Too Much Fun to Take Pictures

It was a wonderful and crazy weekend. We were told earlier this week that we would have two groups here on Friday and Saturday: a mens' retreat from an Omaha church that would take up the cabins, and then a junior high retreat from another Omaha church that would take up both of the lodges. We spent much of this week getting prepared for them.

We didn't have any activities on Friday, but it was more like an extended work day. We had to build some campfires in the evening so we didn't officially get done with work until around 10, although we DID have plenty of goofing-off times before that. So after we got off of work late, we got to get up super-early the next day so that we could enjoy a big breakfast from Paula and still have time to get to our 8:30 activities. (Most days I don't even get UP until 8:30! But you really can't judge me if you live on the west coast, because that's like 6:30 for you!) My morning shift was low ropes with Christina, who is a part-time intern here. We had two of the junior high groups rotate through, and I learned how to facilitate one of the courses that I didn't know how to do. (With low ropes, you can pretty much make up what you want them to do as long as you have a basic idea, but the problem is getting the campers excited about it so that they don't complain too much or give up.) After that we had some free time before lunch.

I ate about five cookies at lunch, by the way. Apparently, when you don't have an oven (or ingredients, for that matter), you really start to crave baked goods.

After lunch I worked the zip line. I had helped with the zip line last week, but this week I was in charge of the sending end. I did have 16-year-old Kirk to help me though, and I was often able to delegate tasks that the campers could do to help me since they get to ride for about 30 seconds and then just wait around for the rest of their group. I had to make sure people were helmeted and harnessed correctly and tightly, attach two straps plus the safety rope to their harness, make sure someone lassoed the zip line cable and lowered it enough so that I could attach a carriage, hook the two straps to the carriage, then carry the zipliner back as far as I could and finally push them across the ravine. It's quite a bit of procedure, and since I hadn't done it before, I was a little nervous that I'd occaisionally skip a step or do something incorrectly, but I was told by several people (campers and staff) that I was doing it well. Apparently I was doing it quickly too, because in the first two groups everyone who wanted to go twice were able to, and there was leftover time at the end of the third group. I don't really credit that to myself, because all I was doing was making sure people were getting their safety equipment on and then pushing them down the zip line as soon as they were in gear. At the end of the day, we had some time before dinner, so Kirk, Owen and I went on the zip line ourselves. It was my first time going on this zip line, and the first one I've been on in several years, so it was quite the experience! I found out this weekend that low ropes and the zip line are two of the least favorite activities to lead, but I actually like doing these activities, so I have a feeling that I might get stuck with them a lot. I mean, with the zip line, unlike climbing wall and high ropes, you don't have to harness yourself, it's definitely not time-consuming, and you don't have to deal with campers freezing up or being too scared halfway through. (On the zip line, as I would hook the harnesses to the carriage, some of the campers would admit that they were scared, but all I had to do was say "You'll be fine; it's fun" and then push them before they could get any second thoughts. The ones who were the most scared always wanted to do it a second time.)

Dinner yesterday was great: Pasta! I'm excited to enjoy the leftovers tonight and the rest of the week. After dinner, I helped clean up the dining hall, and that was the end of my work. Paula's girls were hanging out at camp while Paula was finishing up in the kitchen, and the Solmens were helping Paula out, so their kids were there also. I decided to play some games with the kids. It started out with me and the boys playing some Eastern US-style game with a football, but then we interrupted the girls from the board game that they were playing so that we could do something fun outside now that the sun was coming down. We started out with tag, but that got old quick. Someone suggested hide-and-seek, but since my least favorite part about hide-and-seek is being stuck alone for a long time (and also the possibility of losing people), I suggested couples' hide-and-seek. So we paired off and had a crazy fun time playing that in the dark next to the woods.

