fat bottomed girls you make the rockin world go round!

one time i was at the park here in town(spring lake park)i was driving around and i cant tell you how happy i was that there was a sign to tell me that there were slow children crossing, i mean there was this slow kidd in the road and i almost hit her. jeez williston is wierd!



had a good day and spent 4 hours at the coffee shop. got some reading done and i am heading to bed early tonight becuase i want to go to catholic mass tomorrow. i have never been and i thought it might be neat. i think that i am going go to confession and confess my sins to the priest not because he will pray for my forgiveness but because i have always admired the fact that catholics will tell thier priest all the sin in their hearts. when i think about confessing to my pastor i think well he doesnt really need to know that. so i will test it out here try and see how confessing my sins helps in repenting from them. i think that it will be liberating to be able to tell someone that i have real issues real things that i am wrestling with and that i struggle with. the thought that i can be transparent with someone completely, makes me a little nervous. but i am going and so i am thinking tonight about the sin that is in my life that i need to deal with if nothing else it is really a time for me to examine my own heart.
missed my thursday night talk with kaleb but i am hoping to get a hold of him before i get into bed. maybe i will live with him when i move back to springfield and maybe i will live with jeremy. i guess that i will cross that road when i come to it.
have fun in hong kong and i hope that you bring me something pretty cool back i mean that is the least you could do. ill have a report all ready for you upon your return double spaced with 1 inch margins just like school. anyway do good and dont teach the kidds to many cuss words.

the worst is over...

walked around williston and took pictures o fthis little town i live in. it isnt much but i tried to make the most of it.

this is the trian station i wish i would have been a couple steps back so i didnt cut off the top oops!


this is the chairs in the train station their pretty sweet.


i saw lewis and clark at the trian station and i tried to get a picture of them but it came out all sillouetted oh well i tried


i liked the sign on the trian at the station it was all old and peeling i mean its pretty neat


this is the grass in willisotn its where all the terrible mesquitos hide! yikes


here is a view overlooking the town you can pretty much see the college the little brown building on the right side and the water tower. yeah its pretty big overwhelming at times really!


here is a close up of that water tower i like this shot a lot!


there was a garage on a building down town it caught my eye.


and you know i dont care where you live anything is fixable with a little elbow grease and a lot of duct tape. yeah the moose statue has one horn held on by that silver magic but i promise this place isnt white trash... no seriously...


yeah i also bought some fireworks and im pretty excited to shoot them off. they were pretty cheap and im not sure why i havent started shooting them off yet. oh well i love the 4th of july!


alyssa remember when we were at your house last year on the 4th that was pretty cool when i almost did a faceplant into the cactus and you made fun of me. and then you tried to get your dad and baby ray to beat me up cause im a raider hater. no seriously best 4th of july ive ever had. too bad there arent any mexicans up here to cook me some carne esada yumm yumm. best foruth of july memories i have ever had! deffinately beat the year before when i was taking the 15 hour drive to hume lake and booth the front tires blew out that was awesome!

this year i will probably be alone since its a monday and i dont hang out wiht anyone anymore. man better buy more fireworks and blow stuff up!

send for reinforcements cause there too much here to love...

sometimes i guess you are the sweater you know that one sweater that seemed sorta cool at the store but when you get it for christmas there are about ten thousand other things you would have rather been unwrapping...
one thing that was pretty fun about being in the south was the boiled peanuts. im sure that most of you have never even heard of boiled peanuts and would deffinately not buy them from some guy in a truck on the side of the road. his sign was a mixture of sharpie and stick on mailbox type letters. it was a pretty interesting collage sign. it reminded me of when i was a kid. i think going fishing with uncle ray and dad and josh and elton and aaron stopping to get some boiled peanuts and fishing. life was so much simpler then...

one day it just snowed i guess, they closed the roads that lead to your heart...

back in williston and last night was good. got back to town and then hung out with a friend. watched hostage. that was a pretty intense movie. i didnt think it was too bad either i mean every time i see bruce willis i usually just wonder what he is going to shoot or blow up or how many terrorist he will kill with only one clip. i guess im more into dramas and artsy films but everyonce in a while i guess you need to see something blow up.
went to the office today and i am having the same feeling i had at the begginng where i just feel like i am just here and am not making a difference or that im not living up to the expectations that have been set for me. talked to nikki alot about camp and sometimes i think i am missing out on the best thing. i suppose that it was the same way phillip felt in the middle of that big ol revival and God told him to take that desolate dessert road where he met the ethiopian. hopefully i will make a difference in one persons life.
i talked to kaleb and i think i will be living in springfield atleast for the fall and i think i am ok with that. it will be good to be back in a familliar place. finished a couple more books and i am going to start a few more this week. its almost teh 4th of july and i like fireworks so i am excited. we planned a youth activity for saturday there is a community that has a big display so even if no one shows up im excited to see some good fireworks. (i wish you were going to be here so i could sit on the tailgate o fmy truck and watch them with you)

family fun in the florida sun...

