Where has all the time gone?

Wow. Its so crazy that I have been in Colorado for 4 weeks already and only have 2 weeks left.  It is going to be a crazy two weeks, but I know God has his hand in all of it so it will be amazing.

A lot has happened since I last updated.  Sorry for the delay, but things have gotten really busy since I was last able sit down and process all that God has been teaching me, and the different parts of my life that He has been working in.

July 8-10 we went hiking and camping near Estes Park.  We had legit tents and sleeping bags and split up between about 10 small camping areas.  Friday night we got everything set up and our staff team spoiled us with a steak dinner.  Steak, baked potatoes, grilled vegetables and dessert.  It was delicious.  The next morning we woke up and went to the Rocky Mountain National Park and went hiking.  We hiked to Alberta Falls and then a little bit past that before my knee started to act up so one girl, Ashley and I turned around and hiked back to the central meeting spot.  I calculate that we went about 2.4 miles total.  After we got back we rode a bus to Bear Lake.  It was a beautiful setting.  Truly God placed and there was snow up there! A lot of people who hiked farther than I did had to cross huge snow piles before reaching their final destination.  I've seen pictures and they are awesome.  After we got back from hiking we had dinner at the camp site.  A bit more camping food, hamburgers and hot dogs and chips.  It was still delicious.  After dinner we had a ceremony where the adult staff handed over project responsibilities to students.  So some of my peers are now my leaders.  We have new project directors and a new bible study leader.  My bible study leader is Lauren.  She is an amazing child of God.  He has blessed her with many words to say and a truly loving and caring heart.  Our bible study is still the same.  We laugh and cry and have a blast together.  I am definitely going to miss them in 2 weeks.  After Lauren became the fearless leader of the Pinkie Peinie Winkie Weinies she washed all of our feet, like in the bible.  It was an awesome bonding experience, especially since she touched my feet.   The next morning we got up and had our own small church service.  It was amazing to be observant of God's beauty and just talk to Him.  After our church service we had to clean up the camp site.  My car was one of the last to leave and on our way out we saw 2 elk just grazing where we next too earlier that morning.

The buildings behind the elk are were we always ate and hung out.

After we got some awesome pictures of the elk we went into Estes Park.  The plan was to only spend a couple (like maybe 2 hours) there shopping and possibly lunch.  Well we were shown that our plan is not always God's plan.  As we were shopping a friend of mine found me and asked if I could take him to the car parts store.  He had been having car problems all weekend.  Well I decided I wanted to wait for his car to be done in case something happened and it didn't get fixed, or I would follow him back to make sure he didn't have any more car problems on the way home.  So we ended up getting his car to a mechanic who told us it would be about 3-4 hours before it was ready.  Since we had been camping all weekend most of our cell phones had no battery life left, so it was similar to the times before we had phones trying to find everyone in our group.  Luckily a couple people had battery life left and we were able to make a connection.  We met up with our groups again and told them what was going on.  A few car shufflings happened and the rest of us where in town until the car got fixed.  One of the groups found a place called the Riverfront Community Living Room.  We found out that is a church in the area who has volunteers go sit and they try to build relationships with people before they share the gospel.  It was an awesome place to hang out and the people where so inviting and loving to us.  We hung out there until we heard about Alek's car.  Needless to say that the car was not fixed and all of us had to get home.  We piled into my car and headed back to FoCo.  The next day I took Alek back to Estes Park to get his car because it was fixed.  It was a crazy 2 day adventure, but definitely a memory forever.

