And so it continues....

So there has been a request for me to update my blog so here it goes.....A lot of this you guys already know but I included a few stories that I don't know if I have told anyone.

Once the summer was over I had less than 24 hours until I headed back to school for RA Training. When I got to HBU, the RA's that work in my housing area were in the middle of a meeting with Erin (our RD) about programming. I sat right down, hadn't even brought in my stuff from the car yet and thus, my 2nd year as an RA had begun. :-)

The girls on my hall are fantastic. I decorated my hall in polka-dots and, I think it looked really cute if I may say so myself. I have about 33 girls (the number has gone up and down this semester).

For my birthday weekend I went to Birmingham, Alabama to see my friends from the summer (19 of the 24 of us were there). That saturday was my 20th b'day and my boss from this summer, Graham's wedding. The night before my b'day and the wedding, a bunch of us went to eat at a Mexican food restaurant. All summer long, everyone sang happy birthday to me most everytime went out to eat. Well, they actually got to sing happy birthday to me on my actual (well, the night before at least) birthday! Oh the irony.....

The next morning a few of us go up and went to Oak Mountain State Park. It was beautiful, fabulous and....actually fall!!! The leaves were beautiful colors and the weather was fantastic! What a perfect place to spend my 20th birthday!

That night was the wedding which was beautiful! Yummy food, fun dancing and just being with friends that I love and miss was great. At one point that night I was walking across the room with my friend Jessica and we both just looked at each other and smiled. Her and I both agreed that it was great to be just walking across the room with each other. It was also really fun just to get all dressed up....let's just say, after seeing everyone in shorts and camp t-shirts all summer, my team cleans up nice :-)

I'm really ready for Christmas break....I want to do lots of reading, movie watching and, of course, sleeping. If you guys have any suggestions on books that I should read (I'm up for anything except for a weird sci fi stuff). In fact, if you are reading a book, I would love to read it too and then get together for coffee/tea/pie with you and discuss it! One thing I really want to do is go see a movie alone while I am in Conroe....sounds like fun to me!!!

May Christ always be at the center of our mind and lives, especially during this holiday season.

Blessings.

California...

UPDATED LATER THAT DAY: 5.8 Earthquake today....wasn't too bad here but in some places it was pretty crazy....oh California

So....we, the orange team, have officially done at least one camp in every time zone in the US (besides Alaska and Hawaii).

We got here, Riverside, on Saturday and then went out to eat that night. It was really nice for all of us to spread out and eat where we wanted to (I ate with some of my team at California Pizza Kitchen). It was also nice to just wander around for a bit. I got to wander around Borders for a bit....it was amazing how many people from my team wound up in the history and religion sections. :-) The next day was our load in day. Typically, we load in at 1pm but, as it was Sunday and a church was meeting in the gym which was going to be our worship center we were not able to being load in until 9:30pm that night. So, that day we got to experience "real life" outside of the camp bubble! I ate my first In-and-Out burger and then headed to the mall and Target! (Found a really cute dress at Gap for really cheap for those of you that care :-) ) We then headed back and took naps (on command from our leadership because we were going to be up most of the night). Needless to say, the majority of my team was up until around 3:30am loading in.

Camp this week is a lot smaller than we are used to but it is going to be nice to be able to know Youth Pastor's and camper's names.

Well, I have more to tell but things are going to be slow in the office this week so I will save those stories for a later time.

Grace and peace!

The Promised Land?!?

Two camps in Durango, Colorado really skew your view of "good weather." Doing camp literally on top of a mountain is quite lovely. Doing camp in Shawnee, Oklahoma is....like doing any other camp, really hot. We got here on saturday, loaded in on sunday and started camp on monday.

A few things....

First of all, a funny (well, not so funny to me) story for all of your delight. On saturday, my team went out to eat Mexican food for supper. While there, I, of course, spilt my drink. Right after that, I felt something on my head....it turned out to be a large sombrero. At first I though "what is going on?!?! do they do something really cruel and mean to people who spill their drinks?!?) and then, I saw that a group of people were standing behind me. This guy asked my name and then how old I was turning. I wouldn't answer him so someone else did. They then proceeded to start singing happy birthday to me.  All I could do was repeatedly mouth to my team that I would kill them all. I, of course, turned as red as the salsa. Then the next day, at Chili's for lunch, I see all of the waiter's walking out and I was like "no way!" not again but...oh yes...they come over and sing happy birthday to me again. THEN! Yesterday! on Reg day (my stressful crazy day) while we are in line for supper they all start singing it again! and everyone in line joins in! The only problem is....MY BIRTHDAY IS IN NOVEMBER! So, I have come up with something.....they can sing happy birthday all that they want to but....they must start to give me presents! (Though, that does scare me just a bit :-)

So, we are now doing camp in Oklahoma. It is hot. My camp director, Graham, went to school at the campus we are on (Oklahoma Baptist University) and kept referring to it as "the promised land." Though we like where we are staying and the fact that there are comfy couches and a TV in our office, it is def. not the promised land.

