I'm having so much trouble checking my email!

i cant seem to access my account. Navigating the system is trouble for me, even as a former computer engineering major. Oh well.

As a result i'm having trouble emailing out my last prayer letter. Fortunately, it's a blog post under June 5th!

Hopefully you'll like it! i'll be writing another one soon since the last letter was making up for no May letter!!

Thanks! i'm having fun in Colorado, i've never been out here and it's giving meaning to the song lyrics, "For purple mountain majesties..."

It's absolutely beautiful! Look at my flickr site for some new pictures!

In Denver

Hey everyone!

i'm in Denver right now writing from the basement of a church in the Sun Valley section of the city. Statistically, it has the worst crime in the city. There's a lot of projects around and i heard that there is only 5 or 6 houses in the whole neighborhood. This doesnt fit my concept of the inner city. i'm used to more houses, even though they are run-down. Does anyone know if there is project housing in Rochester, NY. i dont remember seeing any, but that doesnt mean that it doesnt exist.

Our weeks have been jam-packed. The first week i arrived involved orientation with the staff, then we visited Sand Dunes National Park west of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It was amazing. i took pictures but they're on film and some of them are on b&w film so i need to get them processed and scanned before anyone will see any hint of them.

Then our students arrived, we spent a week orienting them, and then we had a week of camp. It was a camp filled with youth group students from Texas. No offense to Texans, but i was picking on them a little bit... Some Texans were talking about how the bridge from the song "London Bridge is falling down..." was dismantled and moved to Texas and i said, "Well, what isnt in Texas..." i'd imagine that there's some Texans that would never feel the desire to leave the state. i'm not sure if that's a reality or not though.

Right now we're in Denver training for the weeks of camp that will be comprised of urban students. As we've seen already they are a handful and discipline will be very important. This will be a great opportunity to practice and grow in an area i've never had to do much with. i'm terrible at discipline, but i'm excited to grow in my understanding of one of my favorite sayings, choices and consequences. It should be a wild ride!

Thanks for your prayers! i really appreciate you all being a part of my team. If you could, please pray that this summer would be refreshing for me as i come off a difficult year in New Orleans, that i would be refreshed especially in my relationship with God, and that i would incline my ear to God's voice concerning my direction in the future!

Thanks again!

(if you want to see a picture of me in the snow on June 5th)

Out here in Colorado

Here i am in the beautiful state of Colorado!

The manager of the camp here was telling me that many people that live here arent from here, the mountains just attracted them to this place. i can understand why. i'm knee deep in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in maybe south-central Colorado and it's absolutely gorgeous. It even snowed here earlier today! Isnt that crazy.

i arrived here about a week and a half ago and since then it has been a whirlwind of activity as i have meet and worked with the staff, planned for the arrival of our students, worked with the arriving students, set up for the weeks of camp that will soon happen, and try to figure out how to do normal life stuff at the same time.

It's been fun but challenging.

What has been rewarding for me has been spending time with the Lord here. We have an hour scheduled every day and it's much needed! It's very refreshing!

Well, i need to get off the computer so others can use it! See ya!

Hello from Colorado! i'm currently sitting at an elevation of 9000 feet in Horn Creek Colorado.

    

    For those of you that i wasnt able to see, i drove back from Louisiana at the beginning of May and stayed in Rochester for about two weeks before leaving for here. It was an extremely brief stay but it was good to be back.

    Our work in Louisiana has finished, we closed up shop, but many of my teammates (in fact, most, are going to continue living and working in New Orleans to further the gospel there. That place is in such great need of the love of God and i'm excited they are staying there! As for me, i'm not sure where the next few months will take me. i'm hoping to spend this month and a half in Colorado "finding myself" a little bit and seeing where God would have me and finding out exactly what gifts and talents God has given me and just what it is that i want. i'm discovering that knowing exactly what it is i want is terribly hard!

    As we (Danielle and Rebecca from my team are also joining me in Colorado) drove up to Colorado to staff a summer, i was listening to a favorite radio program of mine called This American Life. Each show has a theme and this show's theme was "Big Wide World". The show explored when your world is suddenly blown apart and becomes a lot bigger for you. This exact thing happened to me as i experienced seeing the mountains out here for the first time. This is the farthest west i have ever been in my life and i'm realizing the God's world is way bigger than i've ever experienced and ever can experience. It excites me! It also blows apart my small ideas of what i think my future will look like and leaves me craving more experiences like this one! Just look at those mountains. If you look in the bottom third towards the left our camp is right around there, in the foothills of those mountains! It's amazing.

    i'm actually in Colorado for a reason. This is my summer assignment for Crusade. i'm staffing a summer camp for inner city kids from Denver. i'll be discipling college students from around the country as they work the camp and i'll be working the camp myself too! i'm excited to see how things work here since they havent told me much. i'm expecting God to do big things out here. Would you please pray that God would work in my life providing me with direction and a servant's heart out here and for the college students that i will disciple? Thanks so much! Please excuse the quick prayer letter! Computer access is very limited here which is something i'm quite excited about!