sunday is here and its almost time to leave my family. its been good to see everyone and reconnect with people i hadnt seen in a year. its wierd to think that i am so different from them. my family arent bad people but there are so many things that shock me everytime i come down here. i guess that i am glad ive been able to get out and see the world. that i have been exposed to people who are interested in my future and want me to glorify God. im not sure how or why God moves people or decides to use them but i pray that he continues to use me as a vessel showing his love to those who have not been exposed to it.
i was thinking about what makes a girl attractive today and well probably for the past week. what is it that i would want in a girl and there is a list i have made but for the sake of mystery i wont put it here. but i will say this... when someone cares about you enough to pray for you that is an attractive thing. when someones says that they care enough about you to bring your needs and hurts before our eternal father than that person must really care about you. and that is attractive.

counting all my sins on roseary beads!

Grandma past away yesterday morning and so i will be going to florida for her funeral. when i was little and grand ma was watching me i one time took my big wheel down a huge hill and grandma chased me cause she thought i might die(i think there is a pattern of almost dying on some sort of wheeled object!) at the bottom of the hill i said lets do it again grandma. and mom told me that she said to tell me
*well ride that hill again* ill miss her.

took some pictures on the way up then at the track and some of teh cattle round up. there are some fun ones. i think a couple turned out pretty nice. documenting things is tough when you are trying to not get in the way and help with the whole process.

the enchanted highway... some crazy guy made these huge fifty foot sculptures along this highway and so its pretty sweet.


badlands


track i walk there some times when the mesuitos arent eating my flesh


score board at the track looked nice so i took a shot...


rusty grain bins looked nice..


corraling the cows to seperate them and take them out to pasure


cow


this shot i really like i mean i almost thought about becoming a vegitarian because this cow is so cute. then i ate a burger on the way home and thought thank God for beef!


whoa who is that bad ass cowboy? thought you might like this self portrait that i did it makes me look more like a real cowboy than if it was not just the shadow.

save me from the wreck im about to drown in!

last week was good really think that im really starting to get in a good groove here and a lot of the kids are connecting. there are a few who are really committedand i think that i am going to go out to lunch with a couple of them this week. but the weekend was somewhat exciting. i went to a farm in bismark and went on a cattle roundup! so the first thing that i did when i found out that i was going was to buy a comboy hat. found one and then we headed out on friday. saturday morning headed over to the farm and the first thing we did there was to hop on the four wheelers and get all the cattles into a coral and so i thought that after about 2 minutes of experience on a fourwheeler that i was pro so leland told me to ride along the fence and see if there was any cattle that were far out. the land was a little hilly and i thought 30 would be a good speed to go fast and fun. so i cleared this big heel and started down the other side that was steep and then at the bottom there was a little bump. 30 miles an hour over a litlte bump and i got air all four tires off theground and i thought i was going to die. landed it though and decided since i didnt know what was over the next hill i slowed down a little. rounding up cattle is not very exciting and when you take them out to pasture you just ride the four wheeler behind them and folow them about 3 miles and put them in a pasture. they walk real slow also.
sunday was good i taught sunday school and then we watched a rob bell video one of the nooma series and it was good and i think the kids liked it. then last night we started vbs and it reminds me a little bit of mr. j so i was pretty excited about that. i am the game leader for 5th and 6th graders and we played some games and then jessie this girl who was helping me got the kids to do this human knot and that was fun. i took some pictures of the cattle roundup and i am going to get the film developed hopefully this week and ill post more pictures! sweet...

cinnamin toast crunch...

trying to figure out how to make t hings interesting for the kiddies in sunday school so i am making a video asking people around down questions and hopefully they will like that then a little teachy teachy and i also bought the nooma videos by rob bell to finish out the hour, well i suppose the fose ball table finishes out the hour but the part where i am forcing the kids to learn about jesus ends with rob bell. hopefully i dont get run out of town. things are going well and i think its going to be a good summer.
i took some pictures of todd gummerman before i left actually at 2 in the morning my last night in springfield which was actually a day late cause i had taken pictures of audry the night before instead of packing. well i finally sent him an e mail and he sent some of the better pictures. we shot 31. ill show you 4. like i said we shot them at 2 in the morning so that the light would be cool and so that no one would ruin the back grounds. i mean cars or people walking around down town although it might have been cool to have people walking through the pictures because the exposures were so long that they would just be blurs. anyway if you are thinking why does that kidd have a piano in those pictures its cause he is a musician and we were just trying some different things.