This morning, no one else was at camp. Seriously, how do I end up alone almost every weekend? Do my coworkers seriously have things to do every single weekend? Anyway, I was alone so Adam picked me up to take me to church. On the way,
*PAUSE*
I was about to continue that sentence with something serious and spiritual and stuff, but first I just have to tell you about something else on the way: We saw the Mystery Machine. It was pretty cool; this van passed by us and it was painted just like the one that Fred and Shaggy drive. That hasn't been the only awesome van I've seen in Fremont. A few weeks ago, Erin and I saw what was originally a 15-passenger van, only it looked like someone sawed it in half so now it had a pickup bed. It's vans like these that make me miss driving, although I feel extremely blessed that I will never have to get lost alone or drive a long distance for the duration of this internship. But, hey, other people live just fine without cars. On the way home, I saw someone riding a horse in the middle of the city of Elkhorn! Now back to my regularly scheduled blogging, continuing from "On the way,"
Adam mentioned how he noticed that I really opened up and was in my element with the kids the day before. We talked a little about how my future could involve working with kids, including the near future which could mean staying for summer camp, what ages of kids were the best, and stuff like that. Then he told me that, because Kristjun has a passion for music, Adam suggested that he join the church worship team, and likewise, because I obviously had a passion for working with kids, that I should get involved as an occasional volunteer in the children's ministry at church. Before this conversation, I thought I was getting as much of a "church kid fix" as I was allowed to have by working with the junior high girls on Wednesdays, but it would be cool to get involved with younger kids as well. Last week my mom also suggested that I find a family at church that I could just voluntarily babysit for to occupy my Sunday afternoons that would otherwise be spent at home and alone, so I was keeping my eyes open for a potential family at church today (which, by the way, was an excellent sermon as usual, and you can hear what I hear by going to http://www.relevantcommunity.org/messagepodcast.aspx).

After church, Adam and Sarah switched cars so that Adam could take their kids home and Sarah and I could go to a meeting at Jimmy John's for the student ministry leaders. All of us interns were supposed to go, but since the other two apparently had plans, it was kind of awkward as we went around to each person describing their group and then it got to me and I was kind of like "well, I don't have my own group, but...". I did get a lot of good information from the meeting, though. I learned more about the backgrounds of some of the kids and got some tips for how to effectively lead and run a student ministry. I am kind of in charge of making sure the girls' groups run smoothly and, starting in October, I'm opening and leading the icebreaking games. (Actually, I have to start this in the second week in October, because during the first week of October, I'll be at a conference in Colorado!) I also now have the opportunity to help plan a service project that the entire student group can get involved in this winter. Also, Sarah mentioned some things at the meeting about good things I was doing at the Wednesday night meetings, like getting the girls to think, get involved, and get to know each other better through the apparently addicting game of ten fingers, which the younger girls like to play almost every week. It's good to know that at least I'm doing something right. Oh yeah, and I'm super-excited for this Wednesday. Since it's the last week of the month, that means it's our "Reach" event, where all the students get together for a fun outreach-style activity. This month, we're going to watch To Save a Life outdoors with popcorn and soda, plus pool and Guitar Hero to play.

That pretty much sums up my weekend. Next weekend we will be hosting our "Heart of a Warrior" Father-Son retreat, but between now and then, I don't know what all we'll do (besides a lot of cleaning I'm sure!). So, for those of you who read my blog (and besides my mom, I'm not really sure if I have any readers), what did you do this weekend? Any plans for next weekend? If you don't have any plans, I do have one suggestion: go and watch Courageous! I was so excited to see a prescreening of Courageous, interview two of the actresses, and write articles about it for several publications, so it is a tiny bit of a letdown that I will be extremely busy on opening day, but I hope that all of you can live my dream for me and go and see this amazing movie!

Some meetings aren't fun, but others...