That week at work I only had 6 kids in my class.  It was nice but bad all at the same time.  It was not a good preparer for this coming week, when I will get 20 kids.  Nothing really major happened that week.  That Friday night we decided to go to the 16th Avenue Mall in Denver.  We got stuck in traffic on the way and one car yelled at us and said it must have sucked to drive all the way from Indiana like we were (6 people in my car).  The guy in my car, from Oregon, yelled back that he didn't ride that far.  But I'm not sure the other car understood what he said.  We made it to Denver and got dinner at Johnny Rockets.  After that we investigated the mall,  but most of the stores were closed.  We found a guy who was there to help people find where they were going.  He told us that we should check out the Brown Stone hotel.  It is the 2nd most famous hotel in Denver.  It was a block down the road so we went.  It was beautiful on the inside.  I don't have any pictures yet, but will hopefully get some up soon.  After we left the hotel, we went to the capitol building.  It has a step that says we were one mile above sea level.  We took some pictures there and then walked back to 16th Avenue.  There was also a giant blue bear at the convention center so we walked there and got some pictures.  After that we went back to the car and headed for home.

The next morning, Saturday, we had a pancake breakfast at the house.  The social team put together a huge breakfast for everyone.  It was delicious and right before it started my momma and Janell got to the house!! It was so awesome to be able to see them.  After breakfast, the Morale team decided they wanted to wash and clean out all the cars that were project students.  It was awesome.  My car has never been cleaner.  After my car was washed, I showed mom and Janell around FoCo.  I showed them where I work and different places that have meaning to us on Project.  We ate lunch at Beau Jo's.  After lunch I showed them where their hotel was and then took them back to the house.  They went to check-in, take a nap and headed to Estes Park to see Troy.  That night we had a sacrificial poet outreach at the Wild Boar Cafe.  It was a great night hanging out at the coffee shop.
Sunday was church day! Mom and Janell went with us to Timberline.  After church we went to lunch at a little hole in the wall place called the Mountain Cafe.  It was a breakfast joint and very delicious.  After lunch, mom, Janell and I went to the Bible Superstore and then to the Budweiser factory.  We saw the Clydesdale's and opted out of a tour, because it was an hour and a half of walking.  When we left the factory, we started to drive a random road to get back to FoCo.  It ended up being a pretty awesome drive.  We saw a road on one of the foothills and decided to find our way there.  We stopped at a lemonade stand in the middle of a housing edition.  We finally found out way to the road we wanted and when we got to one spot there was a lake on one side and the entire town of Fort Collins on the other.  We kept driving and eventually made it back to the house in time for dinner.  After dinner we had Bible Study and a great night.

Today we have the day off of work.  We are doing an evangelism thing in Old Town where we just have signs that say, "I will listen" "Need Prayer?" and one other sign.  We are going to sit there in shifts of an hour and just wait on people to come to us.  After that, mom, Janell and I are going to go to the Swetsville Zoo.  And after that there is a County Fair for the staff conference.  Project people are going to be working the games and things like that, and there are rides and all sorts of fun things happening.  It will be a long day, and tomorrow we start work with 20 kids in my class.  It will be fun and I'm excited.

If you feel like writing a letter or card I would love to receive it! I only have 2 weeks left here!
Stacy Baute
412 W Laurel St
Fort Collins, CO 80521


Peace, Love, FoCo!!! 

Picture Update!!!

Summer Project Picture Updates!

All those who attended the Bike Parade early morning on July 4

My Bible Study!!

Big Ten Schools

(Me-Purdue, Mike- Michigan, Zac- University of Illinois, Kc-Purdue, Garrett (not Big Ten), Sarah-Michigan State, Nolan-Michigan State)

4th of July

My shoes I made!!

My roomie and I!

My bible study with our school shirts on.

(Me-Purdue, Lauren-Truman State, Kristina-Central Washington University, Amanda-University of New Hampshire, Elyse-Illinois State, Kelsy-University of Arkansas)

My bible study on the 4th of July!

Don't we all look patriotic! 

Sunday Funday!

Best stop on a weekend adventure.

The Dam Store. Best store by a dam site!

Awkward Family Photo

(Zac, Alek, Danielle, Kelsy, Me)

Wow. Its Already July???

Yep. I said it.  I can't believe it is already July.  Project has flown by!! We still have about 3 1/2 weeks, but that will go by so fast!! Here's a bit of what has happened since the last update.

