of fresh fruit. It was really the best gift anyone could have given me at the moment: Grapes, plums, bananas, strawberries, and blueberry bread. Sunday afternoon in between services, I went hiking with some people to a place called Fairy Falls.

Monday was filled with adventure. I went to Cody, WY with some new friends. The highlights of the day included buying a camelback backpack for $42 with my Xanterra employee discount, jumping off a rock bluff cliff thing into a lake surrounded by beautiful rock formations (in my clothes), finding some random roadside-seesaws that were remnants of an old riverside campground, eating pizza and ice cream, and learning a new card game called Nertz that is like Dutch Blitz. It was a pretty good day.

Work is still pretty stressful and kind of dramatic a lot of the time. It is hard to separate my work life from my regular life because I live and hang out with the same people that I work with, so naturally the two kind of meld together. Sometimes I get discouraged when I am at work because the hours are long, but when I step outside and see the majestic mountains across the lake, and the towering pine trees all around me I remember how thankful I am and how blessed I am to be able to spend my summer in such a beautiful place filled with beautiful people and beautiful creatures.

I am really doing a very good job of filling every moment of my life here with excitement, adventure, socializing, and movement. I am realizing that a big part of "ministry" is just BEING with people, co-existing, listening, talking, sharing, learning, discussing, reasoning, discovering other people's stories and sharing mine with them. I think that I am learning a lot, but i know that I have a lot to learn still. This is a summer for growing and learning and being.