Hello from Santa Cruz!

Hey everyone..sorry it took so long for me to get this up. I've had quite a busy schedule :)
I have been living on a Christian camp called Mission Springs for the last two weeks and will be here until break which starts November 25th. We are serving Mission Springs by working on their maintenance and housekeeping teams three days a week. Just this past week, me and a few other people from my Ventana team have been taking apart, sanding, trimming, staining, and putting back together over twenty wooden benches in the center of camp. They now look brand new and we are all proud of our accomplishments. Other branches of our team have put in new stairs on one of their nature trails, sanded and repainted the theater's stage, and folded and stuffed over 2,000 letters. And its been so much fun learning how to serve even when it gets tough.

We have also been participating in a homeless ministry twice a week, which has been life changing. We serve at a place called Elm Street Mission every Wednsday and Saturday. On Wed. half of our team go to the mission to participate in the bible study there that includes several people who live on the streets, and the other half goes out into the main hangouts of the homeless population and strike up conversations with the people there. We have five dollars in our pocket so we can treat someone to a meal. On Sat. we all go to the mission and help prepare a huge meal, sit in the church service, then eat and talk with the people that come. It has been amazing to here people's stories and to love on them like Jesus would. I have met several interesting characters: Dana, who likes to invite me to some study sessions on "medical marajuana research", Thomas, who lost his wife, home, car, and motorcycle eighteen months ago, S.C. (as he likes to be called) who is a practicing Buddhist, as well as several others. Please lift these people up in your prayers, that we can continue our realtionships with them, and show them how much God truly loves them!

The leaders for Ventana are amazing and all of us students love them! There are six leaders in all, and eleven students (four boys and seven girls). We all get along rather well, and love to joke around and prank each other. For example, the boys snuck into the girl's bathroom and put an alarm on the stall door. So the next morning, me and two other girls (LeAnne and Liz) were in the bathroom preparing for the day and we tried to open the stall door, but everytime we did, a loud, obnoxious sound would go off, almost deafening us. We finally figured out what it was, so we could releive our strained bladders :) and we are still coming up with a way to get the boys back!

I miss you all and hope to see/hear from you all sometime. Thank you to everyone who has supported me financially and prayerfully! You have blessed me more than you know! One fun fact that I was just made aware of was that I was the last one to sign up for this trip, but the first one to get all my funds in...what a confirmation from God that I am supposed to be here.
I love you all!