Signature of Divine

July 4th 2008. Happy independence day! I know Challenge was over by now, but the trip definitely wasn’t. We FINALLY got to sleep in for the first time in a week and we were sure happy. I woke up at about 9:30 or 10. We got dresses, packed up, and Laura offered to share some Starbucks coffee with me. I really do love her. But the best part was buying the coffee because the barista was like super enthusiastic and 10 times nicer than anyone I’ve met in Miami. She did not believe in saying anything else but, “Of course!”. I probably could have said, “Can I tell you that you’re creeping me out right now?” and she’d be like, “Of course!” Good stuff. The rest of the group was also in the lobby drinking Starbucks, just sitting around and eating cereal for breakfast. We weren’t really doing much else but watching some news footage of a hot dog eating contest. Pretty gross, let me tell you.

You thought the meetings were over, didn’t you? Well I lied. We had another meeting in the lobby. Nothing about Challenge, though, just about our plans for the day. We were going to pack everything into the van and check out of the hotel [I already felt like it was my home. I miss my bed!]. Then we would walk to the Gateway Mall that was just a couple blocks away to pass the time. Then at 2:30, we would drive over to a nearby park, where Alfred [from the Dream Center] was going to be having a carnival sort of thing for the 4th of July, where we would be helping out by manning booths and stuff for the whole day and then we would see fireworks there at night. We were actually ready on time for once [well except for Mark]. We loaded up the van and the guys drove while the girls walked to the mall. We’re just hardcore like that, is all.

We got to this train station thingy that served as an entrance to the mall and then headed straight for the food court. We each had 5 bucks to spend so I went to the taco place there and ordered a burrito, but had extra money to spend. I looked at the sides and noticed that there was an item called, “Mexi-Fries”. I had no clue what those were, so I asked and I almost laughed out loud when the guy said they were tater tots. And he said it as if it was totally normal for taco places to serve tater tots. Whatever, I ordered them. I sat down with my burrito and my tots and got ready to eat. Now if the plain fact that this place called Taco Time served tater tots wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that their burrito stunk and their tater tots were the most amazing tater tots I have ever tasted in my whole life. I mean, not many tater tots are picture worthy. I ended up not really eating my burrito, so I just took some of Brie’s nachos and took Mia’s breadstick. Yay for carbs.

We then headed walked around the mall for a bit more, but soon enough it was time to get going to the park. We were greeted by Alfred when we got there and he told us about the games he had set up and everything that was going on. I manned the ‘Krazy Kans’ [so incorrectly spelled, but whatever] and the ‘Ring Toss’ station. It turns out that a group from Iowa [by the way, like half of the people at Challenge were from there] was gonna help out, too, so this guy named….Uh this guy with a name I can’t remember [Trevor? Isaac? Jacob?] help me with my station. The rest of the day simply consisted of me talking to little kids there, handing out prizes, and getting squirted with little squirt rings. Wasn’t too bad. There was this one time, though, that this little girl just stood in front of my table with a ticket but said nothing and did nothing. I so I go up to her and ask her if she wanted to play, and she has no type of response whatsoever. I try English, I try Spanish [since most of these kids were refugees], I try hand motions, and nothing happens. I don’t know any other language, so I simply just gave up.

Some people from the Dream Center that help Alfred out, then came to relieve us from some of our duties. So after that, I gave out tickets, ate pizza, and played with my biffle Rani [remember her?]. Fireworks were gonna start at around 9-10, since in the West the sun sets at like 9 [how awesome]. We cleaned up and helped pack everything up then we headed over to a nice big patch of grass and situated ourselves to watch the fireworks. But before that, we faced a near-death experience. Some stupid lady was there throwing little fireworks like all the other lunatics that were there and didn’t notice we were right behind her. So she goes to throw it back and almost smacks us with the explosive in her hand. She then realizes that this not a very good situation, curses a bit, and throw it in back of us, missing me by about an inch. Thank you Lord for having mercy on me.

When we were all safe, we sat in the grass, working on impossible little puzzle things, taking pictures or playing with kazoos [Mark took mine. I never got it back]. Then we watched the fireworks for a while and left at around 10:30-11ish. We were originally planning to stay at the Dream Center, but Alfred said that he would take us to a church where he has people stay when they come. We went and it was pretty cool. They had an indoor gym and everything. So after the baby was in a room upstairs, we played some basketball and volleyball, both at which I thoroughly suck at. But it was still pretty fun. Then we went upstairs to our assigned rooms, girls got the children’s nursery. We got dressed and set up our makeshift beds on the floor and got ready to sleep. But then the other girls started flipping out and getting scared for any little sound, and as amusing as it was for them, I bet Nic and Laura didn’t really enjoy that. Eventually we did sleep, though, and got mentally prepared for the day ahead.

July 3rd, 2008. I actually woke up feeling really bummed. Not because the day before stunk and not because I thought this day was gonna suck but because this was the last official day of Challenge. Boo hoo. We went to our last breakfast [sad] and had the crappiest waffles of life. I still thought of it as special, nevertheless. We had our last Bible study meeting at 8, which was pretty sad as well. It seems that it’s only during summer when ‘last’ things are bad. But it was a good study, as usual and we prepared for our last day of ministry. We headed to the last morning rally where Starfield played their [second-to-last] set, which was great as usual. Then a great speaker came up named Greg Stier. He was the one who was stuck with the ‘witnessing lecture’ this year. Don’t take me wrong, though, the ‘witnessing lecture’ is one of my favorite talks. I always feel so inspired by it and I love how both times I’ve been to Challenge the speakers are not afraid to be intense and tell you straight out, “If you know people that are not Christian they’re going to hell and you have to do something about it and you have to do it soon.” I always feel SO convicted when that’s said to me and this time was no different. My problem is that my non-Christian friends know I’m a Christian and respect me for it but when it comes to talking about their relationship with God, it doesn’t really happen. And I just don’t have as much courage as people may think I do when it comes to social situations. I mean Greg gave us a challenge that morning to witness to someone in the next 48 hours and while I desperately wanted to take it and raise my hand with the rest of the people, I didn’t want to make a promise I knew I probably wouldn’t keep. AH IT SUCKS. But I really hope that this time I will take it to heart and actually do what they tell me. Oh and this is an invitation for you to pray that I have courage to witness to my friends. I reeeeeeeeeeeally need it. You have no idea how much.

