Epic bus ride

I am sorry that I did not post on Friday like I said I would, that day just few by a lot quicker than I thought it would! But here is the story of our EPIC bus ride back. Just to give you some background, the way there took us about 27 hours, due to a snow storm we hit when we were driving through Utah. We had to put chains on at midnight and finally got to our destination safely. 27 hours, how could it get worse right? Well, that's exactly what we thought, but we were in for a surprise :)

11:00am - leave Glen Eyrie while it's snowing and beautiful

1:00pm - stop for lunch for 40 minutes

4:00pm - bus stops in Maxwell, New Mexico (population 300) due to problems with the engine. We are stuck there for about 3 hours and 15 minutes. Thankfully Anya (another staffer), Elizabeth (freshman) and I found a kid's playground nearby and played there for a bit, trying to get rid of all our energy :)

7:15pm - bus starts up again, and the have now called another bus to pick us up and so we leave to meet said bus. The driver says that we're able to go 20-30 miles without experiencing another problem...

7:45pm - at mile 31, bus stalls again. This happens a few times before the bus just dying for good. Commence waiting for about an hour and a half for the 2nd bus

9:15pm - 2nd bus arrives and we're on the road again!

10:15pm - said bus slides off the road into a shallow ditch and it's only because of God we didn't flip. Now we're stuck in 10 inches of snow and have to wait for a tow truck.

11:45pm - THREE tow trucks get us back on the road, and we're good for another hour when...

12:15am - bad accident up ahead and the road is closed. We get off the highway and wait at a gas station until it clears.

2:18am - we're on the road again! Yes, I know the exact time because I was awake basically this whole time...

5am - reach Albuquerque, New Mexico, our next scheduled stop, and switch buses again.

7:15pm - arrive safely back in LA after taking 3 buses - WHEW!!!

May I also add that the reason we switched buses for the third time is because our second bus was not from our original company we ordered from. That bus was only supposed to be a 3 hour ride to Albuquerque to get us to the next bus which was from our company. Oh, and the second bus was 2 seats short too, and so they encouraged us girls to double up because we're smaller and it's only for 3 hours right? So Michelle (bus buddy :) and myself offer to have another girl join us, so we didn't have a lot of room for sleep, hence me being awake. Well, I'd be awake anyways, I can't sleep on anything that moves, be it car, train or plane - one of my lovely gifts....

Was I able to see any of the crash at all then if I was awake? YES. We were watching the movie Hook, which I'll hopefully never see again (negative events permanently attached to it now), when all of a sudden I felt a jarring movement coming from our tires, like we were driving over marbles or something, then saw two HUGE waves of snow hit the front windshield, before some more bumps and then we stopped, leaning a little to the side. Good times. Actually, I was definitely freaked out, but then some of the students sang some praise songs and read aloud some of the Psalms and then I basically buried my head in the Psalms too and that calmed me down :)

Needless to say, it was EPIC and hopefully the record for longest bus/road trip ever.

And now here are some pics from that day:


All the guys loading up on the morning of our departure - in the SNOW


Ahhhhhh, lovely Maxwell, NM...


Me on the playground, having a lot of fun :)


Anya, raising the bar


Elizabeth having fun playing on the bridge :)


Anya and Elizabeth conquered this rope/pyramid thing - fight on!


Elizabeth doing a scene from "Up"


My attempt at trying to get a shot of Elizabeth and I swinging...

Needless to say we amused ourselves :)

The Glen in Oh-Ten, Part II

okay, so I left off last time when it was partly through the week and now I'll get to the last half :)

So, Tuesday was focused on prayer, and our speakers were Vic and Lindy Black. I had never heard of them but oh man they were good! They really emphasized listening to God and they performed a skit together at the beginning, with how we usually pray to God, and it basically was exactly how I pray sometimes!! Vic played Jesus and Lindy came in and basically talked a mile a minute about random things, would stop to answer a text, then launch back into prayers, ask questions to God about how to handle things and keep on plowing through! It was really funny to watch and see how "Jesus" handled it, because whenever she would ask him a question about how to handle something he would begin to talk and then she'd just cut him off because she didn't stop to listen. Yeah, I definitely do that!! So it really challenged me to be more still before God and when I ask Him questions to actually listen for once. It was really good and it struck a chord with everyone there I talked to!

