Some pics and a fun video

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=579978671422&subj=546340254

Rocky Mountain High

Hello everyone,

Sorry it's been so long, This past week has been kinda crazy. Last Tuesday (12 days ago) I was going to hike twin sisters with a bunch of people, but at the last second, Drew and I decided that we would just hike to Morraine Park and spend time reading the Bible and praying. On the way there we saw a rock on the side of the trail and climbed it. On the other side was a rushing stream with rocks sticking through the water, and after awhile I decided it would be cool to be on one of those rocks. We tried to slide down the rock face but realized that it was too steep for sliding towards the bottom so I decided to try and run from about halfway down and jump to the first rock, then to the second, and end up in the final location. Bad idea. My momentum carried me past the first rock and I ended up kicking a rock that was concealed by the rushing water with my shin. My leg was numb for a few minutes and I was just sitting on the rock watching my leg start to bleed a little more and a little more.

Eventually I got feeling back in my leg and made it the nurse with Drew where the wound was cleaned and bandaged, but 3 days letter it was infected. The infection has been very hard to fight - I ended up making 3 trips to urgent care and have hopefully my last one tomorrow. I've been taking 3100 mg of meds and had two shots, as well as some crazy osmosis powder that sucked a bunch of stuff out of the swelling and looked really gross. Despite all this I am very blessed in that it is in getting better and should be almost completely back to normal within the next couple of days (my medicine runs out Tuesday)

Work continues to be crazy. We have been having around 1000 people for breakfast every day and even though we have a lot of help, we don't have a lot of food so it has been a challenge trying to manage food lines. I have really enjoyed some of the relationships I've been able to build on during work though, so overall it has been good for me.

I started a workshop last Sunday called discovering God's will for your life. I am hoping that it will be really revealing to me, because as most of you know, I'm not exactly thrilled with what I have been studying at OSU and really don't know what I want to do once I graduate. We talked a lot about surrendering completely to God - almost impossible. I want so badly to control different aspects of my life because I don't completely trust God, or think I know what's best. It's something I've definitely been trying to pray about with my time here.

Despite my leg I was able to go hiking last Tuesday (5 days ago). A group of us climbed CCY - Chapin, Chequita and Ypsilon. 3 mountains in one day! It took us about 4 hours to climb all 3, an hour for lunch, and an 1.5 hours to get back. The final mountain had 13,500 ft elevation - the highest I've been since I've been here. The hike was hard but it was very cool and I touched snow in July - pretty crazy.

I've been getting pretty good at putt-putt even though the course is challenging...I'm excited for when Jon Shah gets here - I think I'll have a shot at him. I also have a current streak of 16 days straight playing euchre - and am very proud of it.

A bunch of us went into town earlier this week and had dinner at a local pizza place and it was so good. We also did some shopping and went into this awesome antique place and trading post. I bought a hoodie for $25 bucks so I was pretty happy with that.

I think tonight we may be going into a Mexican restaurant in town, and securing day 17 in the euchre streak. I also have project at 9 and afterwards we are praying for H2O's location for next year. I'm excited for the next week as my leg will hopefully be getting more and more healed and it will be less of a stress in my life.

Thank you all for you continued support, prayers and interest in my time. I will try to update more frequently. I really enjoy hearing from you, even if I don't get a chance to respond. I am praying for you all and love you all dearly.

To be continued...

Adam

Update

Happy belated 4th! I hope everyone was able to enjoy fireworks/festivities of some kind.

It was the first 4th of July that I ever had to work (I think), but it wasn't bad because I had the am shift. Work has actually been crazy this weekend. We had 1100 people come in for breakfast on Saturday, and 800 yesterday, but people coming in yesterday didn't have meal tickets so the line was well out the door even with both food lines open. It didn't help that we've been running out of fruit all weekend. It was also crazy (and gross) yesterday when a lady complained to me about another lady changing her baby's diaper on one of the tables. I didn't really know what to do so I thanked her for letting me know and then told Darryl who made an announcement saying that a wonderful part of the service provided by the YMCA is that there are changing stations in both the mens and womens bathrooms so please refrain from changing diapers in the eating room.

To celebrate the 4th a bunch of us were going to hike up Twin Sisters to see the fireworks from the top of the mountain - apparently you can see 7 different cities' fireworks from the top. However, a really large group (33 people) and questionable weather led to a change in plans. We (with the exception of 3 people) decided to hike up Eagle Cliff instead, which meant we wouldn't have to drive into the national park and that it would be a 3 hour hike round trip instead of 5. I wasn't feeling that well, but I decided this was something I couldn't miss out on so I went up anyway.

So worth it.

The hike was really cool - the first "real" hike I've been on here. It was definitely a steep climb and we took lots of breaks. It was actually really cold up on top of the mountain, but most people had packed accordingly so other than me wishing I would have brought gloves - we were fine. Another really cool part of the night was worship. Brandon brought his guitar up the mountain and while we were waiting for the sun to set he just played and everyone sang along. It was so awesome praising God on a mountain peak with clouds floating through and around us.

The way down was really intense. Most people had flashlights or headlights, but it was still hard to make it down in the dark. I slipped and fell a couple times because it was almost impossible to tell where secure footing was, but we were in small groups, which made it easier and we helped each other. Overall, it was one of the cooler 4ths I've experienced.

Last week I had my first project and small group. Great. John Drage ( the LT director ) taught us about evangelism. Going in I was pretty nervous/suspicious of it because I have always had this negative view of evangelism of being intolerant and condemning - which it definitely can be. But John talked a lot about just loving people and getting to know them and build relationships. Things I absolutely agree with and want to be able to do. After John's talk, our project group gathered and we all shared how things had been going, which was encouraging to hear how people were doing and also hear how a lot of people were experiencing similar frustrations as myself.

Small group was pretty good. I'm in small group with Joe, Greg, Mark, and Dan - all really cool guys. We spent the whole time just sharing about our lives and basically how we got to where we are. Definitely cool to learn about everyone's lives. I'm looking forward to the rest of the summer with them.

Thursday was school spirit night at LT. Of course OSU won. :) We had already done face painting stuff, but we did it again and on top of that organized a couple of cheers. The first cheer was the "oh oh oh" chant to the White Stripes' song "Seven Nation Army" which then went to the Buckeye classic "OH" - "IO" During Seven Nation Army we thought it would be cool to add a little extra flair so I crowd surfed (or crowd bobbed) which was pretty sweet.

Other than LT stuff and work I've been playing a decent amount of putt putt and a lot of euchre. Greg and I have been dominating euchre, but I'm still not so great at putt putt. I've now played 11 of the disc golf holes here and was -1 through those 11.

I really appreciate all of your continued support and interest in my time out here and I will try to keep updating as time allows. I am praying for you all.

Here is a picture of a few of us from school spirit night...

To be continued...

-Adam