Well after that session, we headed over to the dining hall and grabbed our last Challenge lunch. And it was good, too. They had my 2nd favorite cookie in the whole world that day- White Chocolate Macadamia Nut. It was so good and depressing at the same time. We headed over to Hall C…yep you know it…for the last time. We prepared flyers [for the last time] and got ready to hand out assignments [for the last time]. Today, though, we were all going to serve together for once and head over to the Dream Center [sorry for not linking in the last post]. We weren’t the only ones so we got to hang out a little with other groups that were going and I talked to some girls that were going, too. Fun stuff. Then I headed over to meet with the rest of my group and that’s when I heard about the most interesting person I met at Challenge- Colton. So the story goes like this….

Mia is sitting at the Serving table like usual when a guy who was playing frisbee walks up to her. She has no clue who he is and he has no clue who she is, but he’s interested. He suddenly turns over her name tag [to read her name] and says,

“Mia, can you hold my sunglasses?” and holds her hand in an awkward way.
He goes to high-five her [that's his thing, high-fiving] and when she touches his hand he grabs it, caresses it in a creepy way, and asks her, “Are you okay?”

Yeah he was DEFINITELY interested. I heard this story and immediately started cracking up. Obviously, this guy thought he was hot stuff. He wasn’t. So after talking about him for a while, we come up with a plan…

Timmy [from California] gets his friend Sean’s sunglasses that look similar to Colton’s and goes up to him and says,

“Colton, here are your sunglasses…” and then holds his hand in an ultra-creepy way.

Colton is a bit confused and looks at his sunglasses, notices that they’re not his, and pushes Timmy out of the way and pretty anyone who was in the way of Mia and goes right up to her. He goes back into flirt mode and asks her for his sunglasses and she gives them to her. Meanwhile, all of us are laughing hysterically right in front of him and he has no idea what’s going on.

Good times, good times. After that whole thing was over, it was time to head to the Dream Center. We had to wait a bit for something and our group was known for going up and down the escalators when we had to wait so we did. But we got caught by a security guard at the convention center. He’s one the second level and stops right in front of the ‘up elevator’ and tells EVERY SINGLE PERSON about to get off of the elevator, “The escalators are not a toy or a ride.” And we were all right in front of each other. He sounded like a broken record. It was pretty funny though. That whole day the joke was, ” The is/are not a toy or a ride.”

After being in the car for like 15 minutes listening to more Starfield [now I love Starfield and all but after ONLY listening to them for a whole week, it gets old]. Oh joy. when we got to the Dream Center we noticed that a bunch of groups had already gotten there. There was a carnival-like thing there with games and entertainment in the parking lot so we could play with kids there. We also noticed that it was terribly hot. BUT we also noticed that someone was there and his name was…Colton. I don’t remember but I think that was a joke we would say Mia’s name really loud over and over again. We weren’t really doing much so we moved to another part of the parking lot and watched some people playing with a soccer ball and sure enough, there was Colton. SO creepy. So we got out of there and headed inside to get water and just rest for a bit. There was a giant line for water right after we finished and our friend from Wisconsin, Kelly, was there and she had a water balloon [we were going to have Utah's largest water balloon fight that day]. She offered it to me and then to Brie, who took it. And right when she did, COLTON was there and told her something like, “Hey not in here!” and high-fived her. This guy was freaking everywhere!

And it got worse. We headed over to the water balloon fight at a park. And don’t worry, I won’t talk much about it seeing as it wasn’t too exciting. Brie and I were walking back from the park when we noticed [who else but] Colton walking in front of us…

When we were waiting to cross Colton turns around and asks me, “Why aren’t you smiling?”

I replied, “No reason.”

But Colton doesn’t get it and asks, “What’s wrong?”

And I’m like, “Nothing.”

Then Colton follows that with, “Well will you give me a high 5?”

And I high-fived him.

Now this whole time I wanted to laugh so hard, but I contained myslef. Until he turned around and then I started cracking up. For the rest of the walk we kept harrassing him by saying his name and ‘Mia’ repeatedly, and then I said something like, “I wonder where MIA is. We can probably find her though she’s wearing SUNGLASSES. Or maybe she’s HOLDING SOMETHING FOR SOMEONE. You know how much she likes HOLDING THING FOR PEOPLE. Especially SUNGLASSES.” Yes, we’re terrible people, I’m sorry. But whatever, we walked back to the Dream Center and just hung out. I know you’re sick of the Colton stories but there are just so many…This one’s short, though. Before I tell it just know that after all these ‘Colton encounters’ Brie and I were wanting to tell Colton something like, “Can I hold your sunglasses?” but we would keep forgetting. So he comes up to me once again and asks for a high-five. I give him a high-five and he starts walking away as I realize that I forgot AGAIN so, with Colton still pretty close to me but turned around, I yell, “Darn it!” and he turns around really suddenly and looks at us all funny and we start laughing once again. Great times.