After I finish this blog post, I really need to get to reading two more chapters of Right Here Right Now because we'll be discussing it at our weekly intern meeting tomorrow. These meetings are for the most part fun because it's just us hanging out and talking about stuff. Sometimes it gets annoying, but I think these meetings are important. Another fun meeting we had was a couple of weeks ago at Cheryl's house. It was an all-staff meeting concerning summer camp, and since I wasn't a part of the summer some things flew right past me, but the part that made it fun was the awesome meal and the fact that her basement was filled with a bunch of cool M&M dispensers. One kind of meeting that is NOT fun is a bored  board meeting. We had to sit in on one last week. The first five minutes were fun when we the interns were introducing ourselves, and I gained a little more perspective on how camps and other ministries are run, but they didn't have food or anything.

Today we had a staff meeting, and it was a pretty good one too. But what made it great was the premise. Let me explain...
Yesterday I gave you a sneak peek at what I would be doing today by showing you a close-up picture. Here is the actual picture:

I took this picture in my bathroom, and it's the toilet paper dispenser! What I did today has nothing to do with toilet paper, but rather the brand: Sysco!

If you like going to Costco for the samples (Mom!), then you should make it a point to go to a Sysco event sometime in your life. This morning for breakfast I had a small cup of yogurt, and then when Erin took me to Blue Bottle Coffee Shop I felt obligated to buy a small ginger snap, but I would not allow myself to have anything else because I was told to be very very hungry for today's event.

Everyone on staff took a trip to La Vista Conference Center to enjoy Sysco's festivities. It was so big, even a panoramic picture could not capture even a fraction of it. So since I can't show you the whole room, here are some of the little stations so you can at least get a little bit of a feel of how it was set up:

I really wish that sweet potato fries and Otis Spunkmeyer weren't included in the first 10 booths that I went to. I was just chowing down on the cookies and goodies, and then realized I'm full and I have to get through the rest of this humongous room filled with food!

There was a lot of really good food there, and as part of my job, I had to continue eating even though I was stuffed. In the back of the room there were a few tables of fruit. Of course, different brands of fruit still taste pretty much the same, so they were only sampling strange and exotic fruits. This one blew my mind:

I have to apologize that I only took a picture of the rind, because I realized when I was almost done eating it that no one would believe me if I didn't have photo evidence. In fact, many of my coworkers saw it in real life and still didn't believe it. That picture above is watermelon! As I was eating it, it was completely blowing my mind and I had to show my coworkers. Some thought it was pineapple, and others thought it was some strange fruit. None of them actually believed it was watermelon until I had them take a bite. It was incredible; much better than that boring red stuff. I also got to try dragonfruit. Lots of drinks and stuff are flavored dragronfruit, but I never had the fruit itself before. (Sorry the pic's blurry; I had to continue eating in an attempt to ignore my stomach from telling me that it was full!)

I did go around to every station in the room, some I went to twice. Everything I tried, I liked. There were also some friendly sales reps that were fun to talk with. But towards the end, I was getting FULL. The one thing we were told to do was try to find a good bacon because the one we currently use at camp is gross, but when I actually started to see bacon booths I was so full that bacon definitely did NOT seem appetizing. Well into the day, Jeff (the maintainence guy and also the husband of our cook, Paula), asked me to try a yogurt parfait because everyone else who tried it liked it and they were considering getting it for the camp. I tried it, it was really good (although it tasted WAY too similar to McDonald's, but maybe they get their parfaits from Sysco?), but after two bites I had to throw it away because I was already getting a gag reflex from eating too much! It was then that I noticed that, although the people attending were really diverse (people from camps, schools, businesses, retirement homes, and even several nuns...I guess convents need to buy their food in bulk!), most of them had one thing in common: bellies! This was probably the first time in my life that I was actually jealous of people who had more stomach space. So after that, food just sounded gross, but I did snack on water-based treats, like juice and fruit. When we were getting ready to leave, several of my coworkers grabbed cookie ice cream sandwiches from an ice cream booth. I couldn't even stomach the thought of that, so instead I got a push pop, which is just sherbert. Still, I couldn't even finish that. 

There were some treats (both edible and non-edible) that I got to take home though:

This was probably my favorite piece of SWAG. On the back, it says "got milk?"