They also discussed Hebrews 4:14-16: "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" and how we need to hold firmly to the faith we profess, and not just hold it loosely like we don't care what happens to it. They said that in verse 16 it says we can now approach the throne with confidence, not due to us, however, and how much of a "catch" we think we are, but because of what Jesus did for us. Vic also said that in the original Greek text, the word "help" in v. 16 was the word "frap," which had a nautical meaning to it. Basically, back then, when their ships were in a storm the sailors would throw huge, thick ropes around the entire ship to hold it together so it wouldn't fall apart, and he said that's exactly what Jesus does for us - He wraps us up tightly for any and every circumstance. I just loved that picture because it has been proven time and time again in my life and it's such a picture of the unending and unfailing love God has for us!!

Then that day my workshop was also on prayer (all the workshops dealt with the theme of the day) and mine talked about getting the right idea of who we pray to. He looked over the Lord's Prayer and how we can really come to God with anything on our hearts, even the bad stuff. He had us look up certain passages and one stood out to me, it was Jeremiah 17:5-8 which compared putting your hope in man versus God and how those who trust in man are like bushes in a desert, because they're not able to grow and their surroundings are deserts, whereas those who place their hope in God are like trees on the banks of a river, which always bear fruit and don't fear the changing seasons because it will always be provided for. What a picture of God's love - again!! It was almost overwhelming just how often God says over and over to come to Him and He won't return void.

That night I had a mini-crisis because I was just feeling so incompetent and jealous towards other people for no real reason at all and I was just struggling with bitterness and feelings of not being good enough. So once the day was through I had a looooong walk with God about it and just poured out all I was feeling, down to the last icky prideful emotions. And I came to the conclusion that I just need to be me, no one else, because we already have a diverse staff and we don't need two of the same person. I basically had to say out loud that I'm just going to try to be me from now on, and stop trying to be other people because that doesn't do me any good. And then I felt a lot better having cleared that up!! Goodness, lots of highs and lows in the same day!!

And with that I'll leave it until tomorrow, but here are some more pictures :)


This was at Garden of the Gods, with me, Kaylynn, Sandra and Janet all doing a jumping pose, and this is at varying heights of jump-ness....


This is Alex (from my small group) and I at the women's tea (held in the castle - sweeet!!). Incidentally, all our napkins were alternating colors of red and gold - hmm, methinks the organizers were secret Trojan fans :)


We had a board game night on Monday I think it was, and a bunch of us played Apples to Apples, and this is a *posed* picture with Sandra (fellow staffer), myself and Kaylynn. I didn't really cheat, and I won the most anyways!!


This is when we hiked up to Dawson Trotman's grave, one of the founders of the Navigators, and this was his gravestone. I hope to follow in his footsteps and always have a heart for God and for people!


This is Elizabeth, Shannon and myself at the top of the hike, and some more good news - Shannon accepted Christ into her heart just this past Tuesday!!! God is MOVING!!


This was the last night, and it was Robbie, Victor and Pablo in the back, then Enoch, Janet, Rani and myself in the front and it was a festive occasion because Rani used to be in my small group last year but she transferred to CU at Boulder this year so we got to re-connect for a day!! It was great to see her :)


This was the morning we left and it turned into NARNIA while we slept!! It was SO BEAUTIFUL though!! All of us from California loved it, while everyone else from Oklahoma and Texas were sick of it....


Lauren and I were super excited about all the snow and we danced around in it :) All of us met at this one cabin to bring our luggage and load up, and most of the people in the cabin were from USC, but there were a few from OU, including a dear friend of mine who I met when I did Project Impact, Lindsay, and I bounced to her room yelling "IT'S SNOWING!!" which she wasn't as happy about as I was....maybe it was the fact that she's also not a morning person while I very much am :)

And I'll wrap up tomorrow with tales of our drive home, and you may be thinking, how could a drive home be interesting to read about? Well, let me just tease you with this - it took us 33-34 hours and THREE buses to get back. Memories were created which we'll never forget, for good or for ill......



And here's the funny of the day :)

The Glen in Oh-Ten part 1

Oh. my. goodness. The spring break conference was AMAZING!! The location was beautiful at the castle, the speakers were challenging and convicting, and it was great to just spend time with the students for a whole week and have some life-changing conversations with them!!

There is too much to talk about so going to break it up some this week. We left last Saturday, March 20th at noon-ish. Our bus then ran into a snow storm in Utah at about midnight and we had to stop and put on chains, well, I say "we" but it was really the guys -- what servants!! So it took a few more hours than we thought, 27 total, but we were all in pretty good spirits so that was a huge blessing! Then we arrive Sunday night, about 20 minutes before dinner, so we all rush to get to our rooms and basically drop off our things and then go to dinner and our first session! Here are a few pics of the castle when it was snowing - it looked so beautiful!!