    Again, thank you so much for your support. i realize that without your generosity i would not be having these new experiences and it means a lot that you would care enough about me to provide them for me. Take comfort in knowing that your gift is impacting eternity through the students i will be able to minister to this summer. You're storing up great treasures in heaven through your gifts!!

    Your friend,

    James!

Thoughts on leaving

The other day i was thinking about how when you're about to leave somewhere it seems like all your friendships and different relationships are sweeter and more satisfying. i'm pretty sure that's because you take time to enjoy them before they're gone for what may be forever and you realize that you really do enjoy your friends.

So i think the trick is to just pretend you're always leaving where you are so that you sacrifice unimportant things in order to enjoy the people you enjoy. This reminds me of the book i read on the Sabbath. There's something to leaving a lot of space in our lives to allow us to do things that are important to us.

This is all brought on by a visit i made to our neighbor Sean today. i brought a plate of "going-away" cookies made yesterday by our team in order to give a heartfelt goodbye. After chatting on the porch about his son moving back from Baton Rouge and where life was taking the both of us next he invited me inside and i ended up staying for about an hour and a half.

It was a great experience for me and it made me wish i had spent more time talking to him in the past. We talked about history, education, where his son's life was headed, guitar, and whatever happened to cross our minds. He is genuinely well-read and concerned about being proactive and contributing to the world. He is one of our neighborhood leaders and i really respect him and his work. It was a great time and i came home with one of his books under my arm and a hope to return...

So maybe i will!

i pray that you also are able to take time to enjoy those that you enjoy!

What to do, what to do!

i'd like to continue blogging! Maybe not as regularly as before, but still regularly. i really enjoyed it!

Well, spring break is now over and i have so much life stuff to catch up on. i'm going to Colorado for summer project and i have a lot of information to sort out and catch them up on, as well as a wedding to be a part of in the middle of it (my friends Dave and Chrissy are getting married!).

Along with making future plans, we also as a team are leaving our house and therefore need to clean it out, relief tools, furniture, everything! So we arent done working in this city, but need to attend to a lot of logistical things! It will certainly keep us busy!

We got to spend time with our Mexican friends at the swamp the other day... i dont remember if i ever mentioned that. It was a complete riot. They're so fun and funny and have great hearts for God. Our friend Oscar even got to do a service at the New Orleans Mission in Spanish! Isnt that fun? They were such a blessing to us!

Oscar and Kat

Me holding an alligator baby

Me and Andreas

Antonio and Kat making fun of Kat's mom Pat, who was falling asleep during the tour!

Also, we had a PR nightmare from Week 3 (our huge week of 300 students) come back to haunt us. Our friend who reads the New Orleans Newspaper online nola.com emailed Rebecca on our team about a situation. Then Rebecca emailed us to read the article. For those interested, here is the article. In brief, we found out through an email that one of our students called the police claiming that housekeeping staff at our hotel had stolen money from her. It was a strange way to learn about that kind of news. We found out that all this had happened without anyone contacting us! i dont know what kind of rule that breaks, but neglecting to tell our team about that send up red flags to me!

We've been told that an investigation is underway and that the housekeeping staff have key cards that record when they key into a room and no one keyed into these students rooms while they claimed the money was stolen. There's a lot of hearsay and rumors involved in the situation. It all seems very shady. i'm sad that money was stolen and i'm also disappointed in how this situation has been handled by the students reporting that money was stolen.

i said today during staff meeting that i was completely uninterested in getting into some strange PR war and Ken said that at this point it's just a bunch of people pointing fingers. i think we're all on the same page as far as how the situation should be handled from our end. i'm glad our team is very wise and composed of wise people.

ok, you should see a prayer letter soon! Life is crazy, but nowhere near as busy as the past month.

Sorry for not posting as much this week!

First, i didnt post on Easter because it was Easter and i didnt want to post on Easter. Also, i kinda assumed no one would read it. i think that set the pace for the rest of the week. We worked on Easter and had Mediterranean food that night because it was easy and so that was our Easter dinner.

i missed my family and wished i could be at home eating large amounts of food for Easter. It gave me a chance to think through Easter and i tried to keep the attitude of celebration no matter what i was doing. Jesus is risen and a gyro on Easter day and registering students for a conference cant ever ruin that!

This week has been much more low-key considering we dont have as many students at this conference. It's been delightful. i've had time to catch up on life a little bit (like grocery shop and watch a movie and not work on the weekends) but at the same time our team is struggling to keep ourselves from checking out of the conference.

There are still students working in our city and we want to give them our best.

That's good for me to state minutes before our last meeting of spring break and considering that after tomorrow's staff meeting we're probably all going to be incredibly lazy until Monday! And i look forward to it. i'd love to sleep and not be awakened by a phone call or a situation!