We came, we saw, we conquered

So I won't normally do this, but I'm gonna cut and paste the post that I posted on jasonye.blogspot.com because it's just a good general update. So here it is:

---

I've had a great past few days. My team went to Mt. St. Helens on Thursday and it was so gorgeous. It was like looking into a dream (cheesy but seriously). I mean it didn't even look real. The enormity of the valley preceeding the actual Mt. made the entire thing look like a really good blue screen effect from a movie. It didn't look real at all. I will post pictures soon. Plus, I had an awesome discussion with one of my teammates Maria about the topic "To what extent is God involved in the world." Meaning the ancient freewill v. God's plan argument. It was cool because I think I have some pretty radical theology sometimes and none of it has really come out on team thus far. She got to get a taste of it and was totally receptive. It was cool.

On that note it's been cool to see how God is growing myself and the team. Conflicts have come and gone and will come again, but we have been gaining understanding of each other's perspectives which makes the sting of such conflicts greatly lessened.We're staying in a Youth House right now just south of Portland, Oregon. The people have been so gracious. We thought we might have to use YE funds to get food while we are here since we aren't staying in actual host homes. The pasor mentioned something at the service and we've gotten non-stop food delivery since :). We have too much now. And we had an amazing dinner with a family that invited us over the other night. We sang worship with them, chatted, and ate. It was just really awesome fellowship.

---

So now for some more fun stuff. I want to say to Dan Magers, that is a fricking good idea and I feel lame for not even considering that up to this point. I don't know how disciplined I am for that, but I'm going to try what you suggested. That will also give you guys more lame day-to-day life type blogs to read though. I'll try and keep them spicy hot. I'll just lie a lot.

But for cereal, this is a true story. We were able to meet up with another YE team on Monday of last week. We went and saw their program and even helped out a bit with it. The following day we just hung out with them. We went to this mall (I can't recall where this was anymore) where we got asked to participate in a movie preview study. We were so pumped. I mean, I love movies, and seeing new movie trailers before they are in the theatres was semi-appealing, plus they were gonna give us $2. So I was thinking, "shit yeah." (pardon the french). So we all kinda went in seperately even though we ended up in the same room, and a different person was in charge of us. My guy was new, it was his first day. And all he did was ask me some really general questions about my likes and dislikes. We talked about what I was doing for the year, being on team and all which he really thought that was cool, we talked about how his girlfriend was pregnant and he wants to go into marketing for a living etc. We just sat and talked while he typed what seemed like pages of response to questions he wasn't even asking me. At one point he goes, "I could just tell how you'd respond to some of these based on our interaction thus far." WHAT, lol. I answered like 4 questions total for him, he filled out an entire quesitonaire for me and he never even showed me the trailer I was supposed to comment on. But hey, I got my two bucks. It really made me think more about statistics. I mean it only has to look good on paper for the company to seem legit. So that was kinda interesting.

Shawn, I don't know how comfortable I'd be with just calling andrew up. I mean, I more hung out with him in the context of my relationship with you guys. Anyway, I'm far from seattle now. But thanks for mentioning it. Dood, your comment just reminded me that I need to check our roommate blog.

Wow, the backlash for my blog being fricking instead of friggin have been overwhelming. (BTW Shannon, I'm totally on board with the editing of posts things, it's just the complication of changing the web address the site is published to that I have issues with). So I will put it to a vote. If you have an opinion please let me know:
option #1: "ifriggingraduated"
option #2: "ifrickingraduated"
option #3: stay as is

The only thing that bothers me about changing the name is that I've given this one out in some of my sponsorship letters. Ah, I'll just have a redirection post on here or something lol.

I suppose this post is long enough for now. I've changed the pictures as per-norm.

i love you all,
in Christ,
jason