The castle is the headquarters for The Navigators, a Christian organization that was founded here in So Cal!! The property was bought in the '50's and it's been in use for conferences ever since! Our first speaker was Jim Leube, and one thing he said really stuck out to me. He said, "Don't settle for a self-absorbed life," because he was saying that when we live for others, that is where true freedom is found. It was just so against our culture which says constantly "look out for yourself because no one else will." It was definitely a good word to hear!

The next day was focused on the Bible and the reliability of it. Jerry Bridges, the author of The Pursuit of Holiness and many more books was our speaker!! It was crazy actually seeing him up there and listening to him! One thing he said that gave the Bible huge credibility is that Jesus Himself submitted to it - whenever He was tempted by the devil He quoted Scripture, and that if Jesus would quote it you know it must be real and true.

Then I went to a workshop that day talking about commitment to God. It was based off of a quote by a pastor in Fort Worth, TX, Harold Bullock, who said, "If God has called you to anything, He has called you to commitment." He went over what that means, and how we can commit and how we can make a difference if we simply commit and put all our chips in. He also had an unrelated, but pretty cool quote too that said, "If your chosen maximum is the job's minimum, you'll have a lifetime of mediocrity."

Each day was focused on a part of The Wheel, a diagram the Navigators came up with in the '50's to describe the foundational aspects of the Christian life:


My small group actually went over it in the fall so it was fun to see the girls who came to make connections with it!

Now, I'll stop there for today and pick it up again tomorrow, but I'll leave you with some pictures too :)


This is Michelle, and she was my bus buddy for both the ride there and the ride back! We got to know each other pretty well in those couple days on the road :)


This is a picture of myself, Lindsay (from OU), Brittany (Ft. Hays) and Lucy (from OU also) who were all at Project Impact with me 2 years ago in Costa Mesa!! My small group that summer was Lucy, Brittany and I and this picture captures the first time we were all together since that time! There have been two of us here and there, but not all three, so I was SO excited to be reunited with them!! I also saw a bunch of other "Impact alums" from that summer because some of them went to OU so it was fun to talk with them and see how they've grown since then. We laughed till we cried about old memories and also talked about our ministries and our struggles and victories with them. Brittany wasn't a part of the conference, but she lives in Denver so she visited for a few hours and it was just so refreshing to see her!!


THIS is what happens when we get together - craziness and funny poses ensue :) And what is AWESOME is that as we were all talking about Project Impact a LOT of the USC students are now applying!! What a blessing!! We've never had a great showing from USC, usually only a few students, but this year I think 13 are applying which is so great!! And now I'm super sad that I'm not going to be working with them this summer, but I told all the students that I would visit them at their work and basically be a Project Impact groupie :) Incidentally, if you'd like to know more about Impact, the website is goprojectimpact.com :)


This is Michelle, myself and Anissa, who is on staff at OU, as we were trying to pose for a picture whilst walking backwards! We succeeded to a certain degree right? But this was the beginning of our trek to the Garden of the Gods, basically a walking park of HUGE red rock formations!


This is Lauren, myself and Alex from my small group posing by the rocks! It was so fun and the rocks were insanely high but really cool to see!

PLUS - I have GREAT news for you!! I have saved the best for last of course :) but...Lauren committed her life to Christ over the break!!! On Thursday to be exact!! Oh man, SUCH an answer to prayer - I've been praying for her since the fall when I first met her!!


This is Lauren and I on another hike to a nearby waterfall :)

But on Thursday some of us from USC hiked to the grave of Dawson Trotman, one of the founders of The Navigators, and my boss led us there and told us Dawson's story, and one thing he mentioned is that when we make a decision, whether it be to come to know Christ personally or even just to lose weight, making the decision is only 10% - actually following through is the other 90%!! So as we're hiking down Lauren is behind me and she says she was a little scared of what Neil had said and in my mind I am thinking it might have scared her off, but after I asked her why she said it's because she did it, she committed and is all in. I whipped around and screamed and hugged her!!! Everyone else behind us thought I had seen a snake or something, but I was just SO HAPPY!!! God was totally moving in her heart and she said a lot of the speakers answered her questions she had lingering and it all finally made sense and the next, logical step was to commit! WOW God is so good!!! Definitely the highlight of my trip!!

So after all of that, you'll get another update tomorrow :)


and here is the funny of the day:

Road Trip

In honor of leaving on a bus tomorrow (sadly not a jet plane), I thought I'd attempt my first Top Ten list to get pumped for the 24 hours of awesomeness awaiting, so, here goes:

Top Ten Things to do on a long road trip:

10. Watch movies

Thankfully there will be TVs on the bus and I raided my brother's movie collection (thanks Mark!!) and am bringing about 15 movies. I know that's a lot, but it'll be about 48 hours total in the bus on the way there and back, so...yeah, the more the merrier I say.