Cabella's was just across the street from the conference center, so we went there for our staff meeting. But first, shopping! I swa the above lion and thought it was a little too passive in attacking, don't you think? Anyway, four of us had a shooting competition (I lost), I looked at the aquarium and all the animal dioramas, and I bought some really good snow pants that were heavily discounted. Here are some animal and fish pics:

Now I'm back at camp, and I'm still full. As I started to write this post, Cheryl came in and delivered my mail so that it wouldn't be locked in her office overnight. One was a package from my family, and I opened it and it was filled with...FOOD! I mean, I'm really appreciative of it and all, especially since it's hard to make it to the grocery store and leftovers tend to get monotonous, but right now, I can't even think about making any food.
So that was my day; it was pretty fun and exciting. How was yours?

It's My Monthiversary!

I've been here for an entire month now! How crazy is that? Look, I'm already dressed like Dorothy and blending in with the cornfield scenery:

Okay, so that was actually my first time in a Nebraskan cornfield. (I snuck onto our neighbor's property just for that pic, shh don't tell!) But really, they're everywhere.

Anyway, back to my everyday life, we just finished the Captivated mother-daughter retreat yesterday so today's pretty much just a recovery sort of day. I helped with checking in on Friday, helped with the zipline yesterday morning, and ran the hair and nails station yesterday afternoon, and other than that was just constantly helping wherever help was needed. On Friday night we went on a night hike. The rule was no flashlights, and there was only one lantern. (Originally all of us interns were supposed to have a candle but the wax dripped on us and the candles burnt out so easily we decided not to do that.) So everyone passed the lantern forward and back up the line to whoever needed to help them get over holes, steps, etc on the trail, but otherwise our eyes adjusted pretty well to the dark. I was actually getting annoyed with the lantern because I could see just as much in complete dark. But as much as I disliked the lantern, I didn't intentionally do what happens next: at one point in the hike, I was passing the lantern to the person behind me. I could tell she grabbed it, but I didn't check to make sure she had an actual hold of it before letting go. She dropped it and it fell to the ground and burnt out. Oh well. Back to the rest of the retreat, I liked having all the on-call staff around because there's always someone to hang out with (unlike Sundays where there's NO ONE to hang out with!). There were probably at least seven people staying here in our chapel basement home Friday night. It was a really fun retreat, and the first one I've worked at that involved meals! We didn't serve any meals to the campers on Friday, but we did get Papa Murphys and cookies for dinner. Yesterday for breakfast we had eggs, diced potatoes and danishes, and for lunch we had cherry chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, and banana pudding. I didn't take any pictures at the retreat, but I DID get some pics of the leftovers!

This represents a fraction of the banana pudding I ate yesterday.

Yesterday I also watched a Huskers game for the first time. Apparently Nebraskans are really bent on the Huskers games. It's like the intensity of Oregon's Civil War but every Saturday. But anyway, at the closing ceremony yesterday the worship team was watching it upstairs so I decided to watch it too. I'm not going to give my opinions on the team or the game because either way I would receive negative consequences.

Since we worked for most of Saturday, we have tomorrow morning off. We "work" in the afternoon, but we're actually going on a fun little field trip. Here's a hint at what we're doing:

Health and Stuff

I'm going to do something a little different with this post. Instead of an update of WHAT I've been doing, it'll be more of an update on HOW I've been doing. And instead of writing to explain the pictures that I took, I'll be taking pictures as I write this post to try to illustrate things.

Lots of things have changed since moving to Nebraska. It's true that there are a few things that are similar to my lifestyle in Oregon, such as watching Psych with a bunch of other Psych-os (but now we get to watch it from a projector instead of an old-school television). But mostly, I've had to adapt my lifestyle a little bit. For example, now I solely rely on other people to drive me to places I need to go. I tried being self-sufficient today by biking (then again, I was actually borrowing Erin's bike). I thought I might be able to psych myself out and at least get across the bridge over the river and make it to the nearest town of Inglewood. Then one day, I might become brave enough to go over the second bridge into Fremont. But I took one look at the road with the first bridge, and knew there was no way. There's no bicycle lane OR walking lane on that bridge, so I'd have to slow down traffic and annoy a bunch of drivers in order to get to town. Therefore, the only place I am able to get to without the assistance of anyone else is the golf course, which I may or may not take advantage of one day.