Soon enough, the day at the Dream Center is over and we start heading back to the Salt Palace for LAST dinner and our LAST rally. HOW depressing. I hardly remember what dinner was, even. But I sure do remember the rally. It was terrific. I think Starfield went up first. Then a friend of Rollo’s and a guy I’ve met several times, Ken Anderson, led his gospel choir that he had been training all week in a couple songs I’ve heard many times, but are always good. Brie thought she saw Colton in it, but I think she’s crazy. Oh well. Then I think J.D. Greear spoke one LAST time. And there were a couple dramas in between things which was cool. Then came the amazing Francis Chan. OF COURSE he was amazingly awesome, that just comes with being Francis Chan. Then we had this thing where we prayed at different parts of the auditorium. There were about 5 or 6 different ‘areas’ set up like different places to represent different things. A school setting, bedroom setting, coffee shop setting, church setting, and I think a set where you think about leaving Challenge or something like that. And depending on what you wanted to pray about, you go to that specific setting. I wanted to pray that I would be able to witness to my friends so I went to the school setting where you get a Post-It and write the names of people you wanna witness to and then stick it on a locker and then I just fell on my knees and prayed. Then I headed over to the church setting where I did my own communion. After that, Starfield came up again [for the last time] and sang their last songs. We were shouting ‘ONE MORE SONG’ for like 5 minutes, but they completely ignored us. Whatever.

I was walking back to the ministry headquarters that night when God answered my prayer. Since I had only talked to Drew for a couple minutes the day before, I wanted to meet up with him again to talk to him more, but I couldn’t find him. I was about to give up when there was [again]! We chatted more [for the last time] to make up for last time and then I said goodbye. Then our group had a meeting [say it with me, FOR THE LAST TIME] and talked about our plans for leaving the next day and then we just had a Challenge wrap-up talk. But after that, Nic introduced us to a childhood friend of his from New Orleans who taught us this dance game thingy called the ‘Boogaloo’ which was reeeeeally silly but yet pretty fun. And I did it seeing as it was our last meeting and all. We were all dead tired, though so we just decided to say our goodbyes, clean up, and go directly to sleep. And so we did. For the last time.

July 2nd 2008. Now let me tell you now to get ready. If you thought all my other posts were long, this one is gonna be ginormous. Wednesday was an interesting day for me. So I started off with the usual. Woke up at around 7-ish, headed to breakfast, went to a meeting/bible study at 8. No biggie, right? I felt like the week had already gone by so quickly. And during this whole I week I kept on harrassing Nic about not letting me meet starfield because he always put me to work. I talked to him about it and he said that after the rally he would let me have free time to go meet them if I got back soon enough. I was super jazzed and hoping/praying that Starfield would be there after the rally. The rally was great and J.D. told the story of Rack, Shack, and Benny [Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Ah I love Veggie Tales]. It was cute how he gave King Nebuchadnezzar [ha I spelled that right on the first try] nicknames like ‘Neb-dog’, ‘The Nebster’, etc. But that wasn’t what was so great abotu the rally, actually. But I mean it’s always great when you can break a world record by just playing a kazoo, right? We played Amazing Grace for 4 minutes [watch it here]. My lips were so numb afterwards, but it was fun stuff.

Then the time came. The time where hopefully I would be able to FINALLY meet Starfield and becomes best friends. A couple of friends and I go to the merch table and look for them in their usual places. And they’re not there. I thought I was gonna cry. i was so mad until…there they were. Across the room, taking pictures and signing autographs and stuff. YAY. I was about to run over there when suddenly I recognized someone that was walking right in front of me. I could have sworn it was Drew. Drew is my friend from good ol’ Kearney, Nebraska. I met him 3 years ago in Miami when his youth group came to help out during the first year of the sports camp. The last time I saw him was 2 years ago at Challenge 2006, so now I had been looking for him that whole week. I had given up but there he was. He was about to just walk away and I didn’t really know what to do or if it was really him so I just took my chances and screamed his name out as loud as I could. Then I realized that it was totally the wrong guy and was humiliated that whole day. NAH, just kidding. Drew turned around and luckily was as happy to see me as I was to see him and we chatted for a bit, and took another [better] picture. I wanted to talk to him longer but I had to go befriend Starfield so I said goodbye and hoped that I would see him around somewhere again.

After that was all over, we headed over to where Starfield was taking pictures with some people we didn’t know and were patiently waiting for our turn. It came eventually and we tried to talk to the guys a bit, I told Tim he reminded me a lot of David Cook and told me that he gets that a lot. I was about to call him David, too. Whoops. YES I know they look nothing alike concerning their face [or their complexion according to Nic. Odd] but if you were there and saw him wearing the same pants and talking the same way and having the same hair and flashing the same smile while singing, you would agree! I got them to sign my hat. I had already gotten my friend’s brother to get Jon to sign my hat the day before [when I was busy]. But on my hat it looked awkward. Like two pickles and a squiggle. Whatever. I got them to sign my hat and then we started to talking to Homeless Dave [guy in post picture on top], the coolest member of the band in my book. I mean with that nickname, and that fedora, he had to be amazing. And he WAS. We talked to him for a bit about his fedora and Canada and then took that awesome picture you can see above. But then we decided that we should get a picture with the whole band so we did. We said our goodbyes and left with a great appreciation for Nic and his timing when it came to giving us free time. We grabbed our lunches, ate, and chatted about how Mia is going to marry homeless Dave one day. Yeah, yeah.

That day was also a bit interesting because we weren’t really going to be doing much ministry that day. We were going to be taking a tour of the Mormon Temple just to check out all the cool buildings. We still handed out assignments, though, and worked for about an hour with the people who were doing the food packaging for Haiti/Africa. Then at 2:30 we all walked over to Temple Square and the buildings suddenly got a lot nicer. I was going crazy with the pictures and was hpapy to see we weren’t the only Christians in the temple square but actually, quite a few Challenge groups had chosen that day to have a tour as well. We tried to be as nice as possible when it came to going into the South Visitor’s Center [YES there's a North one, too] and watching a video of a modern Mormon prophet. He was pretty hilarious, but I don’t think he was supposed to be. Oh well. We walkd back outside, took more pictures, and were waiting for our tour guides. YES, we decided to go on a REAL tour. What an interesting decision that was.