Off I go.....grace and peace!

Welcome to Fort Lewis

9 states in 2 days
25 hours of traveling
2 dramamine

what does this add up to?

DURANGO, COLORADO!

So we finished up two camps at Lee University, celebrated the 4th of July, didn't sleep much, ate yucky food, loaded out and drove for two days. We spent the night at Fort Smith, Arkansas and then got up and drove some more. We got to Fort Lewis College around 11:30pm mountain time and started grabbing our blankets because....it was kinda chilly! That's right...after week after week of humidity, we are now going to do 2 camps on the top of a mountain. While waiting for our keys last night a bunch of us curled up in our blankets and lied down on the parking lot and looked at all the stars (thought of you mom....knew you would be proud). It was crazy how many we could see.

The dorms we are staying in don't have a/c which I have heard can be a bit of a drag during the day but that means at night we sleep with our windows open. I woke up this morning feeling like I was camping except my bed was comfortable and I didn't have any bug bites...it was glorious!

Well, I'm now off to straighten my hair (which will actually stay straight here!) and then off to eat lunch and begin load in.

Grace and peace!

Lee University...the second time around

So last time I was here I had NO CLUE what in the world I was doing....this thing called camp was overwhelming and I was working with a bunch of people who I know that I liked but I didn't really know them....

Now, I have somewhat of an idea of what I'm doing (or at least I have gotten good at acting like it :-)) and I know why I like my team.

Our week of camp was really great. I did learn something though: Florida people are a bit weird...not always a bad weird (a good number of people on my team are from Florida) just a different weird. Our speaker that weeks was Sam Bhatt. I didn't know who he was going into the week but this man was AMAZING. He is a minister in every sense of the word. He cared for the students, the youth ministers and our staff. He would get up early and stay up late just to come to our staff meetings (we meet every morning at 7:30am and after worhsip every night) just so that he would better know how to help us and help the students.

The third night of camp was possibly one of the most authentic times of worship that I have every participated in. As a staff, each morning we are studying the book of Joshua together. In the third chapter, the nation of Israel is preparing to cross over into Jericho but must first cross over the Jordan River, which is in the midst of it's flood stage. In order for the people to be able to cross over, God tells Joshua to have the priests step into the water and when they do, the water goes back and the people are able to cross on dry ground. Our camp theme for this summer "The Way" taken from Acts 19:23 ("And about that time there was a great disturbance about the Way"). So, that night, Sam re-created the crossing of the Jordan River. The students, if they felt so called, were able to walk done and cross through the water, step onto dry ground and pick up a stone as a reminder of their commitment to the way, just as the people of Isreal did in Joshua 3. As a staff, our job was to line the "river area" and pray for the students as they walked through. For some reason, that week I had felt this extra burden on my heart for these students...things I had heard from youth pastors about the students just broke my heart. To be able to sit their, surrounding these students and vocalize outloud my prayer from this was...an opportunity I would not trade for anything.

Moving onto this week...today was registration day, which is normally my hardest and most crazy day of the week. But, for some reason, today was CRAZY easy! I still had hard things to deal with (toliets over flowing and needing to move people to a different room because of it, churches adding 14 people the night before camp and wanting all of them to have beds...etc) but, I never felt the desire to cry! :-) In fact, I even bought some stuff online from Old Navy today! I definatly count today as a blessing!

My team and I have started joking about the little things that we now are so much more grateful for because of the fact that we live in camp world...be looking forward to a list in the near future of these things...I think all of you will find some of them quite humerous. :-)

By the way, you should leave me a comment so that I know who all is reading this and that I'm not just typing to myself....that's too much like talking to yourself and I'm weird enough without doing that....:-)

Well...off to sleep I go!

Grace and peace!

Registration Day in Florida

Well, today is registration day in Florida. I'm sitting in the camp office waiting for one more church to get here. All in all, today seems to have gone pretty smoothly....I had a few rough spots to overcome but, don't we all :-)

Florida is....humid! We got spoiled last week in North Carolina with FANTASTIC weather and WONDERFUL food at Wake Forest and here at Stetson it is back to regular-ole cafeteria food and lots of heat and humidity. 

We got here at midnight on friday and loaded in starting at one on saturday. Most often, it seems that the production staff is up really, really late doing last minute touches on the set, lights and sound but.....yesterday....EVERYTHING was done by 8:30! It was great! Me and some of my team went swimming and then hung out at IHOP. It was great to relax and just hangout with my team.

We have just over 1000 campers this week...which is our smallest camp so far.

Overall, I'm doing pretty good. I finally feel confident in my job and like I actually have a clue what I am doing. My team has made it through the "honeymoon" phase and have become a lot more real with each other.

