The ASi chapter has closed...

The summer went so fast! I can't believe its over already... It was extremely challenging and a huge growing experience all wrapped up in one. Not only have I never been to YFJ before, I've never deaned before, so I was learning both on the go. Talk about stress. I enjoyed it though. I love my girls... It was an adventure having all those personalities in one room for that amount of time.

The last Sunday of the program, we got to go on another beach outing. We went to a different beach than the one that was at Clearwater. We drove for almost two hours to get to this beach... and on the way there encountered one of the worst rain storms I've ever had to drive though. It was so bad, I could hardly see the road in front of me. I had all the students in the car pray that the rain would stop so we could have a wonderful day at the beach... it wasn't looking to promising with the sky looking so black, but we kept driving. When we finally arrived at the beach, there was no trace of the blackness we had just passed through. Praise God! One of the students said the weather in Florida is Bipolar...

In all my travels around the world, I've never seen such beautiful white sand. It was nearly as white as the snow on the mountain tops back home, and so smooth you could hardly feel it with your toes. We played in the waves for a while, and then decided to try some pictures...

Olivia was nervous shooting on my film... not sure why though... she's amazing! She has the same taste and style as we do, so we had a ton of fun shooting with her!

Tuesday we gathered all five of our sites together and had big baptismal service at the Tampa First church, since it was the largest. Mark Finley had the sermon, and it was so powerful! He spoke on all the evidence there is to prove that the Seventh Day Adventist church is the true church... that these people being baptized were being welcomed into a huge family the reaches to all ends of the world. But as he was there making his appeal at the end, we're all standing in a circle around the candidates and he's going at it with everything he's got. We stood there being showered by his presence... and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word. Like Dan says "The news, not the weather bro..." When you see him on TV, you never see the huge spray that follows his powerful words.

Its fun being at ASi getting to see all the big wigs, and Adventist superstars... Like Sabbath in the lunch line, there was Kenneth Cox and the Mitchiff sisters behind me having a super animated conversation about the experiences they've had while filming for 3ABN.

The convention is over... everyone has gone home, and here I am, starting the newest chapter of my life. It feels weird to be moving to another country... even though most of my life I never thought of the States as being a different country... separate from Canada, but I'm realizing more and more that it really is. Weird eh? What's going to happen? Where will I be a year from now? Guess we're about to find out...

Here we go...my very own blog. And my very first entry. I can't believe I'm doing this. But then, I suppose thats what happens when you date a geek...you yourself become one. I should have seen it coming. Let me tell you tho...its been the most amazing journey of my life. It happened December 28, 2007. He drove all the way from Minneapolis in the dead of winter to ask me to be his girlfriend. I woke up Christmas morning...and there he was. Its been magical from day one.

I'm presently in Tampa Florida working with the ASi Youth for Jesus program as the assistant girls dean. I've been back and forth to the airport today three times picking up the students that are flying in and finding lost Czechoslovakian cell phones. Coming from McBride where there's not even a stop light, to traffic in Tampa has been enough to give me an infarction, but praise the Lord I'm still alive.
Already they've considered moving me to a different department because they think I can't handle the girls... Lucky for me now, I know all the secrets for getting away with things from all my experiences in the past, so I always seem to know what they are up to.

Yesterday was one of the strangest days I've had in a long time. The day in itself wasn't so strange, but the things that happened were. It started off with a trip to Sams Club, grocery shopping for close to 80 people...talk about a gong show. It was all Evan and I could do to get the three massively loaded carts to the front, through the checkout, out the door and loaded into the van. Praise the Lord they haven't checked ID on the credit card yet...I've used it so many places. The Lord is working that one out.

That afternoon we loaded the whole group up into the many vehicles that we have, and headed to the beach. Last minute they asked me to drive the Highlander with a load of kids... After everyone had eaten, and ran off to swim in the ocean, Evan and I decided to take advantage of the few minutes we had and took off on what we've come to call "power dates." Kinda like a power nap... only... different.

We went back to the Jamba Juice we'd seen on the way in, and as we parked, we started noticing all these strange looking people. They were all dressed exactly the same; white shirts, with dress pants and belts with beepers. Men and women alike. They were all coming from the same direction, like someone had just let them out of a cage. I didn't really think much about it until Evan got a weird look on his face; kinda staring in disbelief and shock with a little bit of horror. "No way! This is Clearwater, Florida. I just remembered where we are!" I'm thinking, "ya, we've been here most of the afternoon.." He goes on to explain to me that Clearwater is the headquarters for the Church of Scientology and that this cult basically owns and runs the town. Talk about creepy. By now, they were completely let lose, and surrounding us. I saw like, three people on the whole street that were dressed in normal clothes. It felt like we were in a horror movie... the twilight zone.... a scene from a movie about the future. "No! make it stop! make them go away!" We got out of the car and walked across the street to get our smoothies.

Inside, it was full of them. They didn't smile. They looked at us like they wanted to eat us. Evan got brave and started talking to one. "So, I noticed you all have the same shirt, are you from the same organization?" He replied in a sultry, hypnotic tone, "Yes, we are from the Church of Scientology. You're not from around here are you?" Evan staggers back in horror. "Uh, uh, no, we're from a long ways away." We quickly ordered and hid in the corner while we waited. As the streets were filling with the identically dressed automatons, we realized more and more the weight of the situation and knew we had to get out as fast as possible. We ran for the car as soon as we had smoothies in hand, barely making it out with our lives....

(Of course I dramatized it a little... but its really not that far from the truth.)