Our guides were these two Mormon missionary ladies, one from the U.S. and one from Japan. They were both nice but that Japanese lady could not talk to save her life. I had no idea what she was saying, even though she was talking English. But she was sort of adorable. Luckily the American told us the story of how Joseph Smith ‘revived the gospel’ and founded Mormonism. It all started in 1730 when he was 14 years old and desperately searching a church he could join. He prayed for God to show him which one under a grove tree and Jesus or an angle, I don’t remember, maybe both, came to him in a vision and told him to start a new church. This was because apparently when Jesus and the apostles died, the gospel died so Joseph Smith revived it. I wanted to laugh so badly but in reality, I felt so bad for these two nice girls who believe so greatly in all this bogus crud. But we went on to see/hear about one of the buildings [either the church or the tabernacle or the temple? They have all 3. Yippee] and then we went inside the NORTH Visitor’s center. It was pretty cool, but the best part was that one room. The walls were covered with solar system like images and there it was. A giant statue of Jesus.  Don’t know which one, but we still went it. I picked up a bookmark near the front that had their articles of faith on them. At this point they had traded American lady for a lady from Honduras to translate in Spanish. Then the Jesus statue started talking. In Spanish. SO creepy. I felt special, though, because I was one of the only people in the room who could understand it.

Jesus then spoke to us in English, he was done, and we were on our way. We came across more statues but of Adam and Eve this time. Weird stuff. Then we got into one of those 3 buildings, I think it might have been the tabernacle. One person played the organ and the other did this ceremony thing that no one understood. Four of the missionaries came up to talk about the Book of Mormon and then they sang to us. Of course I had to be sitting RIGHT in front of them and had to muster up all the power within me to not laugh. I did pretty well. But then came the comment cards. Boo hoo. I wrote my real name but didn’t want to take chances and wrote fake phone numbers, a fake email, and a fake address. Someone told me that it didn’t really matter about putting my real info on there. But then I heard the Mormon lady telling us that we had to put our address so that someone could visit us. Yeah, I’m sure happy a Mormon missionary is not gonna come to my house. They asked us if we were interested in a Book of Mormon, we nicely said NO, and scurried on our of there. Interesting experience, indeed.

BUT the day is not close to over yet! We’re walking back to the Salt Palace where Nic says something like, “Hey you’ll never guess what I did today” since he wasn’t with us the whole time. I knew it was going to be something I was gonna be mad at so I told him to not tell me. BUT he did. He was like, “I went down to the Dream Center and hung out with Starfield in a room for about 20 minutes. I was soooooo jealous, I can’t even describe it. He was like, “I didn’t really get to talk to them much but Hannah [my friend] hung out with them the whole day. She rode with them, shopped with them, and filled balloons with them.” By this time you could probably see the green tint in my skin. I was thinking, “Hannah ditched us for Starfield?! She hung out with them while we were stuck listening to creepy Jesus statues talking to us in Spanish?!”. I tried to contain myself during dinner, but then Hannah came. We were all looking at her with this really mean face and she acted like if she had no clue what was going on. We then informed her and she was like, “What? Who told you?!”. SHE WASN’T EVEN GONNA TELL US. Tsk, tsk. Then she kept rubbing it in by telling us all that she knows about them and what they did together. Whatever. Little things happened after like a funny prank on one of the guys, and a chat with one of Sarah Benson’s friends that was there and then to the rally. The music was good, the speaker was bad, bad bad. Tim Elmore. *sigh* I almost strangled myself with my Challenge backpack listening to him, subconsciously too. He’s like a motivational speaker on steroids. He used these weird pictures and weird metaphors to teach us how to be leaders. I didn’t really tak in any of it, but I was trying really hard to. The best part of his talk was the story of how he witnessed to Kiss. When it was over I rejoiced.

Another meeting followed that and then we played another game of Samurai along with two other girls from Colorado. After a couple rounds of that, two people from that local youth group asked for our help in removing soda cans from the recycling bins all over the convention center and then taking off the little tabs which would be redeemed for money and used to keep kids alive using dialysis. We gladly offered our help and after a couple hours we had had lots of fun and thoroughly covered ourselves in all kinds of soda. I don’t really know how much money we got out of it but I hope it helped at least one kid. We then headed to our hotels and went straight to the showers. Then we finally headed to bed after that incredibly long, long day.

Since I got like 5 emails about the release of this video, I thought I should post it.
If you’re from the South, be happy.
I apparently am not. Oh and yeah, Florida looks like California in the video. Whoops.

The BBQ Song

*There will not be a Challenge post today, because of this video. And because I need a break from the 1000+ word essays!

July 1st 2008. I woke up a bit later today [30 minutes makes a difference!]. I put my Hawaiian shirt back on and went off to start another long, but great, day at Challenge. I tried to control myself more when it came to breakfast and it worked. Mostly. At around 8, our group met for a Bible study and after that I continued highlighting maps. Then we headed off to the 4th rally. Starfield sang more songs, mostly the same ones over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, though, they’re awesome. J.D. [worry for not linking before] once again took the stage and talked about the woman at the well, I believe. I know much about her already seeing as my pastor had a really long series on that story at church, but it was still a good talk. If only J.D. wans’t a Tarheel fan, then I’d like him more. Hehe just kidding. Mostly. Well after that, we met up once again to keep setting stuff up and made a couple nice signs. I was the grammar/spelling police that morning [and pretty much every day] and reminded one of the guys from California that was in our group that it’s spelled ‘website’ not ‘websight’ ;]

After finishing up our lunch we headed back into the main ministry assignment place/room/thing [let's just call it Hall C] and handed out/explained maps and stuff. Some of the people in our general group were going to go help on the first day of food packaging, but Nic took the sharing group and attempted to get us to hand out fliers for a group that didn’t show up. On the 30 minute drive up to the neighborhood, we pretty much slept. Nic lost a little lost but eventually he found the place. We were about to start when this guy drove up in his truck and asked us what we were doing. We nicely informed him that we were planning to put up church fliers but then he not-so-nicely informed us that there was no soliciting in the whole neighborhood and pretty much all the neighborhoods surrounding it. Oh great.

