"When the daylight breaks through the buildings of Chicago, I will stand alone in the valley of tomorrow..."

Hello Friends!
I am awful at updating... but maybe once summer hits this will be easier.  There are a few things that I want to talk about during this entry!  Chicago, the middle school retreat and perhaps the silent retreat!

First off - Chicago! The picture on the left is of Scout, Breena, and I.  I went to Chicago with Montreat Pres because they are amazing and they love me!  We went for a youth workers convention and it was awesome!  Actually I'm not sure if I liked this one or the one in Atlanta last semester better.  But I definitely enjoyed the location more.  I really can not wait to be doing youth ministry full time because things like this remind me that the time in school is worth it.  Hopefully when I am paying back loans I will still say that.  As much as I want to be in a church doing ministry, I am really excited about being at the Ranch next year.  It is going to be amazing.  Anyway... that has nothing to do with Chicago!  I got to spend the better half of a week in Chicago with some amazing people and learned a lot about middle school ministry.  Yay! I love middle schoolers!  One of the cool things that we got to do while we were in Chicago was going up in the Sears Tower.  The picture above is of Marcella, Breena and I laying in one of the sky boxes :)  It was so awesome!  And a beautiful day to do it.  One thing that I was told before going was that I was going to freeze while I was there because I am from Charleston and I have to say that person lied to me... true story it was honestly kind of hot for the end of February.  But all in all it was a good time.

This whole semester has basically been formed around the middle school retreat.  In one of my classes we spent the ENTIRE semester working on this retreat... I'm not sure if I learned anything other than to build a retreat from the ground up.  And I'm thankful for it, but it was a lot of work... outside of class.  And I had to do something that I did not want to do.... call someone.  I hate using the phone to call people, especially people that I have never met!  I know that God was preparing me for when I have to call people all the time, but still, I am not a fan.  And I was even more frustrated because I was not suppose to even be helping with that part of the retreat, because I knew NOTHING about it.  But it all turned out Amazing!  The picture above is the whole group that went in addition to the students that I will be working with next year at Wears Valley!  On Saturday for a service project we went to Wears Valley Ranch and served the students and house parents there.  It was amazing.  Many of the girls remembered who I was and it was so much fun to hang out with them!  They have already stolen my heart!  It will be bittersweet to leave the student that we went with, but I know that I am going to an amazing place and I can't wait to start. 

The other thing that we got to do on Saturday was ride go-karts!  Here is a picture of some of the students on the track!  Hooray for Breena for taking pictures!  It is a legit wooden track, and pretty much awesome!  Hopefully something that can be done at the ranch next year?  This was one of the most difficult things to get passed with our group.  Shawn, the youth pastor for these students, bought tickets to the go-kart place and a couple of people in my class really tried to get him to cancel it... which would have been awful!  But its all good!  We got to go and it was a BLAST!

Also for my entertainment  I have to tell you about this little girl.  She has stolen my heart for reals, and I'm not going to lie she is going to be the hardest part about leaving Montreat.  This is Scout for those of you who don't know.  Her name came from To Kill a Mocking Bird, if I am correct, and I think I am, but someone correct me if I am wrong.  Anyway - This is Breena's child (and David's just so you know that she is not a single mother :]) and she LOVES me.  To the point that when she sees me and someone else is holding her she starts reaching for me and has some AMAZING pouty faces!  In fact on this day, Breena was holding her, and this is somewhat of a rarity, and I was holding her and then I gave her back because Breena needed to feed her.  When Breena got her back Scout made herself cry because she wanted me to hold her so bad.  Now this has gotten to the point where all the youth kids know that she likes me more so when they are holding her, they run away from me because they do know want her to see me.  Ha ha... I love this kid.  I'm not so sure why she loves me, but its all good.  This by the way has happened ever since this trip, she wants me over the other people around her.  YaY babies!

You know, I'm not going to talk about the silent retreat because frankly, I didn't like it.  I was going to leave you with a video, but I'm not sure how to do that anymore.

So here are a few pictures of the awesome things in my apt...







Oh, PS... the title is lyrics from a NeedToBreathe song.