Office just got crazy....I'm off

Wake Forest University....Reg Day

Hey all...

Well my team and I finished camp up at SFA on Saturday, loaded out and drove to Birmingham. Spent the night in BHAM and then drove all day until about 6:00 when we arrived and loaded in at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Normally, we start load in around 1:00pm and finish about midnight but, because of the distance we had to travel, we started much later and thus finished much later. In spite of tiredness, today has been a really GREAT day. Registration was crazy as usual but went really well especially considering that this is our first time in about 10 years at this location.

Before I left for the summer, many of us joked about how I was going to become an expert at which cafeterias had good which and which had.....really yucky food. Well, so far this summer, I have had some NOT good food but this week....the food is AMAZING! When my team walked in for our first meal today before the campers arrived, we got so excited when we saw all of the fresh food that we started hugging each other. MaDe much of the sleepiness go away.

Well, it feels like my summer is really officially in swing. We don't have a day off until the end of summer. Each day will either be spent at camp or traveling to a camp. Normally, this would not sound fun at all but my team is really great to travel with. We have kind of un-officially divided ourselves into vans and the people that I have been spending most of my time with in the vans are GREAT. 

I would love to hear what's going on in everyone's lives whether in form of an e-mail or a letter. A phone call would be great, but I am not really able to spend much of my time on the phone.

Well, it's almost time for a quick group meeting so off I go.

Grace and peace to all!

Stephen F. Austin Day 3

Hello all...

Well, camp at SFA is over half over. This has def. been a very crazy week. We have just over 1700 campers this week and a very large campus; both of which make life interesting. On the upside, next week we will be doing camp in North Carolina and for what we have seen so far, that week will be much easier than this week, even though it will be Student Life's first time ever at that location.

One of the highlights of this week so far was most certainly last night when one of our guys put at turtle in one of the girls showers.....needless to say, she freaked out just a bit....VERY funny!

I got to see my grandmother yesterday. She was in town and called me and I was able to go to lunch with her. Tomorrow, my parent's are driving to see me :-) They will be here just in time to help make nametags for next week of camp! I will take all the hands I can get when it comes to name tags. I'm really excited about seeing them because I will not see them again until I come home August 11th and then I leave the next day for RA training.

Well, today is my day to help lead a FTO (free time option) so I'm off to get ready for that!

Grace and peace!

End of Lee University week 1

Greetings from Birmingham!

Today, we wrapped up our last week of camp, loaded out, drove three hours to Birmingham (I slept the entire way :-) ), loaded yet MORE stuff into our trucks for the next few weeks of camp, headed to our hotel and then ate fantastic Mexican food for supper. Now, I sit here in my hotel room (my roomate for the next two nights isn't back yet) and am enjoying the peace and quiet.

Tomorrow, we have one of our very few days off and I plan on enjoying it to the fullest. I will get more than 5 hours of sleep, do some housing work (which I don't mind cause I get to do it in my PJ's) and then head to a minor league baseball game. We leave on Sunday and drive from here to SFASU in Nacodoches (sp?) Texas for our second camp where we are expecting around 1500 people. It is also there that I will get to see my family which I am VERY happy about!

This first week was a great week. For the majority of our team, this is the first week of camp EVER for us to be staff. Lots of us (the majority in fact) have never worked for SL before. This had made for some rough patches as we figure out what in the world we are doing but our team has fantastic leadership who do a great job of teaching us how to do our job. Without them, we would be a mess.

Well, I think I'm going to go read a book because I can :-)

Grace and Peace!

Michelle, Alyssa and me at a mall in Tennessee two nights before camp started.

Lee University day 2

Hi blog world friends!

Today is day two of week one of camp. Yesterday was registration day and I can honestly say that I have never worked so hard in my life. Oddly enough, I really enjoyed it! (I guess there is a reason I am doing this job). 

We have just under 1200 people at camp this week. I got to worship late last night so I sat in the very back and as I sat down I was overwhelmed as I looked around the room and saw the students and it hit me....all of these kids have a place to sleep....it might be on the floor, but it is still a place to lay down their pillows. It was another "insignificant" moment in that there was NO WAY that I would have done that on my own....only through God taking the rooms and multiplying them (my theme verse for the summer is from Matthew 15 where Jesus has compassion on the people, doesn't send them away and feeds them). I am also blessed to be working with an amazing staff. Our products girl did housing last year and our event coordinator did housing her first year. They have helped me in SO many ways!

Well, I'm off to work again!

Grace and Peace!

Lee University

Hello all!!

