Week 6-8

This summer keeps me busy for sure! I'm sorry I haven't been able to post in a few weeks. Work has been scheduling me 40+ hours every week, which helps pay for school, but also keeps me busy.

During week 6 for project day we spent 8 hours at a national park alone with God. No phone, no ipod, no food. Just us and God alone with our bibles and journals. I was actually semi excited about getting to spend the day with God, I wanted to finish memorizing Psalm 63 as well as spend some extended time in prayer. The day turned out to be a little frustrating, I have had a really hard time reading the Old Testament this summer, and spending 8 hours reading and praying just reminded me of that. I feel like this summer God has really used it to test me and see if I still want to follow Him and have a relationship with Him even when it's hard. I definitely wasn't expecting that this summer, I was hoping for a great 10 weeks with God and some fellow Christians while we all tried to grow closer to God. I'm not saying by any means that I regret coming, I think this is exactly where God wanted me this summer, it's just been a lot harder than I was expecting.

Project day for week 7 was roommate and conflict week! We spent the first part of the morning having a devotional as a house, we spent a lot of time talking about Psalm 63, and then we all recited it as a house. After our devotional we spent time as a house trying to find a way to serve someone in our lives. We decided to try and bless Suzanne, she is the manager of the condo's we are staying at this summer. We went to her house to invite her out to lunch with our house as well as to see if she had any work we could do around the condos. She said she was very excited that we had thought of her but her sister was coming into town to visit and should be arriving shortly so she would have to take a rain check on lunch. When we asked her if she had anything we could do she said she couldn't think of anything.

When we were walking back to our house we were a little sad that our original idea didn't work, but shortly after we left her house we had the idea to make her a fun gift basket for her and her sister while she was visiting! So we went to the store to find everything a girl needs to have a great day, nail polish, candy, candles, drinks, a fresh pineapple, a pedicure kit, lotion, homemade cupcakes and of course treats and toys for her dog!! That might have been my idea ;-) It was so much for to prepare it as a house, and giving it to Suzanne was so much fun!! She was so excited, I thought she was going to cry.

Once we finished our service project we met up at Grace church for a workshop on conflict. Neil talked for a while about how to resolve a conflict in a healthy and Godly way. Once Neil finished talking we split up into our houses and discussed any conflict between our house...it turns out that if you put 7 girls into one house for a summer you are bound to have some conflict. But we finished the day with a fun house project - we made house movies describing the summer so far. Our house ended up making face puppets and making a 'Top 10 rules of LT 2010' movie - I don't think our house has laughed so much all summer.

Project day for week 8 started with a service project for a local teen girls shelter. We spent several hours in the morning cleaning their yard and volleyball court as well as painting the outside of their house. It was such a blessing for the maintenance man, we were able to finish in several hours what would have taken him most of the summer to finish. After our service project we all went home for lunch and were encouraged to take showers. :-)

At 3pm we met back up at the church for three different discussions on theological topics. It was definitely an intense afternoon, theology is not one of my favorite topics by any means. We took a break half way through the discussions for dinner, I really enjoyed getting to eat dinner with all the other students, I feel like this summer I have missed out on a lot of social activities because I am one of the few students that work night shift.

Overall the last few weeks have been really hard, I have had several issues at work, both with scheduling and with fellow employees. I've had a really hard time respecting one of my mangers this summer and the way she runs the restaurant, and I'm trying to see how God wants to use that is my summer. I probably haven't done a great job at trying to respect her when we don't see eye to eye. I tend to think I can do most things better than she can, and I'm trying to let go and not have to take control of every situation. This is just one of the things I'm learning over the summer.

We only have 2 weeks left here, part of me is really excited to go home to see my family and start school again, but part of me is sad to leave the friendships I have built here, both at the LT program and through work. I'm trying to spend the last few weeks working really hard to continue to build my relationships at work and to try to share my faith. Keep me in your prayers over the last 2 weeks!

Love,

Beka

Week 5

I feel like this week has gone by so fast, I can't believe that tomorrow is Monday already and I have to work again. This weekend I had the joy of babysitting Lincoln Frost all weekend :-) He is the most adorable 15 month old you will ever see. His mom and dad, Carl & Carolyn are both really involved in my life and I have been watching Lincoln almost once a week since he was born. Carl is on staff with my church at school and they came out to LT this summer to help run the program. They had to go to Michigan this weekend for a wedding, and to make things easier on them Lincoln stayed here with me. Probably the biggest thing I learned from this weekend is that I never want to be a single mom - it was hard work!! The first day went really smoothly, and Lincoln woke up at 7am instead of his usual 6:30am. We spent the day playing, going to the pool and hanging out with Aaron.