On Friday a few of my friends decided they wanted to go hiking.  I was not feeling up to go because my knee had been acting up, so I decided to go to Fort Fun with some of my coworkers.  There were 8 of us.  We went laser tag, go karting, down the giant slide, bumper boats, and mini golf, only we ended up changing the name of mini golf to Extreme Insanity Miniature Golf, or something similar.  We basically throw the ball at the hole, attempted to bowl, or simply all hit the balls at one time.  It was a lot of fun.  After we left there a few of us went and saw Transformers 3.

Saturday morning came pretty fast.  We went to Denver for the day.  We helped a church put on a car show.  We did everything from helping in the parking lot to serving the food, to assisting with the inflatables.  After the show ended we were on clean up duty.  It was a long morning.  After we were released from helping we went to the Aquarium.  After that we decided we would take out the GPS, or Agatha and find a restaurant that was Denverish.  Not something any of us had back home.  We couldn't find anything that was cheap enough and finally decided on Noodles and Company.  We as I pulled into Noodles there was another restaurant right next door.  It was an Italian place.  I got some wood stove cooked penne alfredo.  It was delicious.   After dinner we decided we wanted to go shopping.  They found an outlet mall near where we were and zoomed there.  We had an hour to hit up lots of different stores.  I got some pretty good deals.  After that we managed our way back to Fort Collins.

Sunday morning was church at the same one I've been going too.  I really enjoy it there.  After church we went to lunch at Five Guys.  Delicious!!! We decided to do some thrifting after lunch to find some last minute outfit details for the Fourth of July.  For dinner we had an international night at the house.  We had different missionaries through Campus Crusade come in and talk about what God was doing in their lives.  It was pretty awesome.  We also ate food from different countries.

Monday morngin was a bright and early morning.  We got up to go to the bike parade.  The bike parade consisted of staff children decorating their bikes and themselves to win a prize.  We had a blast, once we got some caffeine in our blood.  After the bike parade, my Bible Study participated in the amazing race.  We drove all over FoCo finding random places and completing random tasks.  At the first place someone had to eat an entire Cinnamon Roll.  This was no ordinary roll.  It was relatively large for a girl to eat.  (Pictures will come later).  I decided I could chow it down.  The guy told me that it only had to be in my mouth.  So I ate 3/4 of it and then stuffed the last 1/4 in my mouth and spit it out right after we finished.  After the amazing race we had lunch catered at a park.  After that I came back to the house and took a small nap because I was worn out.  We had to be at City Park to begin outreach activities in the early to mid afternoon.  One of the things we did was the Everything Skit from Lifehouse. Hopefully I can get that on here one day.  It was amazing.  We did it a total of 4 times, rotating groups every other time.  After we finished that we had dinner. A traditional barbecue. We also had our competition for the "How American Can You Be?" I received 4th place, again pictures to come later.  We ended the night with fireworks across a pond.  It was beautiful.

Today was a typical day.  I worked and then had dinner and then for natural evangelism I choose to play volleyball with a bunch of people.  I was doing pretty good, or at least thats what they told me.  We came back to the house and I showed off pictures of my family and myself when I was little.  My roommate is currently gone and its sad.  She will be back tomorrow, but I have the entire room to myself right now, and its weird.  I'll give her a big hug when I finally see her!

Well I'm about to fall asleep!!
Peace, Love, FoCo.

Don't forget to write me :) I love mail time!
Stacy Baute
412 W Laurel St
Fort Collins, CO 80521

My first week . . . and a half

Well how time has flied since I last updated this.  Lots of things have happened.  Hopefully I remember them all.

I started my week with my 3rd graders.  They are precious and sweet and have been a blessing to work with.  There are 9 kids in the class for right now and the last 2 weeks I am here are full of around 20-25 kids.  It will be a big change, but hopefully the ones who have been here will be able to be shining examples of how things work in Fiji.