Nic called this guy, Darren, to find out what we should do but he didn’t pick up so we stopped for a bathroom break for about 10 minutes and just went back. And we slept the drive back down, too. We were probably the most unproductive people in the whole conference that day. Haha. We got back with about 20 minutes until dinner and I just decided to go back to where the food packagers had just finished 100,000 meals in a couple hours. I helped them clean up and get ready for the next/last day when they would finish the other 150,000. For dinner we decided to [sort of] experience what a lot of African people experience and all we had for dinner was a little bowl of rice with a bean medley. Now it wans’t the most amazing meal ever but I’m SURE that African kids don’t eat this well. Of course, they’re not legally allowed to starve us on purpose so they gave us a couple of little bowls [and bread and peach mango juice]. But actually, with one little bowl and one piece of bread I was totally full. And after putting a packet of salt in it, the rice and beans were pretty good. I WISH that this is what the people in Africa ate.

The most interesting part of this dinner, however, is that my friend Hannah and I decided to sit in a random table with random people and see what would happen. Her brother Matthew did it all the time and he always had decent results so we tried it. We did not get results as good. The girls we sat at the table didn’t really want to talk to us and all they did talk about was which boy was cuter and which boy they dated when and how cute their hair looked that day and how much weight they lost that summer. We left quickly after we were done with our food. Then I headed to the hotel with some other people from my group and played a card game called Bang! [the object is to kill people], which ended ‘in a verbal bang’. Luckily, we had another rally to help calm us down.

That night’s speaker was a pretty cool woman named Becky Tirabassi. She told us the story of how she came to know Jesus. Long story short, she was an alcoholic/smoker/speed addict by 15. At age 21, she almost got raped by some football players when she was drunk and her boyfriend [who she was living with at the time] wans’t too happy about it. He kicked her out and she decided to head back home to Cleaveland where she went back to the Catholic church her parents made her go to as a child [which she hated] but no one was there except the janitor. Next thing you know the janitor lead her to Christ and she stopped drinking and smoking from that day on. She used that story to try to witness to a young girl on a plane she was in and it pretty cool. She spoke about being bold and on fire for Jesus and she sure was.

Another rally wrap-up meeting proceeded and our group decided to play a nice game of samurai right after, in a very public place. This is a hard game to explain via blop post but just know it involves samurai moves and very, very loud screaming. People looked at us weird but we actually got a couple people to play with us. Fun stuff. After a couple rounds of samurai, our voice were shot and we decided it was time to go to bed. Brie actually wanted to play samurai in the hotal elevator but many people shot down her idea. Thank goodness they did. We headed to our rooms, cleaned up, and finally went to bed.

June 30th, 2008. The first Challenge ministry day. We wake up at about 6:30 am [ew], get ready, and head to our first Challenge breakfast. I had some yummy eggs, hash browns, a danish, a croissant, AND bacon [which tasted like they had been nicely stacked the day before]. Yeah, yeah I’m a fatty. Shoot me. You could probably guess what we did next [*cough* meeting *cough*]. But after that, we did some pre-work-work. We got into our little groups depending on the area of ministry we were assigned to [either caring, serving, or sharing]. People in the Caring group did big car washes and extrme bathroom makeovers in public restaurants and stuff. The Serving group [which I was in 2 years ago] did manual labor for individuals people, mostly yardwork and all that good stuff. Finally, the Sharing group [my group] went out into the city and put church fliers on doors and witnessed to people using a survey [available on a WordPress blog!]. So I helped my youth pastor, Nic, highlight maps for people and call some leaders to inform them of their assignments. Then at 9:30 we headed to rally #2!

Starfield once again played a great set. And then there he was. Zach Hunter. Zach Hunter is a 16-year-old abolitionist that started an organization called Loose Change to Loosen Chains when he was only 12. This organization collects money that is given to government programs that help free modern-day slaves. He spoke about how the young generation can make a difference and also talked about modern slavery in general. He was great. And great-looking ;] That morning they also had this thing called ‘Prayer Initiative’ where this guy Ben and two kids from the conference would talk about an issue some people have, talk about their own experiences and lead everyone in prayer. The best part of that was that Ben looked like a chubby/shorter version of Sawyer from LOST! Creepy. Two Sawyer encounters in one week. Then finally, J.D. Greear was introduced as our main morning session speaker. He said he was from North Carolina [woot woot Rhett and Link]. BUT then he said he was a Tarheel fan [boo hoo]. So yeah since Rhett and Link went to the Tarheels’ rival school [Tarheels are from UNC], NCSU, I booed J.D. as loudly as I could and screamed, “GO WOLFPACK!”. Then he’s like, “I’ve only been on stage 3 minutes and I’m already getting booed at!”. I felt special. He did have a good talk about how one of the best ways to show the love of Christ to people is to have radical joy in the midst of persecution, using Paul as an example, of course. We then went to get lunch and to yet ANOTHER meeting. I ate my yummy food and the highlighting continued…

At around 12:30 we headed to the main ministry place where we set up tables for each of the 3 groups and put fliers in door hangers and just got all our supplies together. At 1 pm, the youth groups started pouring in. My pastor/the head of ministry at Challenge, Rollo Casiple, had a little powertalk with them to get them excited, prayed for a bit and the craziness began. Groups came up to us asking what they were doing and where they were going. The thing was that I didn’t know as much as I should have and ended up directing almost everyone to Nic, who was already bombarded with people. But it worked out pretty well. 3 people from the sharing group went with a random group to hang fliers on doors. Everyone else from our Miami/San Diego group decided to stay and take over an assignment that belonged to a group that didn’t show up [which was going to a nursing home and playing with old people]. Nic had something to do and asked us to wait by the escalators. If only he knew what he provoked us to do.