9.) Eat!!

Thankfully some of our amazing alums are making us snacks for the ride there and we'll be stopping for food along the way. It'll all be fast food though...but what are ya gonna do? At least I'm getting fed. I can be quite cranky without food for a long time....as my brother knows full well :)

8.) Look out the window absentmindedly

This is a favorite past-time of mine whenever I was a kid going on long trips. Basically it involves looking out the window, preferably with a slack jaw, and daydreaming about something or other, for example, thinking about that colorful flower I just saw --> so many kinds of flowers in the world --> what if flowers took over the world? would they be kindly rulers or vicious dictators? --> ahh, I remember dictation in 7th grade french --> I wonder how Ms. Rahme is doing? She was a great teacher --> I remember the video assignments I had to make for that class --> I wonder how Annie is doing? --> etc., etc., etc.......

7.) Read

Might as well start War and Peace because it's going to be a looooooong ride...

6.) Go to the restroom

Least. favorite. thing. to. do. on. the. bus. The bus bathrooms are small and smelly, and everyone *knows* what you're going to do when you start walking towards the back of the bus. It's basically a walk of shame. Ugh....

5.) Get on the loudspeaker and talk about all the beautiful scenery...at 3am

This would be funny if it didn't actually happen. My freshman year we took the bus to New Mexico and the bus driver thought nothing of telling us all about the desert landscapes at 2 in the morning. Most people didn't hear it because they were asleep but I was blessed with the ability to not be able to sleep on anything that moves, so I heard everything she said. She actually used the words, "and on your left we have..." when it was PITCH BLACK outside!!! My boss even went up to her to get her to stop while people were asleep but she stuck to her guns and said it was all part of her job to do that. Thanks.

4.) Drool on people

Again, this would be humorous if this didn't actually happen to me. I wouldn't recommend this option, but it is there. My senior year of high school we went on a class trip to the Kern River and did white water rafting, rock climbing, etc. It was only 3ish hours away so we were all in a bus for the ride. I sat next to my friend Janet and on the way back she wanted to talk to one of our guy friends. Well, the guy who sat next to him then came and sat down next to me. He wasn't a friend of mine, but eh, I could deal. We were all tired from the week and I was watching Top Gun on the TV screens, when all of a sudden, this guy, we'll call him Bob, falls asleep and leans on me. Ehhhhhh...not happy about it but whatever. Then after about 5-10 minutes I feel something wet and sticky on my arm. He had drooled on me!!! EW EW EWWWWW!! I pushed him away, but that didn't phase him at all. He stayed asleep! Gross gross gross...yay for fun memories on a bus right?


3.) Sleep

Ahhhh, that most elusive of friends on a long car ride, at least for me. Yes, this is really the best possible thing to do. Too bad I can never do this, because I'm usually the last one awake on trips like this, be they in cars, buses or planes, so I then proceed to the next thing on this list...

2.) Be angry that I can't sleep

It's rather disheartening when I am the only one awake in the entire car, bus, plane. I can't tell you how many times on a plane, if it's a red eye, that I am the only one awake while everyone else is asleep. At about 2:30am I look around the cabin and my light is the only one that is on. Awesome. Same goes for a car or bus, so then I embrace that quality and do the next item on the list :)

1.) Take pictures of people sleeping

This is actually from 2 years ago, the last time we took the bus to our spring break conference, and yes, I am the photographer :) I had some other ones, but I thought this gave a nice picture of everyone else being asleep while myself the photographer was not. Ah well, at least it makes for some good pictures right??


I won't blog next week because I don't even know if the place has internet or how often I'll be able to get on it, so I shall say later until the week after next!!


As it will be St. Patrick's Day next week, I shall leave you with this:

Getting ready

Well it's almost time for our annual spring break trip and this year we're going to Colorado Springs!! The past 7 years we've gone to Glorieta, New Mexico (right outside of Santa Fe) and while I will miss certain things about Glorieta like the Chuck Wagon and Thunderbird lounge, it's also New Mexico, which, let's face it, is not as fun as Colorado :)

Here is where we used to stay:



aaaaaaand here's where we'll be staying this year! Plus all the ladies get to have a tea in the castle during the week - woot!



Now, there's more to it than the castle, apparently it's a huge area of land that the Navigators use as their headquarters, with the Garden of the Gods right nearby. I don't know what that is, but everyone says it's beautiful. I'll update on that when I get back.