This was actually my first day biking. My normal form of exercise is hiking on the trails here at Rivercrest. I try to do this everyday, but I've been slacking the past week, so I decided to get back to it tonight. The trails can be pretty interesting. There's several miles of trails and I still haven't gone down all of them. Tonight I was walking down a new part of a trail and realized that I had ended up in the paintball range. (So much for the boundaries being clearly marked! jk) I walked through and continued on the trail, which was getting more and more overgrown. Soon there wasn't really a trail at all, but I kept on going because there appeared to be a pathway ahead, or at least an open place without any trees. After a few steps, a branch-like thing flipped up and hit me in the shin. When I felt a little bit of pain, I figured it was some sort of thorny plant, but when I looked at it, it was barbed wire. I walked back to my room with my leg bleeding, and after cleaning up I looked at the damage. The cut was just a little bit longer than a Perry the Platypus band-aid lengthwise. (The cartoon-themed bandaids complements of my mom!) It'll heal.

This scratch made Perry sad. :(

My sister said that I won't need a tetanus booster for running into barbed wire, and she's the authority on that kind of stuff so I'll believe her. But even if I did need a shot, at least I know where the immunization clinic is now. On Wednesday Erin took me to get a tuberculosis test in town. Finding the clinic was easy, but finding out where we were supposed to go was the confusing part. It turned out that the correct door was right under the big sign that read "Immunization Clinic" but, hey, third time's the charm! I had to go back on Friday for the results. The injection gave me a weird-looking bruise on my arm, but other than that it was fine so I was declared tb-free. Erin and I celebrated by eating unhealthily. I had a tall peanut-butter dipped soft serve cone and deep fried cauliflower (it's still a vegetable!).

It's small, but I will be super-glad when it's gone.

The "kitchen" (the microwave and big fridge is in the shared living area).

Besides that unusually unhealthy lunch, I've been trying to eat healthy, and it helps that I have a roommate who tries to eat healthy as well. We get a lot of free food from the kitchen (i.e. this week we got grape tomatoes, yogurt, and eggs in a milk carton), but we still have to buy most of our food. On Wednesday, since I was in the car with Erin anyway, she took me to Omaha to shop for the upcoming Mother Daughter retreat. For lunch we stopped at Whole Foods, which is a grocery store that I have wanted to visit for a long time. I got all kinds of healthy, organic, fair trade, whole food to last me the week, and for lunch I got pesto pizza and a Sambazon Supergreens smoothie. Making food is kind of difficult in the conditions we have. We don't have a kitchen or an oven, and we do have a toaster oven, but the rack is missing so it's pretty much pointless. We also don't have a kitchen sink so we do our dishes in the bathroom. We do have a hotplate, microwaves, and the blender I brought from home. Because I got to the point where I was really missing baked goods, I made no-bake cookies and microwave cake over the past few days (good thing I got cocoa powder, raw sugar and coconut oil at Whole Foods). But although I'm trying to be mostly healthy, I'm also trying to be cheap. Today I finally made a list of foods that I should regularly shop for because I keep missing out on things. On my first shopping trip to Walmart, there were a lot of things I should have bought but didn't, but at least I bought almond milk. On my recent trip to Whole Foods, I bought things I had been waiting for like spinach, oatmeal, beans, and bananas, but of course I forgot the milk/milk substitute. I should have gotten flour and the larger carton of spinach, but I didn't realize that until after the fact. I'll learn eventually. But I'm doing fairly okay budget-wise. Not counting the times I've eaten out, I've only spent about $50 on groceries since I got here, and it's been three weeks already! Also, while I try to eat balanced, I don't have to worry too much because I've got Flintstones vitamin supplements (also complements of my mom).