We were all bored and since we were near the escalators we thought, “Why don’t we just go up and down the escalators to pass the time?”. And so we did. After about 5 or 10 minutes these 4 guys from the Midwest [woo hoo] noticed us and strated giving us high fives as we rode the escalators. A couple more people joined in and soon enough we had started a revolution. We were on the escalators for probably half an hour before Nic finally came and our fun was done. But since it was so late we ended up not going to the nursing home but staying at the Salt Palace so we could help set up the assembly lines where 250,000 meals were going to be packaged so that they could be sent to Haiti, the Congo, and Tanzania. We also learned how to package the meals so that we could teach groups how to do it the next day. It was actually pretty fun. But soon enough, it was dinner time.

We ate hamburgers [that also tasted nicely stacked] and then had some free time. Some of the other girls went back to the hotel but this girl Elizabeth and I decided to walk around the presentation tables and buy stuff at the Starfield merch table in hopes of meeting some of the guys. No such luck, but I did buy myself a nice hat. Then we walked around some more and there he was [again]: Zach Hunter. And of course I went up to his table and pretended to be interested in the 2 books he wrote [they were good, but I had no money left]. This lady that worked at the talbe gave us some magazines and then I just decided to go for it and talk to Zach. Holy cow, he was good-looking. And super nice. I asked him if he had a blog, he said he did but didn’t remember the link and told me to check out the magazine article about him to see if they posted the link there. I talked about how I’m a big blogger and how blogging helped me get to Utah [thanks, Annie!]. We talked for a bit more but we had to go so I cut off the conversation and said goodbye and stuff. By this time I was about to swoon. Yeah, yeah I’m a typical girl. However, I came back because ‘I forgot to ask him to sign my magazine’. And also because Brie wanted to meet Zach, too. I felt a little creepy, but whatever. He signed all our things and we talked about Facebook and his manager was there, too. Zach then gave me permission to add him on Facebook. I almost took it as a marriage proposal. Haha.

It was time for the evening rally and once again we heard Starfield. I think this was when Tim introduced the band. One funny moment was when Tim introduced the bass player Homeless Dave [he's not really homeless, he just dresses like it]. He said that he always wears his ‘tiara’ and Homeless Dave was like, “It’s called a fedora not a tiara.” The audience laughed and informed him that a tiara was like a princess crown. Although he was thoroughly embarrassed at this point, he continued and did amazing once again. Then came time for the ‘Ministry Minute’ where Rollo talked about…well, ministry. Then Jimmy Dorrell talked to us about caring for the hurting and talked about his church. His church is called The Church Under the Bridge because that’s exactly what it is. His church meets under a highway bridge and consists of homeless people and stuff. He was pretty cool.

We had another rally wrap-up in ministry headquarters [151 D, for the win] with our little group and then the girls hung out a bit in my hotel room as I listed all the reasons why I should marry Zach Hunter. First off, he’s actually close to my age. Second, he loves Leeland and Switchfoot and is like buddy-buddy with them. I love love love love love them. He is also soft-spoken and humble. We balance each other out! Most importantly he lives in Atlanta, GA which is ONLY like 8-10 hours away by car :D

I kept talking about how cute our kids would be [just kidding], the girls left, I read some of his book [Elizabeth bought it and it was adorable], then I went to sleep.

June 29th 2008. It’s the first official day of Challenge. Doesn’t really consists of working. Youth groups start pouring in from different parts of the country and begin to register. This day felt so long I won’t probably remember all of it, but I’ll try. We woke up and ate cereal for breakfast with some funky orange juice. I’m pretty sure we had a meeting that morning seeing as we had one like 3 or 4 times a day. We talked about more ministry stuff and how that day was crazy registration day. We set up our little registration table where all the churches who were serving that week would come and we would put them into the system and all that good stuff. It was lunch time before we knew it but we had to pay for it ourselves. I, not wanting to spend any money, starved myself, [just kidding. I had half of Laura's taco] but still walked to Carl’s Jr. with the group for the sake of going Carl’s Jr. because I had heard so much about it, and we don’t have those in Florida. We ran into some other groups from Challenge, some with very nice Southern accents and some with very nice skateboards.

We walked back and at 1 pm it officially started. Some people in our group were helping out with shoes [people donated shoes that were going to be ground up and used to resurface basketball courts in inner-city areas] and some were gonna help out in the kitchen to prepare food for the conference and stuff. I went with 3 other girls and helped stack frozen hamburgers and frozen bacon. It was actually pretty fun and the chef was cool. His name was on everything and we got these little cool paper hats and asked Chef Ben to sign them. We even got pictures with him and met some other girls from Pennsylvania [?].

