This is me and my roommates at the top of the mountain! (These pictures are a little mixed up but what can you do.) The view was amazing. This was our first night hike! At the top are the Alpha boys or Alpha Men as we have dubed them.:) They are a blast.

This is the view from the top. It is an amazing thing to get to the top and realize the vastness of God's creation. From the top you can see waterfalls and layers and layers of mountains. The mountains are a lesson in the shades of blue. At dusk you can look at the horizon and see only the outline of the mountians in shades of blue. It is wonderful!

This is all of us! Alpha and Omega as well as our leaders. We have a wonderful group of people with different gifts. It is so neat to observe in class and other activities to see the gifts and leadership skills that emerge in each person and how the others make room for that.

This was at the very beginning of the hike! On the way there we were joking that we looked like a funeral procession because there were so many cars in a row. Our favorite thing to do in the car is to have a dance party. On this particular car ride our dance party featured the thriller dance. It was so much fun!

My Team!

So I am offically at Focus on the Family Institute! There are a total of 48 of us which is exciting because we are half of the normal class size! We have done some crazy things already. The first game that we played I was paired up with a guy named David. We had to choose a double name for our team so naturally we chose salt and pepper. We were then seperated and put on opposite ends of a giant field and instructed to call out eachother's name at the top of our lungs untill we found eachother. My teammates name for the game was salt, so I got to wonder around the park yelling salt at the top of my lungs (use your imagination, it was very funny:). The inflection in our voice as we got closer was great, and we found eachother in record time (though I can't prove it because it was not actually timed)! So aside from the fun though, each game was designed to help us identify our leadership skills and those of our teammates. It was a wonderful time and I am so excited about the team that God has put me in. Having said that meet my team: starting at the top left in the back we have Jenna, my roommate Britany, Me, Amy, Elizabeth, and Laura. Then coming down to the front left we have Hal, Ben, David, and Gary! These people are wonderful and have blessed me so much already. Over this summer we will be working togeather to edify, challenge, encourage, and engage eachother to grow closer to Christ, to know God, and to become the agents of change that we are intended to be in this world. Please be praying for me and my teammates!

Mom, Laura, and I, and our Adventures!

We decided that we needed some fondu! Mom and Laura did not plan a head for the perfectly balanced compostion due to matching shirts but it did work out quite nicely.


This is a street front in a town called Manatoue Springs! We loved this little town.

This is mom and I in a crack in a giant rock formation at the Garden of the gods. What a beautiful park! There were all kinds of creative interpretations of the rocks but we never could find the sleeping giant. My favorite was the kissing camels.

This is a rock at the very bginning of the Garden of the gods called Balancing Rock.

This is the 7 Falls waterfall, and yes if you look carefully you will see the lovely flight of stairs that we climbed up to the top. Go team!

This is me and my momma at 7 falls! My mom, Laura, and I had a wonderful time at this park, although we were expecting 7 different waterfalls. Don't worry though, what we were missing in falling water we made up for in climbing stairs. I believe that when all was said and done I climbed close to 400 stairs to get to the top of the waterfall.

7 Falls park features much beauty and many stairs! Further more the stairs climb very steeply up the side of the cliff face where the waterfall is. Let me tell you that by the time I was at the half way point I was breathing as if I had just ran a half marathon!

This is Laura and Mom at 7 Falls! It is a park with a waterfall at the center of it that has 7 different kinds of waterfalls in it. I am completely unable to explaine how this is possible, but if you are interested my brother Michael just finished a geology class and may be of some help!:)

Laura and mom made reservations for us at a place called Flying W Ranch. The set up is of an old western town. This is a picture of us in the saloon. (I also got a camera before I left and we were discovering the wonders of the color option menu with this picture!)

While walking around the old town we discovered a bench where they used to shine shoes. We all had sandles on but we decided that we needed a shoe shineing none-the-less.

We had such a wonderful time together and I was so blessed that Laura and my mom where able to come over to Colorado with me and get me settled in! They did an exceptional job!