Friday night was a rough night, Lincoln was up most of the night because his teeth are still growing in, and he was up for the day by 5:45am...giving me about 3 or 4 hours of sleep :-/ Needless to say we both took naps that day! We also spent part of the day at the playground at the mall with one of my friends Jazz. It was fun to watch Lincoln get excited over everything to play with. Sunday morning I was reminded of how much Lincoln loves me..he slept in till 9am!!!! I couldn't believe it, I always said I wanted to train my kids to sleep in, well I guess I have the magic touch. The weekend was full of lots of cuddles, books, and interesting toys - I think the fly swatter and empty apple juice container were his favorites :-)

Project day last week (6/24) was a long day, but surprisingly not exhausting. We met at the grassy knoll at 8:30am for a time of service. My group went to the church whose building we are using this summer to help them prepare for VBS. I had the privilege of cutting 200 strips of fabric - it only took 2 hours...But I did get to hang out with Jenna during the project, and I enjoyed getting to know her a little better. After our project we went back to our houses for a quick lunch before we went back to Grace church for our workshop. This week we took a strength's test. It's not a christian book, but it is very helpful in figuring out what your individual strengths are. Mine were: Woo (winning others over), Communication, Positivity, Maximizer (focusing on strengths instead of weaknesses) and Achiever. I think these all line up pretty well with me...and it was funny to see how different Aaron and mine were. We answered the exact opposite on almost every question, but that just means we compliment each other well :-)

After the workshop we finished project day with 4 hours of quiet time. I went to my favorite Starbucks and enjoyed some time alone. Every time I have been to that Starbucks the same people have been working and we usually strike up small conversations. When I was working on memorizing Psalm 63 on the the guys working was teasing me for talking to myself, and I told him I was actually memorizing. As I said that an older woman walked by and told me that it was a great thing I was memorizing (my bible was on my lap). It was pretty excited to get encouraged like that!

More to come soon!

Beka

Week 4

This past week has been crazy busy! Last weekend 8 of us went back to Indiana for some of our friends (Liz & Steve Garst) wedding from the church we all go to. It was a long drive, we left after our project day at 10pm, drove all through the night, and got home at 11am. But we didn't fall asleep driving and we didn't get any speeding tickets - so it was success! It was really nice to be home for a day or two, I got to love on Captain Jack and see my family, plus Aaron's family came down and had ice cream with us. :-)

This week work has really started to pick up, the boardwalk art show was over the weekend so we were really busy during that. I got to wait on a lot of adorable old ladies looking at all the artwork - some of them even had big sunflower hats! It wasn't quite the same as little girls with bows as big as their head in their hair, but it was still cute.

Project day this past week was fantastic as usual, we met as a group at 8:30am...well that part wasn't really fantastic, but oh well ;-) We started off our day by spending 3 hours with the Lord. I went to starbucks, its one of my favorite places for quite time. I spent the first part of it working on the memorizing the last part of Psalm 27 - I really enjoyed working on memorizing it, I felt like when I kept repeating it I was thinking more about what the verses meant to me and using it as a time to honor God.

Once I finished working on my memory verses I spent some time reading through the Psalms and 1 Samuel. I kept getting distracted by all the people at Starbucks - it was the first time I was there so early and it was busy! There were several business men having meetings at some of the small tables, and I was getting very annoyed at them...every time a young woman walked by they would stop what they were doing to take note of her. I just got so frustrated by guys...but then I became very thankful for all the wonderful men God has surrounded me with! So, if you are reading this and you are one of the those men - thank you for trying to respect women! And if you know a guy like that, you should thank them also! I think sometimes we forget how rare that can be. Ok, I'm done with my rant :-)

After our quiet time our houses met back up for lunch before we went back out for the second part of project day. After lunch we met back up as a group and recited our memory verses as a house. The house that knew it the best won a prize - Neil (Ball State's pastor) cooking them breakfast! Of course our house won...we are pretty fantastic! I was really impressed by Aaron, (it happens a lot!) he was the only guy in his house that memorized it, so he went up by himself and said it in front of everyone! :-) Our house said that he should be allowed to come eat breakfast with us.