We then decided to go back to the registration area. There were people running everywhere and in the midst of it, I saw two of the guys from Starfield [the Challenge worship band] setting up their merch table and stuff. At first I thought I was going crazy because I’m thinking, “Don’t people recognize them? Wouldn’t they have tons of people running up to them and asking for autographs and pictures and stuff?” Apparently Starfield wasn’t as well-known as I thought [sorry, guys]. Well I still told my friends [who hadn't recognized them either. figures] and my friend Brie thought that we should try to talk to Jon so we could become best friends. I discouraged that idea because I didn’t want to seem too creepy [like if staring over at him over and over wasn't enough] and she was like, “Let’s just ask him if he needs help setting up the merch table or something.” and I told her how stupid that sounded for about 5 minutes…then he brought out the shirts and it came to me. “We should ask him how much the shirts cost.” I say. So we went. It took a couple minutes to actually get over there [darn nerves] but we did it. I went up and the conversation went like this:

“Hey how much are the shirts going for? ” [me]
“Um I don”t really know but I think they’re 20 dollars.” [Jon]
“Oh okay cool.” [me]
“So where are you guys from? ” [Jon]
“Miami.” [Brie]
“Florida? ” [Jon]
“Yeah not Ohio.” [me]
*Jon laughs a little*
THEN IT HAPPENED:
“Do you need any help?” [Brie]

AH EPIC FAILURE!

“No not really I’m fine thank you.” [Jon]
“Oh. Alright.” [Brie and I]

Apparently he thought that we actually wanted to help him and when he said he didn’t need help he thought he was done talking to us and said:

“Well have a nice day. Bye.“

*sigh* We start walking away from the table and we find Tim carrying a table. But there were a couple guys helping him and we know who they are. They are two guys from our group. I go to them and I’m like, “DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT IS?!” and they’re like, “What?” and I’m like, “THAT’S STARFIELD.” they reply with “Starfield?”. “AS IN THE BAND THAT’S PLAYING IN THE RALLIES!” I say. “OH okay.” they say. Then one of them says, “Why are you so excited?” and I’m like, “Well I’ve loved their band since forever!” and he’s like, “Do you want me to introduce them to you or something?” [he doesn't even know their names]. He goes to talk to them but turns around and finds that we have run off. Hehe. Brie and I then walk around the soon-to-be-opened book/merch store for Challenge and see some nice shirts that are only 15 dollars. We waited patiently until it opened, bought ourselves those nice shirts [I also bought Jon Foreman's Fall and Winter EPs. YAY], and we even guessed our cashier’s state of residence. That Minnesota accent always gives it away.

We continued hanging out, talking to random people that came to our table, until dinner. Then we headed off to the first Challenge rally [these consist of a worship session with Starfield and a talk from a certain speaker]. I was uber excited because Francis Chan was scheduled to speak that night. I love love love love him. The music was great and the speak was phenomenal and pretty much hilarious. Francis Chan told the amazing story of how he worked as a vacuum cleaner [that sold for $1400 each] salesman, and during a slow period his partner/friend decided to use a new method to sell more vacuums. Francis would pretend to not know English and his friend would be his translator. So they went to their first house and told this little old lady that Francis [using his Chinese name that sounds something like 'young fun' or something and dressed in a nice Chinese kimono] just came from China, knew no English, and was trying to have a better life in America. She totally bought it. Francis would talk in Chinese, his friend in English. The lady thought Francis was the cutest thing ever and would talk to him really close-up and reeeeeally slowly in English [like if that would really help]. Francis didn’t even make sense really he was just rambling about nothing while his friend said whatever they usually said during presentations. It was going great until the lady told the friend to ask Francis how many siblings he had. Now this friend knew no Chinese. Francis knew this was going to be bad. His friend suddenly starts making these really weird noises that sounded nothing like Chinese at all and they couldn’t contain themselves. Him and Francis were rolling on the floor laughing their butts off for 5 minutes until the lady looks at them and asks the best question ever: “What’s so funny?” [I was in tears by this point from laughing so hard] She had no clue what was happening. So they went on with their act and she actually bought the cleaner for 1400 dollars. They then continued to use this method over and over again but the friend would raise up the prices each time to get more commission. The purpose of this story was to describe how Francis was before he saw God how He really is and used a couple passages in the Bible that describe God’s ‘physical appearance’. It was cool.

We all left in a good mood, thinking about what Francis talked about, and had yet another meeting. Talked a bit together, prayed a bit, and went to sleep mentally preparing ourselves for the work we would have to start the next day.

June 28th 2008. I woke up at like 7 am with major jet lag. But this was good jet lag, I guess. I felt like I had slept for so long and was so sure it was like 10 but I had only gotten 5 hours of sleep. Weird. Whatever. Nic brought us some breakfast which included donuts and coffee from a place called Winchell’s. This place is apparently very popular in Vegas/Nevava/The West, but I had never heard of it. I didn’t really care, those donuts are freaking epic. SO good. Unfortunately the coffee was only for the people driving 5-6 hours up to Utah. Boo hoo. I settled for some OJ. We got dressed, packed up, and hung out for a bit. I talked on the phone with my mother [again], Christine, and Vanessa. Then Michael came back but it was sort of creepy. He came in without me noticing and left without me noticing. My friend Hannah didn’t notice either so I took advantage of the situation [and Hannah's extreme guillibility] and told her that he was just a mirage. She thought she was crazy…until he came back. It was funny while it lasted, though.

A couple minutes we were off and that’s when it started. I started taking pictures of all the amazing mountains and couldn’t stop. We also drove past Burnham St. I wanted to take a picture of it for this guy seeing as it is his last name but I couldn’t get it. Sorry, Zach. We tried to figure out the iTrip, we did, but it kept on getting fuzzy. We just let it be, and soon enough the two other girls were asleep in the car. That left me and Laura while Hannah, Elizabeth and the guys in our group were in the other car supposedly rapping. I sort of wish I was there just to hear Nic attempt to rap. THAT would have been amusing.

I took more and more pictures of mountains. I deleted over half of them but if you count those I deleted I took about 70-80 pictures of mountains alone. When you live in Florida, mountain-picture-taking is freakishly addicting. After 4 and half hours of driving, we all are dying to get out of the car and Laura is dying to get some coffee. So of course we stop at the next Starbucks. We had no idea that this was a special Starbucks. So special that the employees have extremely prominent sideburns and wear clown makeup to work. Fine, it was only one employee that fit that description but there were only two of them. So I could honestly say that half of the workers there have epic sideburns and clown makeup. I never asked him the reason for the clown makeup but to this day I wish I did.

