8000 feet up…

The past three weekends I have been camping up in the Big Bear area, about 8000 feet above sea level. The area is beautiful, though the weather is unpredictable. The first weekend was with Torrey on the Dante camping trip. Last week I went up for my MC coordinator retreat and today I just got back from Mount Emerson, the annual Emerson retreat.

MC retreat was great! After a long drive and having no idea where we were going the whole time, we pulled up to a swiss-family-robinson-meets-the-mountains cabin and got to stay there! The first day was a bunch of reading passages, thinking about the spiritual direction of Biola, etc, all in preparation to tell us the theme of Missions Conference. The next day we went out by ourselves and prayed and then met back together to get lunch and go to the docks to hear the story and the theme of Missions Conference 2011. On our way down we played with the wacky-talkies (I was ‘Big K’ and we had tons of code words, like ‘the fox went under the porch’ which meant we turned left). The story was crazy, and might be talked about a little bit at Missions Conference, but it’s going to be great! That night and the next morning we went around and told our testimonies to each other and then headed back down the mountain.

The dinner group

This past week went by without too much excitement (although there’s always a ton going on). Thursday night I got to have dinner with the Thoenneses with 19 other students in the caf banquet room. It was so cool to hear their stories and about their lives. There were alot of laughs, eye rolls (mostly from Mrs. Dr. Thoennes) and really good food. It’s always fun to see faculty in less academic environments and see that they really are who they portray themselves to be. Right now Mrs. Dr. Thoennes is my Torrey mentor, but as a Bible major eventually I’ll have Mr. Dr. Thoennes as well, so I get the best of both worlds in Torrey. After dinner I stayed up late getting ready for my Greek midterm and my Midrags… and by late I mean 4 am. Greek went ok, but Mid rags went great! I had to restructure my notes from last year because they were missing the “meat” that it needed. So this year I spent a lot of effort into finding a new format, and it works! For any Torrey student who’s having trouble with notes, come talk to me, cause now I can give legitimate help on how to take them.

That same day I headed up to Mount Emerson, which ended up being a longer drive than I thought. We left at 7:15 and got there around 9:45, after driving up a pitch black mountain for 28 miles. There were so many hairpin turns it was ridiculous! We got there, had some food, and then went to bed. Luckily, since we were late, we didn’t have to set up the tents. That night was freezing! The next day the sun came out and it got hot (yah for mountain weather) and we played capture the flag, even floors versus odd. We only played two rounds in two hours, and it ended up being a tie, but it was epic. We did some other stuff up there, like quiet time, worship, hanging out and stuff, and then we came back down today. It was a great trip, and I love Big Bear, but right now I’m sick of camping and just want to take a break. Thank God for nature and thank God for the city.

Prayer request: on Saturday my brother in law got in a motorcycle accident and is getting surgery tomorrow. He has 4 broken vertebrae and has a labor intensive job (welding). So not only is his back a problem, but he can’t work, and my sister is pregnant with their second child, all adding to the stress. My parents were on their way down to visit me, but now I don’t know what’s going to happen. I hope to see them since they drove down, but they need to be with my sister and her family, so be praying for this situation.