This is one of the bulletin boards in my classroom :)

The first week of camp kinda flew by. We were busy getting our schedule correct and making sure everything fit into the right spot.  We have the schedule pretty much in place and the kids are starting to know what to expect from the day.  Last week we worked on 2 different Bible stories.  We did creation and then the fall of Adam and Eve.  The way we are telling the stories is very interesting and I'm excited to know if the students actually retain the information.  This week we have started talking about God's Covenant with Abraham.  We are going to talk about Isaac starting tomorrow.  On Fridays we talk about different Jewish holidays.  Last week was the Feast of the Trumpets.  I can't remember what this week is, but I'm sure something.  Part of the  celebration of the Feast of the Trumpets is that we got a guy to come in and play a Shofar, or rams horn.  Some of the counselors are pretty good at it.  I didn't try but doubt I would have done very well because playing one is very similar to playing a trumpet or trombone, which I have never played either.  

Me, Elyse, Amanda, Kristina, Kelsy, Caitlyn

Friday night brought fun adventures.  It is our only time off completely from work and project.This week I loaded my car with 5 other girls and headed towards Estes Park.  We jammed to some Disney songs and had a blast.  I think my favorite part of the entire drive was rounding a corner and hearing them all freak out and lean out one side of the car all trying to take pictures.  It happened just about every turn.  It was a blast and I love all the girls dearly.  

Kristina, Christine, Sarah, Lauren, Kelsy, Amanda, Jessica, Elyse, Caitlyn, Me!

As we got into Estes Park we met another carload of girls.  We drove for a bit and then stopped at a dog park and asked where the best place to go hiking and see the sunset would be.  The ladies sent us on a wild goose chase trying to find this sign.  We finally decided to turn around and head back towards town.  We actually found the sign the were talking about and got some pretty sweet pictures by the Estes Park sign. After that we stopped at a place that said hiking, but it turns out that they didn't let people hike at the time we went.  So we asked the park ranger were to go.  He told us to go to Rocky Mountain National Park because they stop charging at 7 and by the time we got there they would be done.  Well we went but guess who was still charging?? So we decided not to go up in the park.  We saw a huge hotel on our way towards the park so we decided to go bouldering there cause they had a huge pile of rocks.  We made our way back to the Stanley Hotel, which side note is where the Shining was filmed.  We went and bouldered our way up the rocks and took some amazing photos and watched the sun go behind the mountains.  

All of us on the boulder.

The view we saw. Bad picture of Christine but I didn't want to crop it.

After we got down we decided we were starving and went to eat at a cute little place in Estes Park called Poppys.  After dinner we drove back home. 

Saturday morning we learned how to use Perspective Cards and Solarium.  We took our new knowledge to Old Town and tried to start conversations with people.  I went with a girl named Hannah.  We decided to just lay the Solarium cards on the ground by a corner and asked people to come over.  As we were setting them out a gentleman came over and asked what we were doing.  We talked to him for a little bit.  He was a Native American from Wyoming.  He was looking at the pictures for the artistic value.  He said he was an artist and they appealed to him.  We talked for a bit and then he left.  We had another group walk over and we tried to ask them some questions and there answers were about the here and now.  They did not think very deep into the questions.  After they left we left to meet our group for lunch and to regroup.  After we ate Hannah and I decided to try Perspective cards.  We just walked down the sidewalk and asked people if they wanted to take a card game survey.  A lot of people said they were too busy and we didn't  get to talk to anybody.  We met our group and headed back to the house.  That afternoon I baked over 15 dozen cookies with some friends.  We were having a "guys" night to honor the 8 men who deal with the 55 girls on project.  We decorated the eating area and had Chocolate Chip Cookies, Sugar Cookies, and Ice Cream.  After eating we decided to play games and watch a movie.  The guys got to choose between Top Gun, Gladiator, and Braveheart.  They choose to watch Gladiator.  It was a fun end to a great night.

Sunday morning I went to a church called Timberline, again.  It is a great church and I really enjoy it, although it is a little big for my normal liking.  Nothing really compares to the church family I have back home where there are 50 of us.  Which speaking of them, I miss them dearly and can't wait to see them all in a few weeks.  After church we went to lunch and then out thrifting. We are trying to find amazing outfits for July 4.  We went to a place called Arc and Once upon a Thrift.  They were both awesome stores.  After thrifting we were having a Sunday Funday social.  We were playing games on the CSU campus and tried to involve people from the community, however the only people that showed up were project people.  After Sunday Funday we had a night of Prayer and Praise.  We formed a group on campus and sang different songs and prayed through the ACTS model of prayer.  For those of you who might not know what ACTS stands for its Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.  It was a great night of conversation.  