Mr. Sideburn Clown wasn’t the only weird person I saw that day. But [I'm so not kidding] while we were driving Brie noticed that the guy driving next to us had a creepy resemblance to Sawyer from LOST. Lauta saw him and was like, “TAKE A PICTURE!” so I took out my camera and the next thing ‘Sawyer’ sees when he turns to the left is two teenage girls taking a picture of him. In mine he and his friend are actually looking at the camera with a confused look on their faces. It was awesome. But I felt bad so I made a sign, just in case he drove past us again, that said, “I’m sorry that I took a picture of you but you look just like Sawyer from LOST! [and then not to seem so creepy, I added] God Bless You :D”. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to use it. But I still kept it for the memory! [I left it at the hotel]

Talking about the hotel [The Marriott Downtown which is freaking amazing], we got there at about 6 and walked to the Salt Palace Convention Center right after to have a meeting with our pastor who had gotten there a couple days earlier, since he runs the ministry portion of Challenge. We also met with his old youth group from San Diego, CA and a local youth group because we were going to be working with them, too. We talked, we prayed, and claimed our signature Hawaiian shirts that are used for easy identification and to let people know we were in charge. We then headed over to the lobby where I played a card game with Hillary and Brie. Felipe then found his way into the game and him and Hillary were playing for like half an hour until they gave up and ate pizza with the rest of us.

We had yet another meeting in a hotel ‘cubby’ then headed into bed. But not just any beds. The most amazing beds of life. I miss that bed.

It was June 27th 2008. I woke up at about 8 in the morning and was getting ready to head to camp for the last time in the next 10 days. I sure was excited. I was even more anxious to go when I realized that the little kids were especially evil that day. The time seemed to be going by so slowly that day, I was going crazy. I’m surprised that the kids haven’t held that day against me and haven’t subsequently dubbed me ‘The Evil Coach’. As much as I wanted to leave I was also saddened by the fact that this was the last time I would see my Wisconsinite friends Christine and Vanessa in a while. They’d been living with me for about a month and it was really hard to say goodbye. But I could count on the kids to make leaving easier.

At 12:30 we left the church to go to the Ft Lauderdale Airport. I was taking some pictures of Rani [shocking, isn't it?] as we got to the airport. I was way excited. Before Challenge, I hadn’t been on an airplane in 12 years. But I can’t remember any of that so it felt like my first time. We checked out luggage and found out that our flight was delayed an hour. That didn’t really cause a problem, we just had to wait longer. I sat down and ate some yummy trail mix, talked to my mother [she's so paranoid], and talked to this wonderful girl for a few minutes. I had to cut it short because it was time to move on. We went through security and you could so tell it was my first time in a long time. The guy on the other side of the metal detector asked me, “Where are you going?”. Now let me tell you now that it’s not a good idea to ask me such a vague question. I was standing there for about 45 seconds thinking, “What does he mean? What do I answer? ‘That way’? *points forward* Does he want to know where the plane I’m getting on is going? Does he want to know my last destination plane-wise [Vegas] or my ultimate destination in general [Utah]? Does he care? Or am I doing something wrong?” So after that thought process, I finally answer, “Atlanta”. He replies with, “Well that took you a while.” I didn’t like that guy.

I found a seat near the gate and my friends and I walked around until it was time to board. The flight was cool. My ears bothered me at takeoff and landing but it was still awesome. We each had little TVs on each of our seats and I watched Project Runway with Laura. I also had some yummy peanuts and the most amazing juice of life [cranberry apple. try it]. We got off in Atlanta and then realized that the FTL airport is the crappiest airport of life. The ATL airport was like a mall. And there were two Starbucks :D

I got some coffee and we got on the plane at about 8:45. I got some more cranapple juice with some cookies this time. I watched some Spongebob Squarepants, The Soup on E!, listened to some Feist, and then copied what the rest of my youth group was doing and played ‘Inflight Trivia’ where you’re competing against other people playing on the plane. I played a couple rounds, got first place in the last one and after 4-5 hours of flying, we were in Vegas. Now technically this was now day 2, but thanks to the 3-hour time difference it’s still day one. It was about 10-ish in Vegas [1-ish in Florida]. The airport was amazing. Slot machines everywhere [not too amazing], sculptures, lights, and giant screens everywhere, and more Starbucks [yippee].

We were all getting tired of being at the airport, though. Nic finally came back and gave us some good/bad news. The good news was that it was cheaper to get one Hummer limo and a cab than 3 cabs [which is what it would take to hold all of us], so Nic sprung for the limo. The bad news was that 2 people weren’t gonna get on it. The girls automatically got seats in the limo and the guys flipped coins to decide their fate. The limo was cool. The music was bad. The view was amazing. As sinful as Vegas is, it sure is pretty at night. Very glitzy. The limo driver dropped us off at the church we were staying at for the night [it was probably funny to see a Hummer limo pull up to a baptist church at midnight] and we were met by Michael Oakley. He was the youth pastor and a very cool guy. He played for this guy, he said, and he is currently in a Las Vegas dance show/musical thingy called ‘Stomp Out Loud’. We talked to him, played some Mad Gab, did a little bible study [we memorized a verse and used the greatest hand motions ever to do so], and finally went to bed for the night.

The World’s Largest Kazoo Band [myself included. I heart Challenge!]

*EDIT: For all who are on Facebook- I have FIVE new albums on my page from my trip to Utah. You don’t have to be my friend to see them, I think. Two of the links for them are already on my photography page (: