This holiday weekend was such a blast, it was filled up with fun!!! Saturday morning 16 people from the house ran in the "Firecracker 5k" that takes place every year in Fort Collins. It started and ended at City Park, which is like a 5 minute walk from the house, so I got to go watch and cheer with others who weren't running; it was so much fun. We made signs and yelled our brains out, which was unfortunately the beginning of the end for my voice. It was so exciting to cheer on our brothers and sisters in the house, and we got to celebrate a lot of success too. Kyle Mena, a senior from Eastern Michigan University, won the race, Linsey Smith, from UW-Madison here for AIA new-staff training, won the women's side of the race, Meghan Jacob, a Junior from Wayne State in Nebraska took third overall for women, and Dee Hammonds, a staffer from Dayton-Ohio, and Lauren Beechey, a Junior from Ohio State, each placed second and third in their own age categories. Watching these awesome finishes and the awards ceremony made for a great time!!!
That afternoon we had an outreach, some people played pick-up games of soccer, tennis, or ultimate Frisbee in the park, while others ran free car wash at the house. At either option, we tried to take the downtime and steer conversations toward Christ and the Gospel. I got to be part of the car wash, it was so much fun. I washed car for a little while, but most of the day I was jumping up and down in the street yelling and holding a sign trying to get people to come and let us wash their cars, the final nail in the coffin for my voice. We had so many people come and get their cars washed, which lead to some great conversations throughout the day. Although we didn't have anyone make faith decisions, countless seeds were planted.
Finally, we got to watch a beautiful fireworks display in City Park. Though I missed the coordination to oldies that I get with Rhythm and Booms back home, the fireworks were the perfect cap to an exhausting day.
On Sunday, after going to church, the men's Bible study groups each took a women's Bible study group out for a date. Earlier in the week, the men were matched up with groups and had to plan and ask out a girl's group on a date. The purpose for the date really was for the guys to take us, their sisters in Christ, out on a date to show us how we as daughters of the King deserve to be treated in relationships. So, most of the guys got super-creative in how they asked the girls out and in what they planned.
Our guys, Rob and Cody, (all groups had like a 1:2 guy:girl ratio because that is almost the ratio of the project) asked us out with a really cute note and then took us out on a great date that lasted most of the day. We started at "Fort Fun," an amusement park quite reminiscent of most of Wisconsin Dells, where we took on the boys in Go-Karts, Mini-Golf, and a final water balloon fight. It really was a lot of fun, just hanging out with the boys and spending more quality time with our Bible study group.
After "Fort Fun," the boys took us home and told us to get dressed up for dinner, but wouldn't tell us anymore than that. When we came down for dinner, the boys greeted us each with 3 roses with notes attached. It was so great and cute, and I loved it!!! Then we all went to dinner at a local Italian place in Old Town that was so good. None of us had been there before, but the boys did a great job picking it out. Afterwards, we went for a walk to get ice cream and sat in front of some fountains enjoying our ice cream and having great conversation, I think we sat there for almost an hour talking about everything we could think of. The whole day was really perfect. The man were perfect gentlemen the whole time, opening doors and the whole nine yards (Cody was even carrying my purse for a large amount of time throughout Mini-Golf :) )
I really loved the whole experience!!! It was perhaps the first time that I truly have felt valued like that as a deserving daughter of the King, I will definitely hold a little higher standard from now on.
Ok, well I am running out of time and Sal and I need to get back to the house for some ministry training time. I will fill you all in on Monday and today later this week.
-Randi
No comments:
Post a Comment