this might be my favorite one it is shot infront of the mudhouse in springfield missouri down town.

this one was at a parking structure pretty neat

i like how the light turns this one a little blue green nice feel dont you think

this one was on mt. vernon the street i lived on in springfield there were two blue lights and the rest were orange man that magnesium lighting is so gross when you dont use a flash. blue isnt too bad...

this one is kinda romantic with the candle light huh? i like the light flares from teh candles it took a second to figure out what the floating circles were. hope you like these photos and remember i like to take pictures of people and so if your a person i could take a few shots of you if you want...?
if you wonder what todds music sounds like you could guess that its piano music and you would be right if you want to know what it is really like though maybe you should ask nikki to hear the cinnamin toast crunch song. or you could hear the whole thing it will grow on you for sure. ok peace out...

Fire!

reaidng a generous orthodoxy and i guess that i will say there are some questions and some praises i have for this book it has challenged me and made me think which is i suppose more than most books even atempt. the chapter on being a mystic/poetic i think may be what i needed to think about more. how art and religion are intertwind in scripture but art is resented by most religious leaders today is wierd. there are some other great thoughts in the book and the one that says remember the movie contact when the lady in the space ship says beauty undesribable poetry they should have sent a poet. that got me and i hope that my life is full of experiences that are poetic that cant be described in an essay but figuritive language that doesnt make complete sense but is still beautiful!
i guess my boy blaise pascal had a good grasp on this when he was 31 was swept away into that great abyss... fire!
In the year of grace, 1654,
On Monday, 23rd of November, Feast of St Clement, Pope and Martyr,
and others in the Martyrology,
Vigil of St Chrysogonus, Martyr, and others,
From about half past ten in the evening until about half past
twelve,

FIRE!

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, (Ex 3:6; Mt 22:32)
not of the philosophers and scholars.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
"Thy God and my God." (Jn 20:17)
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except God.
He is to be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel.
Greatness of the Human Soul.
"Righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee,
but I have known Thee." (Jn 17:25)
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have separated myself from Him.
"They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters." (Jn 2:13)
"My God, wilt Thou leave me?" (Mt 27:46)
Let me not be separated from Him eternally.
"This is eternal life,
that they might know Thee, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." (Jn 17:3)
Jesus Christ.

JESUS CHRIST

I have separated myself from Him:
I have fled from Him,
denied Him,
crucified Him.
Let me never be separated from Him.
We keep hold of Him only by the ways taught in the Gospel.

Renunciation, total and sweet.
Total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day's training on earth.
"I will not forget thy words." (Ps 119:16) Amen.

road to joy...

yesterday was a bad day for the first time in 12 years i am missing camp and that is probably a worse feeling than only one kidd wanting to go. so i thought i would take the week to get my summer calendar together and its coming together nicely. so today is better but i am trying not to live my life with highs and lows according to the circumstances. my quiet time in the mornings have been good and i have been thinking a lot lately its easy when you are alone most the time.
the family that i am staying with is very nice and we have a good time. their son andrew cries sometimes when i leave. and he stands in front of the door and says do you know what and then tries real had to think of something that will keep me there for a bit longer. its pretty cute but then he gets yelled at.
i have been listening to teh new gorillaz album a lot lately and boy is it good. also both new bright eyes albums are great i dont listen to them for too long cause you know they are a little sad but they are good. things are looking up and i am feeling good about the summer i hope things go as well as i hope and better. im not counting down until summers over anymore that is a bad attitude to have and wont help anything so i am just trying my best and knowing that is all i can do. so this summer the theme is ...*do your best kidd* and i will

10 weeks and counting....

so i think that first impressions are hard to get past and i think i am making a good one but my expectations are not being met. not that i am real demanding or maybe i am just second guessing things i thought i could live without. so here i am finding that truth is the most important thing to me. second place goes to organization neither one of those things are prevelant here.
its easy to make highschool kids my freinds and its easy to talk about life but who christ created me to be is something that im not sure this church can handle. i dunno. apparently in north dakota or atleast here in williston n one plans and you never know what a turn out you will get. so i am counting down the ten weeks until i return to springfield. i guess my new plans are to take a year off pay off some bills and then go to school for photography. thats a ways away but i really think that is what i would like to do whith my life. i guess ill find out in a year. alyssa ill call you soon. if you like pink shirts i have 8 of them now. pretty much blue and pink from here through summer. hahaha. hope all is well with my pondo homies. chelsea send the letter to 5434 n holmes kansas city missouri to my parents house. they will know where to send it cause i dont know my adress.