Greetings from Lee University in Tennessee! We have loaded in our camp office and are loading in the worship room tomorrow. For those who are wondering what exactly my job is this summer it is as follows....I take the schematics of the dorms we will be using and figure out where all the people in our database are going to stay. Then I e-mail the lists to the Youth Ministers and wait for changes to come in and take care of them. I also am in charge of name tags (with the help of my team since this week we are doing 1185 name tags.) There are a few other things I will be doing throughout the summer but those are the biggest two. Camp starts on monday of this week so today and tomorrow are a bit of "off days" though we are still doing some work.

I'm really ready for camp to start and cannot wait to see how God is going to move this summer!

Off to do laundry I go!

Training Week

Hello friends! I am still at training week! It is going great so far. God has really blessed me with a fantastic team who I really enjoy being around. I am working hard learning how to do my job (housing is crazy but oddly fun). On the first day (sunday...the day I flew in and then began training) I typed up my thoughts from the day and what all had gone on that day and I thought I would share it with you.

"Today began at 5:00am, was at the airport  around 6:20 and once I shuffeled a few things aroundso that one of my two bags was not over the limit of 50lbs and then went to the right terminal, made my way through security, found my fate, got sprite and a muffin, alked back to my gate just as they began loading. The flight was fairly uneventfl, especially condidering that it was my first time flying alone. Though i did get sick on the plane and the fact that my ears were still popping 5 hours alter. Once I got my luggage I found the SL van (or rather, they found me) and we picked up the rest of the airport people we were off the the SL office. Honestly, being att he SL office waiting for training week to really begin was the most overwhelming part of the day. There were TONS of people all looking around at each other's name tags hoping to find more people with the same color name tag. Though it was overwhelming, it was great to finally meeeting the people who had just been a name, face and some words on facebook. After a quick meeting and lunch we were off the Shocco Springs where we would spend training week. The ride was quiet att imes, but I really enjoyed getting to know some of the people a litte better. Once we arrived and got into our rooms, the day REALLY began. This day, as will the rest of the week, held lots of meetings. I really enjoyed some of the, my favorites being the teaming meetings where people take turns telling about themselves and the meeting where we learned about how to use MAC computers (even though this meeting was from 9-10 that night, about which time all of the office staff was falling asleep). So now, as I sit on my bed and refelct back over today there are two moments in particular that really stick out in my head. The first took place on the airplane before ite ven began to taxi. I sat there and just thought "What am I doing?!?! I don't know how to do this job! I don't know these people! I'm going to travel across the US (literally)  and I get car sick!" After I thought these things all I could do was sit and rest in peace that God is in control. He uses us in ways that we don't think we can be used. And as He taught me when I was applying for this job, He knows what I need and will supply accordingly. My second highlight of the day was much more peaceful and invovled much less freaking out :-). During out second Orange Team meeting I couldn't help but looking around at the circle and be thankful. I am so very thankful for my team. Though I don't know the well, I think I have been able to talk to almost every member today at least at some point and I am so excited about getting to know them, being a member of their family for the summer, being their friend for a long time and serving and stretching alongside of them this summer. Indeed, God is in control."

Sorry for all the typos...don't have time to fix them....off to lunch!

Grace and Peace!

Grace and Peace!!

Mail

Finals have ended and I have spent the past few days at home relaxing and getting ready to leave on Sunday for 13 weeks of camp. Many of you have asked about sending me letters etc. this summer. To answer the most common questions, yes you can send me mail and here is how you do that!

If you are sending me a letter, mail it to...
Lisa Lund
Orange Team
P.O. Box 36040
Birmingham, AL 35236

If you are sending a package you will need to send it to the location that I am currently at. E-mail me and I can let you know where I am and what the address is.

Random

*So today was the last day of classes of my sophomore year which means I am almost halfway done with by undergrad. degree....crazy
*4 finals and 16 moveouts until I am done for the year.
*I found out yesterday that the computers in the camp office are MACs :-)
*I went to the beach tonight....it was really fun.
*I absolutly am so excited about this summer and yet, I am also really looking forward to a few days home with my family.
*My brothers both went to a formal tonight and they were so handsome in their pics that it almost made me cry. They have grown up into such handsome young men!

This was short, I know, but I must get some sleep

~Lisa

Intro...3 weeks til bham

Hello All!

Well, most of you know that this summer I will be working for Student Life Camp's Orange Team as their housing coordinator. I thought I would set this blog up so that I can keep you guys up-to-date with everything that is going on as I get ready to leave, and most exciting, as I spend the summer serving with my team.

For those of you that did not know that I will be working for SL this summer....I will be leaving May 25th at 7:37am in the morning and spend a fantastic summer with amazing people and will fly back into Houston on the evening of August 11th. If you want to know more...then just ask!

I ask one thing of you....that this summer, you will cover me and my team in prayer. As time goes on I will have more specific 'prayer requests' but for now, pray for us as we individually pack (yikes!) and as we prepare to meet together for our first time as a team and that when we do meet, the Lord will draw us together.

Grace and Peace,
Lisa