What I should regularly buy (the letters next to the foods helped me ensure that I had every food group covered).

Well, that's enough about my physical health for now. Health isn't all about exercising and eating! In middle and high school we learned about how health is like a triangle, and to be ultimately healthy, the physical, mental, and social sides should all be equal. Clever, but I knew even then that it was missing something. Later down the line I read an article that compared health to SPIES, that is, instead of three aspects of health, there were five: Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, and Social. I really hope this year at Rivercrest can help me strengthen all these aspects of health, especially spiritual. I'm really blessed to be a leader within the Relevant student ministry, and I'm even going to be taking a class through the church that will help me be even better at this part of my job. Our first small group meeting was this Wednesday and it was a lot of fun (and I got to eat cookies that were baked in an actual oven). It's possible that this could turn out to be one of my favorite aspects of the internship experience. Speaking of church, their two-year anniversary is tomorrow (coinciding with my mom's birthday; Happy Birthday Mom!) (Oh yeah, also coinciding with the 10-year anniversary of 9-11-01), so that should make for an interesting service. But now I'm really straying from the topic of this whole thing, which is health. So, in closing, for the record, by most people's standards, I appear to be in general good health!

My Second Trip to South Dakota

I'm not trying to make South Dakota a weekly event. In fact, I hadn't even planned going there this weekend, but it just worked out that way. But before I tell about the weekend events, I should probably tell you what went on this week at Camp Rivercrest. After all, I'm not just working for the weekend.

-Projects: Each intern was assigned to come up with an outreach sort of project that was primarily to reach out to people and secondarily promoting Rivercrest's off-season. I'm planning a family movie night with a raffle. Tyndale Publishers already agreed to donate five books to the raffle. I'll probably be busy planning the logistics of the movie night and securing donations in the weeks to come.

-Power Tools: I used a saw for a little bit and pretty much became a pro at using the cordless drill. I used it to unscrew the screws from the bottoms of broken tables (so we can burn the wood and sell the scrap metal) and to drill holes in the dumpsters so I could attach signs that said things like "Trash Only- No Cardboard" and "Cardboard Only- Break Down Boxes". I also drove the ATV- not really a power tool but still fun.

-Cleaning: One day I cleaned the poolhouse, a bath house, and some cabins. I don't really have anything "fun" to say about this, except that towards the end of the day I got to jump in the pool and attempt to clean that too. Notice I said "attempt"- it's kinda hard to clean the floor under twelve feet of water.

-Low Ropes: I REALLY want to learn more about the low ropes. They're such cool activities, and they play really well into my interest in Communications- it's all about communicating! There's a bunch of low rope activities, and I know how to lead about eight of them.

-Student Ministries: Relevant Community Church's student ministry started with the fall kickoff on Wednesday. We met the youth leader the Sunday before so he explained how things will happen. The back to school bash was a lot of fun and I think I'm really going to like it. I will start off as a coleader and substitute for the girls' leaders at the weekly meetings, and then if more girls start coming I will start my own group. The last week of each month is a "Reach" that is pretty much a big get-together for any students who want to come.

Well, that's enough of what I did this week! Now let me tell you about the weekend.

Everyone had plans for this weekend. Most had plans to go to the LifeLight Festival near Sioux Falls. Not every Rivercrest employee was going, but I was the only person who lived on-campus that would be home for the weekend. That sounded extremely boring and lonely. On Friday evening, Kristjun and Erin were already gone, so Adam invited Brandon and me to his house for dinner. While there, Adam suggested I call the Solmens to see if I could hitch a ride with them. So that's what I did, and it turned out that I would be on my way to South Dakota in less than twelve hours! All I had to do was pack (and text Erin to see if I could borrow her sleeping bag).

