there and back again

well,

at this point i am over trying to make excuses for not writing. i've been busy. WE'VE ALL BEEN BUSY. i guess life just gets that way sometimes. so i will visit as often as i can.

life has been crazy.

complete madness.

but not madness in a bad way...madness in a...i don't understand what God is doing with my life-madness. but i suppose i need to back up and start at the relative beginning, fast forwarding through the normalcy of spring at evergreen.

as mentioned in one of my last posts (i think), i spent the majority of january and february travelling around the 3 western provinces promoting camp, recruiting staff, and recruiting guest groups. bible college camp days, teachers conventions, and the like were how i spent the greater half of each month. more days spent in hotel beds and friends' homes than at home defined these months. it was super tiring. i liked it but by the time i took a week of holidays the first week of march i was poopered.

but one of the stops along the way in february was ACSI's teacher convention. i was bored and so i started doing some very simple team building activities with teachers passing by. this led to a conversation with alberta's ACSI director and soon enough...i was getting information about teaching some workshops at the following year's convention and a week later i was getting recruited for leading team building at the Alberta Student Leadership conference in october. 200 student leaders from across alberta. i didn't really think anything of it initially. i was just like...it's team building - whatever, i do it every day. so it sat on the back burner for months.

we took off out of the gates in may with 17 staff. it was a great spring. lots of amazing staff members. but probably the starting of my madness began on may long. a group that rents our site asked me to work with their high school students for the weekend. which was cool but it marked the first time i got booked as a speaker...as a "consultant". we did team building and talked about how to impact our world instead of letting it just float by. it was cool - a little nerve racking at first because i wanted it to be good...then the end of june hit...

i was contacted by the organizers of the conference in october.. we met and it turned out that i would be doing 6 sessions (almost twice as many as the keynote speaker) for the 200 participants. in my mind i was freaking out a bit. this could be a massive springboard for me or...it could bury any hopes of getting into this more full time.

i ended up getting booked to be the keynote speaker for another school's high school retreat out at another camp. that was amazing too...i had never been a "speaker" for anything other than teaching my staff during Staff Training weeks. two weeks later i was at the Student Leadership conference. it was crazy doing team building with that many people...i definitely learnt and grew as a facilitator. i made lots of connections and hopefully i will get to do it again next year.

in the middle of all of that was summer. it was awesome. we had a great two months. at the end of august i got a chance to roadtrip with my good friend jenni to oregon to see the ranch that she works at and adventure around the volcano(ish) area that is the desert of oregon. 15.5 hours there and 17.5 hours back with 2 days in the middle. it was great...

we ended up not having a place to stay because the state parks were full...so we stayed at jenni's friend's house...which was a giant barn near sisters, oregon...it was amazing. thanks Jane!

the first picture is of Smith Rock - which is a very popular climbing spot there but just an amazing place. Then of course is of us...Bear and Bee...the roadtripping queens. i had never really been to a desert before and so this was quite the little experience for me. we hiked up Smith Rock...i was sweating like crazy and you know the amazing thing? my hair stayed straight. i fell in love with the desert right there.

the rock formations were amazing. and the lava lands - which is where i was determined to find obsidion... the picture of me infront of the black rock is...courtney versus the volcano...or giant black rock. needless to say, i lost. jenni had to give me (once we were back in canada) some of her obsidion as a consolation prize. i wanted to find it so bad.

so i'm pretty convinced that the lava lands are possibly where buddy (peter jackson) that directed Lord of the Rings got his inspiration for Mordor from...it pretty much looks like it. so jenni and i were frodo and sam for a short time...

i loved seeing stuff for the first time. we don't really have stuff like that in alberta. sure we have other cool things that oregon doesn't but this was totally cool. i imagine it's similar to someone seeing our Icefields or the Tyrell Museum for the first time.

anyways, the last cool shot i want to give you is the large hole. literally - it's a big hole in the ground. it's called a lava chute. and you get to just walk down into it. jenni and i ran. mostly because we got there late in the day and we wanted to go as far down into the hole as we could. we ran for about 29minutes straight...and we weren't close to getting to the end of it. in the picture at the opening of the chute i'm wearing a hoody...well - it's actually 30+ degrees celsius outside but the moment you step into the chute it drops down to 5 degrees celsius. awesome! you could see your breath (next picture) and all. basically - if you're ever just wanting an adventure...go to the state with 8 license plates.

if i were a parent, i would tell me kid that the chute was someone's best attempt at digging a hole to china. literally, the chute goes for miles underground. it's sweet.

i guess that pretty much catches all of us up on what i've been up to. there and back again...no jokes. it's been a pretty eventful 6 months. and what's coming? well - i'm now a taekwondo athlete. that's my new winter sport. my classes are in sundre and it's great. i really excel at beating people up...apparently it's a spiritual gift. ;) i'm competing in my first tournement in a few weeks so i will definitely let you know how that goes...i don't know what you get if you win...maybe just the nice feeling that you can beat people up better than anyone else.

and lastly...i will be spending my new years in st.louis. i am attending a huge mission conference there called Urbana. so that will be pretty exciting...i know some people going but apparently it's almost impossible to find people as there are like...30, 000 people at this conference. but i'm jazzed about going...i've wanted to for a long time.

but that's it from the den of this bear. i'll check back soon... (me and really ugly monkey in a place just across the border called "Good Grief"...so we named the monkey Pete. so we could say that we stopped for Pete's Sake in Good Grief.

until next time...