Monday morning came super fast.  We started the week out very good.  All 9 kids came back.  We talked about Abraham.  The kids seemed a bit more interested than normal.  Monday night was bible study.  We are still in Ephesians.  I love my bible study girls.  We are so open with each other and its been a great match.

Lauren, Amanda, Kristina, Elyse, Me, Kelsy and Judy

This picture is the first we we ever took as a group!!

On Tuesday we had our natural evangelism night. But before dinner and evangelism I got to talk to Chelsea Dock.  I love her to death and am soooooooo happy we were able to talk!! Kelsy and I went back to the guys house we met last week.  He told us it was too hot to paint.  So we are probably going to try back one more week and then switch to something else if he keeps saying no.  Please pray that he is open to us painting, or that God puts something else on our heart to do.  Since we didn't get to paint we decided to go to an ab class at the rec center.  That is definitely not my forte.  After the class we made our way back to the house and hung out and played Skip-Bo.  But before playing cards I got to skype with Hannah Gurley, Kayla Oldham, Jessica Hall, Alyssa Major, and Lisa Bricker!! It was so amazing to see my girls!! And so encouraging to hear from them!! 

Today was Wednesday and the kids were a bit crazy at work.  It was the hottest day of the week.  Rumor had it that is was supposed to be close to 100 by the end of the day.  It was definitely hot enough to be.  Today was one of the guys on projects birthday.  Garrett turned 21, but according to project rules there is no drinking.  So instead a group of us went out to play putt-putt.  

 Cydney, Me, Alek, Kristina, Elyse, Caitlyn, Danielle, Garrett, Kelsy

All before we starting playing

 Alek, Danielle, Me, Kelsy, Elyse, Kristina, Caitlyn, Cydney, Garrett

at the first hole

Me, Cydney, Caitlyn, Garrett, Alek, Elyse, Kelsy, Danielle, Kristina.

 Cute house on the course

 Elyse, Garrett, Me, Kristina, Caitlyn, Kelsy

 Me, Cydney, Elyse, Garrett, Caitlyn, Kristina, Danielle, Alek, Kelsy 

at the castle which we did not play.

Me, Elyse, and Kelsy

Well for now I think that is all.  God has truly been blessing me! I am loving project but would still love prayer.  I am missing home a lot right now.  There are quite a few things happening there this weekend and its hard for me to miss.  I want to say hello to all my family members at the Baute Fish Fry.  And then Congrats again to Mark and Cara on their wedding since they are having a reception in Indiana.  And then I'm missing July 4, however I think we will be busy enough this weekend to where I'll realize that while I am missing out on things in Indiana that God has bigger plans for me in Colorado.  We will be in Denver this Saturday and then Monday is full of activities.  I'll be sure to add pictures and let ya know what all happens after Monday, if I have enough energy to post it.  

Don't forget to write me if you have an extra minute.

Stacy Baute

412 W Laurel St

Fort Collins, CO 80521

Peace, Love, FoCo! 

Living the Dream

So much has happened since I last updated this blog.