Then we broke up into groups that worked together and spent an hour praying for the people that we work with and our work environment. Once we were finished praying we worked as a group to come up with ideas on how we could bless our co-workers. Some of us made snacks to take to work, others took Gatorade to the valet department etc. I decided to go buy fun serving pads for all the servers at work, we have these old ghetto ones. It was really fun to take them to work the next day and see everyone get so excited over them! The best part was when Sergei was the last one to pick and he got stuck with a pink Hello Kitty one! :-)

The final part of our project day was a cookout on the beach. We had invited our friends and co-workers earlier in the week. We just wanted a chance to hang out with them and develop relationships with them. One of the bussers from my work, Honor, came to the cookout. I was a little sad because literally every other server was working that night. The art show had kept us so busy they all had to work :-( But we have plans to go to the beach later today, so we still get to hang out. Anyway, the cookout was a lot of fun. We had several games of Frisbee and volleyball going. We hung out till it was to dark to play anymore - it was a great time to hang out and relax.

Friday night I got off work early since I had been there since 6am, I was so excited to actually have an evening off! I usually work every night that we don't have stuff to do with LT; this was my second night off since we got here. It was fantastic - Aaron and I got to go on a date, we went and saw Toy Story 3 in theaters. It was great, but a little sad - we both almost cried at the end!

The church that we use for our main sessions on Monday and Tuesday has a huge children's program during the summer, so any of the students in our program that didn't have to work went to help out this week. I got to hang out with the infants...such a challenge for me ;-) There were a set of twins in my room, they were 6 months old and adorable - I even got to feed them. It was a fun way to give back to the church for being so gracious and letting us use their building so often. We will be doing this every Sunday until we leave.

More to come soon!

Beka

Project day on 6/10

First, let me apologize for the delay in posting this, I went back to Indiana this weekend for a wedding, so this is the first time I have had to write.

Project day this past week was long & fantastic! We met at 8:30am at the 'grassy knoll' to find out what we would be doing for the day. We all went to a local church in Virgina Beach and helped them clean out some old rooms; they are working on turning some of their old buildings into school rooms. We worked at the church till about 11:30 and then spent some time praying for the church as a group. Once we left the church we went back to our houses to eat lunch before we met back up at 1:30. We met back up at the grassy knoll to talk about what was coming next, extended quiet time with the Lord. Carl and Ryan, both staff members at Ball State, shared about the importance of spending time with the Lord, and how it doesn't always have to be this mind blowing time, but that it is important to just spend time seeking the Lord. Once they explained what we were doing we were sent off to find a quiet place for the next 2 hours. I spent a lot of time praying and writing in my journal as well as praying over some of the psalms. I really enjoyed the chance to spend an extended time with God, and to pray for a lot of my friends.

At 4pm each of the school, Ball State and Virginia Tech, met up separately to talk. We spent a few minutes talking about how our quiet time went before we began talking about what was coming up next. Our final activity for project day was to go out onto the boardwalk with the hopes of sharing our stories with different people. We asked them the same questions we did at our last project day, but added an extra question at the end: "If I could share my story with you in 2 to 3 minutes would that be ok?" So to practice we spent the next hour going around the room and sharing out stories with different students. It was a great way to practice telling my story in a short amount of time, but I mostly enjoyed getting to hear all the different stories for other students at Ball State. After we finished practicing we separated for dinner before we met back up at 6:30 to head out to the boardwalk.

Once we split up into groups of 3 and decided where we would be going on the boardwalk we headed off. My group had the first part of the boardwalk, streets 1-4, so it took us a few extra minutes to drive there. We didn't waste anytime getting to know people, we started talking to our parking attendant, Lisa. When we asked her if we could interview her a few cars pulled up, so we told her we would stop back on our way home when she wasn't so busy. This was the first time I was genuinely excited about sharing my faith on the boardwalk. Before I was either annoyed or nervous about going out, but this time I was just so excited for the chance to talk to people and share with them the most important part of my life. We met some awesome people, in 2 hours we only talked to 4 couples because we had such awesome conversations with them!