Here are the LifeLight pictures:

Building 429:

Britt Nicole (This was the first female Christian artist concert I had ever been to):

Sanctus Real:

Francis Chan speaking (we're going to read his book Crazy Love as part of our internship):

A small sampling of about 100,000 people waiting for Tenth Avenue North:

Tenth Avenue North (I wish I could have stayed longer, but it was getting cold and I was getting tired, but fortunately they played all their popular songs first so I didn't feel like I missed out):

• Building 429 at KLOVE's Q and A on Sunday:

Sixteen Cities:

Some people are just so creative. On Saturday there were these guys who, instead of doing normal things like throwing beachballs or tossing frisbees or doing the wave or getting into a "We Love Jesus" cheer competition or eating out of a giant bag of M&Ms and passing it on to the person next to you (all of which I participated in), they held up zucchinis. Yes, zucchinis; how random is that? I wanted to get a pic with them after the Britt Nicole concert, but then they disappeared. Then on Sunday there were these girls below. I had to take my picture with SOMEONE weird! (Later I noticed several guys that also did the same thing, but it was kinda creepy.)

A Christian American Indian group performed. (Remember, this IS South Dakota!) It was an interesting change of pace. They had this one song where some of their dancers went into the crowd to lead everyone in a dance. It felt more like that "Snake" game that was the only game on every cell phone ten years ago.

Sidewalk Prophets:

I left the Sidewalk Prophets concert after only three songs because I REALLY wanted to go to the KLOVE station for Q and A with Jeremy Camp. I got there late but Jeremy still wasn't there yet, so Scott and Kelli from the KLOVE Scott and Kelli show were there playing a game with the audience. I remember playing a game like this as a kid at Applegate. They would ask for a unique item, such as a fanny pack, and the first person to show them one would win a prize. Scott asked for a kernel of corn. After a quick scan of the ground, people just stood there because obviously no one had any corn. Then Scott said "there's a corn field RIGHT OVER THERE". Of course there was a corn field right next to the festival; it's eastern South Dakota! A couple of boys raced each other to see who could get the corn first. While they were gone, Kelli asked for a driver's license from the furthest place. I thought for sure that someone would be from Alaska or Hawaii or overseas, but then when I heard people shouting "Kansas" and "Missouri", I decided that I might have a chance. I handed my wallet to Scott, which indeed had an Oregon driver's license inside! (Also, for the point of this story, note that I was also wearing a Quack Attack shirt.) There were several challengers from California, but only one from Huntington Beach could provide a driver's license. Kelli issued the SmartPhone holders a challenge to see if Central Point or Huntington Beach was further away. But they decided to make it a tie because they "didn't want Oregon to lose twice in one weekend". My prize was a Louie Giglio DVD. Finally, the reason I came to the KLOVE station happened: Jeremy Camp!

Speaking of radio stations, Air1 was taking free souvenir photos:

I missed most of the Sk8 demo because of the Q and A, but I did get to see a few minute's worth:

Stephanie Smith:

Sunday evening, I was trying to decide if I wanted to see John Reuben or Jeremy Camp. I hadn't seen John Reuben before (in fact, JC was the only performer at LifeLight that I had actually seen before), but I like Jeremy's music better. I ended up going with Jeremy Camp. After all, it's been several years since I last saw him and he was a little sick during that concert, so I'd better go see him again. I'm glad I did, because there was this interesting "Heaven and Hell" program going on before, with Vota playing between the speakers. It was nice to see that while eating my Pizza Ranch pizza (apparently I can't go to South Dakota without having at least a slice!). Here's Vota:

Waiting for the Jeremy Camp concert to start. I had to stand a long time for the evening concerts just to get a good spot. And I got that LifeLight pin on my hat from a "Spin to Win" wheel. I actually got a bunch of stuff from the concert (stickers, bracelet, DVD, pin, etc) and I spent less than $10, which was all on food and donations. (Did I mention that LifeLight is America's largest FREE Christian music festival?)

JC:

These are all taillights at the end of the day. I think getting out of the parking lot was, like, half of the ride home. (I actually got back around 2:30am.)