More Pictures

At the request of Jenny, here's some more pictures from our Mississippi trip!

Mudding


Bethany painting


After splatter painting


Meal time (which we all looked forward to just so that we could have a break and be able so sit down without feeling guilty!)


Zach sanding


Trees


My first time seeing the ocean!! (which we got to swim in on Thursday night, also another highlight of the week)


GIANT SPIDER


House on stilts (as they all were)


Spoons


Pickle's house

Mrs. Sippi

Woah, guys, sorry it's taken me so long to write this! It's now been a week and a half since I got back from Mississippi. It was SO HOT down there! Mostly because of the humidity... So besides the extreme heat, it was a really, really, good week. I could spend about 5 times the writing to talk about only bits and pieces of the week, so I'll just highlight my three favorite specific things of the week (in chronological order, not by favorite, because I'd be on here forever trying to decide what to put in what place).

1. Creative painting with Bethany. Bethany, my dad, me, and kind of my brother (he was only for a little while) spent Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning painting the future bunk houses. Pickle, a good friend of Katie's (from church), and also the woman in charge while we were down there, gave us permition to be creative. So that's excactly what we did. After running out of the blue paint we were using, we had to be creative and use some lighter blue paint to finish up the blue walls. We did that by making the lighter blue into "clouds". Observe:




Then on Tuesday morning, we painted the second bunk house:




Painting in those rooms was like being in a sauna, but once you got to the fun stuff, it made it all worth it. :)

2. Playing spoons. That was definately the most intese game of spoons I've ever played and I loved it! At one point we actually bent the leg of a metal chair... it was pretty crazy. The other group down there helping for the week from New York (the Bronx), came into the dining area (where we were playing) to have some ice cream and we got some pretty crazy looks from them. I wish I got some good pictures of that, but all of the pictures are of us before someone got four of a kind...

3. Spending Thursday afternoon talking with Jessie. Thursday morning I had been pretty useless, so at lunch, Jessie asked if I wanted to go to Pickle's house (which was the main project for the week) and help her mud/sand. We ended up spending more time talking than mudding/sanding. We spent a good portion of time just laying down upstairs or on the floor of the church. But it was such a good talk!! Well, talks. I got to know her SO much better. We talked about struggles, our pasts, relationships with family and friends, things we hoped for, and so much more!! There are some things that Jessie now knows that I'm pretty sure no other human on the planet knows about me. I am SO thankful for the huge blessing that she (well, and everyone else at our church) has been!!

(Our "matching" shirts... both green, same type of writing, same underlining thing...)



The Group

Canoe Trip

I just got back from a canoe trip that we went on with our "youth group" at church. We stayed at Katie and Jeremiah's (the unoffical youth leaders, I guess you could say) house on Friday night and left for the trip on Saturday morning. There were eight of us on the trip: Katie and Jer, Annaka (who is the same age as I am), Bekah and Ethan, Matt (who came as a leader/youth-mostly leader, though :) ), Jessie (who is acctually in public school and it's been really cool being able to talk with her about our struggles in school; she's going to be a senior at Chippewa this year), and me. On our first night camping out, we played battleship-in the river with our canoes. Basically there were two people per canoe and two canoes would go out and try to tip the other one. Jessie and I were together and we went against Jer and Bekah two or three times (three, I think) and did not last long any of those times!! Before we went into battle, Jessie and I had gotten in the canoe and she was in the back and had never been in the back so we were going to try to switch places.... without getting out of the canoe. It worked pretty well, acctually, until we had to turn... then we tipped and I have to say that may have been one of my favorite parts of the trip. Another favorite was after we had been tipped, Jessie and I had both wanted to go into the air pocket in the canoe and I'm not quite sure why, but we were laughing SO hard everytime we got under there. It was definately fun! On our second night camping out, Bekah and I were doing shadow puppets.... little bunny Foo Foo. :) except the light was so big that I had to use both my arms to make little bunny Foo Foo and Bekah had to be the arm. The best part of that, though, was turning into goons. :) Jer's devotions were absolutely amazing, too. We went through the armor of God and talked about each piece of armor and the purposes that they served on a Roman soldier and how that relates to us. It was definately really cool and challenging, also. There were also a lot of really cool conversations that I had, talking about how awesome God is and things that we struggle with and awesome ways God has worked in our lives. Katie, Annaka, Jessie, and I (and another girl from church, Kaera, but she wasn't on the trip) are doing the Kay Arthur Lord, I Want to Know You study of the names of God and the first one is Elohim-strong creator-so it was really amazing being out on the river right after studying that. That study has been so awesome and we've only met twice so far (and are trying to finish by the end of summer)! But that's a whole nother (hmm... how would you write that?) subject. And seeing how I was talking a mile a minute coming home from that on Wednesday, and this entry is already pretty long (as it usually is), I'll maybe save that until later. But we'll just put it at this- I'm SUPER excited because God has definately been working in me and changing my heart to desire Him so much more!!! And it's most definately been amazing for me to undergo that awesome change! And well... I guess that's mostly what I have to say for today. We'll be leaving for Mississippi on Sunday with a few other people from church (Spence-who organzied this trip, Jessie, Bethany, and Zack-or maybe it's Zach? but I just met him last night, which is kind of sad since there's only like 40 or so people who go to our church! But we've got this whole week to get to know everyone, and I already know most of them at least farily well, but this will still be good to get to know each other that much more! :) ). So anyways, we'll be leaving on Sunday and will be gone for a week, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to post anything down there-probably not- but although I don't have pictures from the canoe trip (unless I can get them from Katie somehow), I will have pictures for you from Mississippi!!