My favorite person that my group talked to was a young woman named Andrea and her son. She was one that I got to share my story with, we all took turns sharing our story. First, when we were talking with her and asking her our questions I assumed she was a Christian by her answers, when we asked her to name a time she had experienced God she replied '5 minutes ago on the beach'. When I asked her if I could share my story she got excited and said of course I could. I got about halfway through my story before she started crying! When I finished my story she said that she was a Christian poet and that she had been praying to God at the beach a few minutes ago about how she wasn't inspired to write anything. She told me that she loved my story so much that she was going to write about it! I got so excited, it was one of the first times I have shared my story with a stranger, and I felt so blessed to see how it positively affected her. :-)

Needless to say I left the boardwalk feeling so excited about the day, but it wasn't finished yet. We still planned to see our parking assistant Lisa before we left. I really enjoyed talking with her and listening to her story. She worked several dead end jobs for a few years, was involved in drugs, and involved in an abusive relationship, and one day decided that she wanted a better life. She is now working 3 different jobs and going to school to be a nurse! She is 6 months away from graduating - I was so inspired to hear her story! Once she finished telling us her story Joel had an opportunity to share his story with her, which he was really nervous about. But he did an awesome job, and I'm sure she was blessed by it. She told us we could come back and visit her anytime, which we plan on doing :-)

At the end of the day I was so excited by everything I had seen God do throughout the day, and although it was exhausting, it was my favorite project day thus far :-)

Week Two :-)

After wrapping up this week I have decided that this year will be totally different compared to last year - but in a very good way. God is definitely working in my life and challenging me. We have spent most of this week talking about relationships, both friendships and boyfriend/girlfriend relationships.

This week has been emotionally exhausting after all the serious but good conversations I have had. The speakers have brought up a lot of things in both my friendship relationships and my relationship with Aaron that have sparked several conversations. Mike, one of the pastors at Virginia Tech talked at main session on Monday and Tuesday night; he shared about the importance of having accountability in relationships, guarding your heart, as well as physical boundaries.

Then on our project day on Thursday we had three different workshops to help us put into practice what we had spent that week discussing. Carl, a staff member at Ball State finished up our project day by helping us learn how to handle situations when our peers might come to us in a vulnerable situation, whether they are sharing some struggles they are having in their relationships, or any other type of difficult conversation.

Project day on Thursday started a little differently then it normally would for me. All the students met at the beach at 9am, Neil shared a little with us and then we were told to go on our own and pray through some of the psalms before we met back up at our condos at 11am. When our group broke up individually I saw a yellow lab that I had met the week before playing with his owner. Being the dog lover that I am I took a minute to go over and play with him. His owner, Mike, asked me what our group was doing and I started sharing with him about LT and that we were a group of students from my church back at school. This sparked several questions from Mike about God. He was very curious to learn what I thought about God, which ended up turning into a 2 and a half hour conversation! I had the chance to share my faith with him in several different ways, it was so scary, and all I had originally wanted to do was pet his dog :-(. However, God used this situation for me to build a friendship. While Mike and I don't see eye to eye when it comes to religion, we did build a friendship. Mike and his dog (loco) come to the beach every morning to play, so I am confident that I will see him again soon. Even if our conversation didn't strike any thoughts in Mike, which I find hard to believe, God definitely used it as a way for me to step outside of my comfort zone. It was probably the first time in my life I have had to actually defend my faith, I actually hate biblical debate. At one point I just wanted to tell Mike to have a good day and leave, but instead I talked with him and voiced why God was so important in my life and how He has changed me. It was pretty exciting!

Today I got to finish my week with a day off of work. I spent the afternoon with two of my housemates doing what girls do best...shopping!! :-) It was a great way to end an emotionally draining week.
More to come soon!

First project day!

We had our first project day yesterday! We all met at the beach at 7:30am (ugh) for an hour of praying together. This year we will be starting every project day with an hour of prayer together - yesterday we focused on thanking God and admitting things we were scared about for this summer, it was awesome to hear everyone be so honest.

After our prayer time we went back to the directors house where some of the staff had prepared a huge breakfast for all of us, it was a great time to continue to learn more about everyone and share some stories. At breakfast we learned that one of the students had a huge orange allergy - so we all had to wash our hands and get rid of the oranges before she could come in!