I found out my placement for the summer! I will be working with 3rd graders and have one coworker.  Our school decided to have a theme of the Olympics so we had to pick a country, either real or fake and that was our rooms theme.  We decided to go with Fiji.  Our room is tropical and has some fun elements to it.  Decorating and making decisions about this room really made me excited for having my future classroom.  We get our kids tomorrow and I am ready to see how the first day goes.  We have heard about how it is supposed to happen, but that doesn't mean it will happen that way. I'll keep you posted on how everything goes.
Friday night a group of us went to the place right down the road called Woody's Tavern.  It is going out of business next week, so we had to try it.  It had some really good pizza and burgers.  After we finished eating, we walked around the CSU campus and then went to Old Town and walked around and took pictures.  When we got back to the KD house, I heard a rumor that there was a gas station with gas for $2.99.  I was flabbergasted and had to check it out.  It turns out that the rumor was true, I just had to pay in cash.  I filled up right then and there.  We think the store is going out of business, so the cheapness won't last long, but I'll take advantage as long as I can.
Yesterday was an adventure all in itself.  We started the day out with evangelism training in the morning, and then went and put into practice what we learned.  My group went to the mall and tried to talk to some people and share our faith with them.  We didn't have very much luck at first and were considering leaving the mall and finding someplace new, but it was close to lunchtime and the time we needed to leave to get to our second adventure of the day, so we chose just to stay and make the best out of the time at the mall.  My cell phone had been acting up so I needed to go to the Verizon store anyway, but found a kiosk in the middle of the mall.  The girl that I was sharing with and I had decided we were going to talk to the next person at a kiosk we found and it just so happened to be the Verizon one.  So I had the perfect leadway into the conversation.  The guy was really nice and gave me some good info about Fort Collins and things to do, but when I asked about a church in the area he was not very receptive.  He kinda stopped talking so I knew there was not going to be any spiritual conversation happening with him.  But I ended up getting a new phone cause my contract was ready to be renewed and had to go back to the kiosk after my numbers and pictures were all transferred. After I left my phone there we met back up with the other girls in our group. (there were 6 of us total).  The other groups shared stories of talking to people and having some good conversations which made me pretty excited about trying at least one more time.  It was lunch time and there was a little old man sitting at a table all by himself so I decided to go and sit with him.  He ended up being an Optometrist at the Sears store.  We chatted for a while about his life and mine, and why I was in Fort Collins.  He had heard of Campus Crusade so I figured that maybe we could get into a spiritual conversation.  So I started asking a few questions and we had a really good talk.  I'm going to continue to pray for him, because he has some issues that he needed to work through.  I'm not sure exactly where he stands on his spiritual life, but I pray that he is able to work things out.  I finished my lunch and our group left the mall.
We headed up to our next adventure of the day which was White Water Rafting on the Poudre River.  We signed our lives away, got wet suits, water jackets, life jackets and a helmet for our adventure.  We went at a very crazy time in the river.  All the snow off the mountains were melting so the river was very high .  That can make rafting dangerous, but on a good note, we were able to experience a part of the river that if it is a little higher they wont take anyone, or if it was a little lower they wouldn't take anyone.  It was such a fun trip.  My boat consisted of Caitlyn, Tyler, Kelsy, Kristina, Elyse, Lauren, me and our guide, Dave.  Dave did a great job with all of us girls.  We went over class 3 and 4 rapids.  On one of the rapids we lost Tyler out of the boat, but she swam to the side of the river and luckily there were some people that were taking our pictures that were able to help her.  She chose not to get back in the boat, so the 7 of us continued down the river.  We had some great laughs and definitely got wet.  When we got back to the rafting place we had dinner catered for us, and then headed back to the KD house.  We went that night to my bible study leader, Judy and her husbands Nate's house.  Nate's group of guys were also there so we were able to get to know 4 of the 8 guys on project with us.  We played a game called Nouns which was pretty fun, and then Telenary, or telephone/pictionary.  We had some great laughs and then came back to the house.
This morning we got up and found out how extremely sore we all are from rafting yesterday.  My muscles definitely got a great workout.  We went to church at Timberline.  It is a huge church, or at least way bigger than good ole Mt. Auburn.  Made me miss being at home and seeing everyone, but the message and worship was pretty awesome.  I'm definitely planning on going back there.  After church we went to lunch in Old Town at a place called In-gre-di-ents or something like that.  After lunch we went and visited some of the little shops in town.  We went to a Thrift store and found some great stuff.  We just got back to the house and have been resting and relaxing for the day.  We have dinner planned tonight and then some Bible Study time.  And then I'll probably head to bed early so I can be well rested for the kids in the morning.
I love getting mail so if you life to write letters, send me one!
Stacy Baute
Campus Crusade for Christ
412 W Laurel St.
Fort Collins, CO 80521

If you have any prayer requests let me know,
Peace, Love, FoCo!