I am so looking forward to this, to a week away to just relax in some of God's creation and hear from some amazing speakers. I also realize that there won't be a lot of relaxing, more like long days and late nights, but that's how my weeks normally are so it's not that big a deal :) One of the things I look forward to most are the deep conversations you always have at these retreats, usually late into the night! I'm looking forward to what God will do and I am praying that I will be able to truly enjoy it and not have endless lists in my mind of things to get done.

Oh, and how are we getting there you might ask?? Private jet? No, not this year. Train? No, apparently they don't go through Colorado, which leaves......THE BUS!!! Yes, it should be about a 20-24 hour ride, and while not my first choice, I've done long bus rides before (we've taken the bus twice to Glorieta) and you can always find a way to make it fun.



Plus, we're supposed to have free Wifi in the bus (have no idea how that works in a moving vehicle) and top-o-the-line TVs for movies. No matter what it will make memories!!


And in completely random news, I dyed my hair!! It's the first time I've ever done it before and I figured after 26ish years of the same color I was cool with changing it a bit (and no, it's not orange, as much as I love orange I don't want it on my head - just went a little darker). Before this year I never even wanted to dye my hair because you always hear horror stories of how someone wanted red streaks and it came out bright orange everywhere, but one of the girls in Challenge, Michelle, has dyed her own hair before and it looks really good so I thought I'd give it a whirl. While we were talking about it she even said I seemed pretty low-maintenance so I wouldn't freak out if it didn't turn out well. Little does she know how uptight I used to be with this, and now that I've done it I don't know why I was so against it for me. I can always get my normal hair color back and besides, it's fun to play around with hair color! Below are some pictures from when we dyed my hair (last Friday actually!)

This is the nice, before picture :) Jane and Lauren decided they wanted to come along and watch the party!



This is the fun picture, with all of us imagining what my new hair will look like...



I would have the actual "after" photo, but it won't let me upload it, so you'll just have to see me to look at my new, darker hair!




Lastly, the Academy Awards were this past weekend, and while I've only watched them sparingly in the last few years, this year I went to my good friend Katelin's place and watched it with her fiancee Matt, her little sister (also named Kourtney - makes for some funny "who do you mean?" moments), her two neighbors and her fiancee's "little" brother Brad (I used quotation marks because while Brad is younger, he is also 6'8''...so...tall). It was a great time! Katelin and I are both really into movies so we were talking all about the red carpet, the nominees, their filmography, our newest celebrity crushes, all the usual :) We also used ballots for our choices of who would take home the Oscar and I got second place with 12.....Katelin and Matt tied for first with 14! I was just happy that the movie I wanted to win for Best Picture won!! I saw the Hurt Locker and while it is extremely intense, it was also really good I thought and I'm proud the Academy rewarded story over box office records (no offense Jim...)



And Sandra won too!! She's my favorite actress, well, tied for favorite with Meryl Streep, but this was Sandy's year and I'm so happy she won! Her speech was heartfelt and hilarious and I loved it!

Pictures finally!

So I know we had our women's event for Christian Challenge a few weeks back but my roommate just recently put up her pictures of it on facebook so now you get to enjoy what we put on! If your memory is a bit hazy (like mine) let me remind you about it - it was a women's event that the full-time staff women (Erin, Anya and myself) wanted to put on for our girls to connect them with each other and also with recent alums. We had the event on campus in the religious center and we had a cornucopia of delicious treats!! We had everything from mini-muffins to cookies to tomato-herb crostini (made by moi :) We invited some of our recent alums to speak to the girls about laying a foundation in college in your walk with God and how it's helped them in the years since they've graduated. The event went on for a few hours and everyone loved it! We got some great responses so that was super encouraging, and without further ado, here are some pictures of it for your enjoyment!

So this was the layout of the room. We had beaucoup tables with 6 chairs each, black tablecloths with red candles on top and silver Hershey's kisses!


mmmmm - now we get to all the food we had. This table was *covered* with food and of course it was all gone by the time it was over! And all the food was really good, I personally went back a few times to "check" on it and had multiple plates of the stuff :)


Here are some of the ladies at one of the tables, including one of our lovely staff women, Anya, on the left :)


Here we have current student Josephine on the left, staffer Amy in the middle and recent alum Jenn on the right



It was a great time for the women students to get more connected with each other and not just have friendships within their small group exclusively. And I think they really enjoyed being able to talk with some of the alums and get a vision for their walk with God post-college!

And lastly, here is the funny of the day: