Crazy. Beautiful. Life.

I wanted to sum up my life in the last 3 months in one word, but the English dictionary just doesn't have a word that can actually describe this crazy beautiful life I've been living!  First, I looked up the meaning of the word "busy" but it says, "actively and attentively engaged in work" that is a true statement, I have been busy, but I couldn't describe my time here with the word busy because it neglects the excitement and joy of it all!  Actively engaged in work? How could I classify what I get to wake up and do every morning as work? Work sounds boring!  So I thought of words like active, accelerated, and rapid which do a better job of describing the word busy with adrenaline and excitement, but still those words don't do justice to my time in England!  How about I catch y'all up on what's been going on in this area of the world, and maybe you can help me come up with the perfect word.

So, starting in March, I went to Denmark and visited my Danish friends Laila and Kirsten!  I was also able to speak on a bible weekend retreat for students age 12-18!  Laila and Kirsten introduced me to dark bread called rugbrød! I think I was addicted almost immediately and since coming back to London, I have searched the streets for a Danish Ryebread dealer!  I need my bread fix!  The time in Denmark was just incredible and full of joy while catching up with these girls and laughing about our times on DTS!  Also during the bible weekend, I took a walk with one of the youth at the conference and during our conversation, I couldn't believe how much I was learning and being encouraged by her as oppose to the other way around!

When I returned to London, my sister came to visit!  Jacee was only there for 3 days, but it was so much fun to hang out with her!  It was great to have a group of Texans in my backyard again!  Jacee came with some of my friends from Denver City and one of my best friends from Texas Tech, Katy Moore!  We sang the Texas Tech fight song and it was great to have people wearing red and black in support of the Red Raiders! We were able to see the Lion King, which was my first Broadway/West End show, and stroll around downtown London at night!  It was so much fun having them here.  I just wish they could have stayed longer, but now it just means they will have to come back to get the real tour of England!

The day my sister left, my friend from South Korea came to visit, and she helped me get to work on alot of the design work that needed to be down for the Forever team.  Together we completed 2 weeks of work in 2 days, so it was such a huge blessing to have her here!  The last day that she was here, we went on a quick tour of London and wanted to take pictures in front of the O2 arena!  When we arrived, we saw that Enrique Iglasias was performing that night, so we went to an official and asked if they had any more tickets.  The man told us they were sold out, but 3 people didn't come and claim their tickets, so we could have them for free and the VIP lounge bands that went with them!  It was so much fun and really funny because seconds before we asked about tickets Lynn had said "Who is this guy?  An actor or something?"  Maybe the hardcore fans out there wouldn't be so happy that mediocre fans just got front seats to the man of their dreams!


After the concert, Lynn left for the Airport, and I went straight to Manchester for a week where we as the Olympic Forever team ran a week called "DTS Gathering"  This is where trainees from all the YWAM bases around England come together for a week of Evangelism training and outreach (as well as sleeping on the floor and having 60 girls sharing one bathroom!)  Myself and Rebecka both led the sports outreaches.  During the week, we ran 2 football clinics, played a football game and helped with a football tournament!  Football was the key and we were able to use sport to show Christ love.  They had outreaches of Art, Family and Children, homeless ministry, and prayer walks.  It was so much fun and really cool to have such variety of ways to Evangelize.  We are already planning our next gathering for the beginning of June, so I'm excited to use the same tools we used for Manchester, but this time we will be able to do outreach with a beach as our "football pitch" hopefully we can play a little volleyball as well!

When I returned from Manchester, the next task was receiving my level 1 football coaching badge!  This meant playing football (soccer) everyday from 9am-5pm.  It was actually really fun and I learned so much about the sport!  We practiced coaching around 14 drills, and while we were not coaching, we were being coached by the other trainees!  With this training, I will go into an area of London next week and run soccer schools for kids grades 1-5!  I'm really excited because the format will be integrating football and life lessons together with Jesus being the focus of it all!  I just hope that the kids don't really show me up and make me look like a fool with their smooth skills.  I know it is highly possible to be beaten by a 6 year old, so I'm a bit nervous!  Good news is the weather has been amazing and I have a great tan which I heard was almost impossible to receive in gloomy England!

So that all brings me to this week.  I just returned from a recruiting trip to Scotland where we talked with the bases there about getting involved in the Olympics and encouraged them to begin thinking about how they can be apart of what we are doing in England.  It was an amazing trip and Scotland was incredible! It was great to see the land of William Wallace and the Lockness Monster!

So, after hearing about life in England, does anyone have a word that could describe this madness, this crazy beautiful, frustrating and stressful, wonderful life.