The area is safe, and I have gloves on!

Hello Lovely People reading this!!

I hope your day is going amazing.  I know that mine has been pretty awesome.  The last two days have been full of sitting in an uncomfortable chair listening to rules and regulations. But I can officially say that I am CPR and First Aid certified. (Thats where the name of the post comes from.) We have been drained from brain functioning because of the lack of activity, but I completely understand why we had to do it, just definitely long.

BUT on the good side of things, I found out my placement today for the rest of the summer!! I will be working with 3rd graders.  There are 4 classrooms of them so we will start out with about 7-8 kids for the first few weeks and then end the year with about 17-18, unless more sign up.  I'm so excited and got into crazy teacher mode when I saw my classroom.  I'll upload some pictures after we finish decorating.  I will be working with a person who is originally from Fort Collins.  She is a year younger than I am, and I am praying that it will all work out.  The theme of the building is the Olympics.  Each classroom had to figure out a country, real or fake, and decorate their classroom that way.  We decided on Fiji for our country.  I can incorporate lots of bright colors and make the classroom awesome.  We don't actually get the kids til next week, but tomorrow we unload all the stuff from two years ago and figure out what all needs to be purchased.  I'm super excited to finally be working and doing fun stuff!! Pray for the hearts of the children that are on their way to Fort Collins sometime this summer.  Pray that we are able to pass all inspections and that things run as smooth as God has planned.

One of the cool things that we are doing this summer is called Outward Evangelism (I think).  But basically we all pick something and go out into the city of Fort Collins and see the same people every week and grow in a relationship and then hope to have spiritual conversations with people.  Tonight we decided to go to the apartment complex that most staff are staying at this summer and play some sand volleyball with the Colorado State University students that live in the same complex.  There were about 7 of us and we got to the complex and told our leader that we were there and went down to play volleyball, and no one was playing. There were some little kids playing in the sand, but we realized we didn't have a volleyball so decided to go back to the CSU campus and see if we could find some students there.  We did find them and started to play.  We ended up watching a really good game between 3 people on project with me and 2 CSU students and 1 guy that actually works with me at Colorado Kids Camp and Care.  It was an awesome match and I pray that some connections were made.  I am thinking about switching to help some people in the community clean up their yards and then have a conversation with them.  Some people a few years back on project did something similar and I've been told they had some pretty awesome conversations.

Tomorrow we unload trucks at the schools and start to work on our classrooms more. I'm super excited to get things going and for the kids to come in!!

If you need prayer for anything just let me know :)
Peace, Love, FoCo!

First Weekend

Hello all!

What an awesome first weekend!! Saturday was full of getting to know all 55 girls and 8 guys on project. We found out who was going to be our small group leader, and who was going to be in a group together.  I have been blessed with 6 amazing women.  We are full of laughter, and fun! We have decided to call ourselves the Pinky Pienie Wienies or PW's for short.  We shared our stories yesterday and today and had the awesome opportunity to grow a little closer. Sometimes we can't stop laughing and get to the point of crying. And as I was typing this we had to take a break so we could all laugh.  We all live next to each other in the basement of the Kappa Delta house. Its been awesome.  My roommate is amazing.  She is from Oklahoma, but goes to school in Arkansas. She is also in my small group.  We have been able to bond very quickly and I'm so excited to see where the summer goes with our closeness.  Weirdly enough her name is Kelsy, and my roommate freshman year at Purdue was Kelsey, but I love her already. The rest of my small group consists of Lauren, Amanda, Elyse, Kristina and our fearless leader Judy.  Its just going to be an amazing summer. Love them all already.

Tomorrow, Monday we start our first day of work.  I'll update ya'll on what I am exactly doing after I found out.  It going to be so amazing to see what all we are doing with the kids.

But I'm going to go to bed so I can actually wake up in the morning.
Peace, Love, FoCo!