Once we finished breakfast Ball State and Virginia Tech split up into separate rooms to take time to get together as a school and share some of the things we were expecting or hoping God would do in us and through us this summer. I had the chance to share with everyone at school my decision to not pursue Catch 31, and that instead I was going to focus on building relationships at the restaurant I will be working at this summer. It was great to get to share that with everyone, and to see that they all supported me. After everyone had shared some we split up into groups of two and spent some time silently praying for each other.

When both of the schools were finished meeting we met back out on the beach for some good old fashioned school competition! We had games of ultimate frisbee as well as kickball set up for the schools to play against each other. I played on the ultimate frisbee team, along with 7 other boys :-). Ball State plays frisbee together every Sunday afternoon during the school year, so we were quite a bit better than Virgina Tech, most of them had never played before. It was a quick game of 11-0, but probably the best part of the game was when Aaron made a diving catch into the ocean, and he claimed it for me :-). He ended up cutting up most of his back and losing his sunglasses in the process, but he said it was worth it.

After everyone was tired and sun burnt from playing on the beach we went back to our condos to make lunch and meet with our life groups. Life groups are a small group of girls or boys from the same school that meet every week to share about life, work, their time with God etc. I get to be a life group leader along with my friend Meredith for all of the Ball State girls this year. We spent our first life group getting to know each other a little better, sharing in more detail about our fears & expectations for the summer as well as some good old fashioned boy talk ;-).

All the students and staff members met back up at 2pm to head over to Grace church for our first workshop. We spent the rest of the afternoon writing down our stories of coming to know Jesus, then a few of us, myself included, had the opportunity to share our stories in front of the whole group. Then we spent some time breaking up into groups of 2 and sharing our stories with each other after we had discussed how to share your story in a precise manner. Neil talked about how our stories needed to connect with whoever we were talking to. He suggested that we share 4 main points, first that we share what our life was like before we committed ourselves to Christ, second, what made us realize that we needed Jesus, third, how we committed our lives to Jesus, and finally, what changes we saw in our life after we started living for God.

After our workshop we went back to our condos and had dinner as a house before we met back up at 7pm to go out to the boardwalk for our first chance to meet people and talk with them! We went out in groups of three with five simple questions to ask people, we told them that we were students on a leadership program for the summer and that we were going around trying to get different opinions for everyone. We asked them five questions. 1. What did they do. 2. What do you think is the biggest problem in our culture. 3. What bothers you the most about religious people. 4. What is one thing you would change about yourself. 5. What is a time you experienced God. Then through these questions we were able to strike up a deeper conversation with a few other people.

I think this was an awesome first project day, we were all mentally, physically, and emotionally spent by the end of the day - but I think it was a success.

The Life of David

It's been an exciting start to LT this year. Saturday evening we had a cook-out once everyone checked in. I was very excited that I learned everyone's name the first night. I just kept walking around repeating everyone's names :-). We spent most of Sunday going through orientation for both the LT program and our jobs. Most of the students are working at a Holiday Inn on 39th street, they just did a $19 million renovation so they had a lot to talk about. I will be working at the Holiday Inn on 21st street, along with 2 other students from Ball State. It's the same restaurant I worked at last year, but this time I get to work night shift! I start working on Wednesday, so I have spent most of yesterday and today hanging out around the condos since almost everyone else started work on Monday.

God certaintly didn't waste any time explaining to me what He wanted to teach me this year. As most of you know I was really excited for the chance to work at a really nice restaurant this summer. I came down early for an interview, and had planned meetings with the restaurant and HR manager this week. Ever since I got to LT I have had this uneasy feeling about what my reasoning for coming here this summer was. I felt like my main goal for coming this summer was to get a great job, and secondly to go through the LT program and grow in my relationship with God. So, after much prayer and hesitation I have decided to not pursue a job with Catch 31 anymore, which was probably the hardest/scariest thing I have had to do in a long time. I've learned that I like to take control of everything, especially my jobs and finances. So, I'm going to spend this summer focusing on my relationship with God, not how much money I can make at my job this summer. This is really scary for me, but at the same time I am really excited to see how God will use this summer to mold me.

This summer our focus is "The Life of David" and becoming men and women after God's own heart. I am excited to take this step of faith towards becoming a women after God's own heart. We are spending the summer reading through 1 & 2 Samuel, as well as all of the Psalms and a book titled "The Life of David." We are also going to memorize 4 Psalms this summer, starting with Psalm 27.
I can't wait to see what this summer holds!

Love,
Beka