Glaciers and ATVs

So another mega post coming up. Strap in.

Marcus, it is indeed Eternal Sunshine. Good Job! Of course you should all know that this is my fav. movie right now. Speaking of good movies though, I watched Cast Away again last night. That movie is pretty brilliant as far as Tom Hanks goes. It falls a little short in the heavy handed metaphores at the end but...eh? Tom Hanks is so goddam awesome (Please, Please, forgive the cuss). He is though. He just rox. Is there a better actor out there? Let me hear your best case.

Anywho. Lauri, good to hear from you I will try and give you a call soon. Please post what day you leave for the Air force.

So We have Nat back with us, that's good. It's been fun to have her along again. It's taken some readjusting, but that's totally expected so as far as I'm concerned, no big deal. Our team struggled for awhile with it though. Mostly because our team likes to make bigger deals out of things than is necessary (in my esteemed opinion). So the first week Nat was back we got to hang out at her church's rocking camp on the Flathead Lake near Big Fork, MT. Yeah, sweet. The kids were cool. I met one camper who was a total faith questioner person like me. It was nice to have a chat with her about some of my faith struggles in the last few years. And assure her that the Bible is full of questioners like her and I :). There were some lame aspects too. Like the curiculum for the week was all about witnessing and the book that we used was so simplistic and indoctrinating. It made me kinda sick to my stomach to eat up so much cookie-cutter-christian content. Dan McMahon would have snapped after the first lesson. But, I was just honest with my group about my feelings about the book (as were most of my teammates) and we had good discussions about the content anyways.

Then onto Missoula, MT for a week for a VBS. Pretty standard really, although I had to play a tight-rope walker named....Walker every single day during the opening celebration time. I had a script every day. I didn't have it quite as bad as Mariah who was a clown named Pelle. It cracked me up at times though because it was so bad. Like one day Pelle was looking for her Sun...("No walker, not Son you silly...Sun"; "I know a story from the Bible about a man with two sons" "Two sons, how did he see anything, it had to be so bright" "Now who's being silly Pelle. Two boys.") And at the end of the skit she turns around and it's taped to her butt. She says, "Where could my Sun be Walker." And I say, "I wouldn't worry about it Pelle, I'm sure we will get to the bottom of it." Oh yeah, that's right. Good stuff. It was a really awesome week though. And I went hiking for 4 out of the 7 days which was super good for me spiritually. I was feeling so down about being on team for another 3 weeks or whatever, as well as team drama stuff. But when you get up in the mountains, and look down on everything it reminds you how absolutly stupid most everything is :). Okay maybe it just does that for me. I got to make some good phone calls. I saw a bunch of dear. Here's the kicker though. So the whole week (as well as numerous other times this year) my one goal was to see a black bear. I fig. if I went hiking a bunch I would have to see one right? Wrong. Instead, one day while hiking up to the top of this mountain I turn to Sarah, who is hiking with me, and say, "Hey sarah I think I'm gonna pick up the pace and just go up a little further. Then I'll meet you on the way back down the mountain." So her and I part ways. I end up on this awesome yet lengthy trail back to the main trail that involves me running for about 45min because I realized it was taking too long and sarah might begin to worry. I get back to sarah only to find she had seen a bear and its cub only minutes before I met up with her. I had three cameras on me...did I give her even one...NOOO. Anyway, not bitter.

After Missoula it was back up to Kalispell where I am now. Today we had a day off so we drove up to Glacier National Park which is the size of Yellowstone. The mountains there were huge, I took tons of pictures. I saw some mountain goats, marmets, and ground hogs...good pictures of them too. I have a picture of a ground hog drinking out of a miller Lite can, I kid you not. Then just now before this post I went on an ATV (4 wheeler). Mom and Dad please don't hate me. I told my host brother I was nervous about it and he was very careful and respectful. By the end of our first stint out in the woods I decided to drive one myself and had a fun time doing it too.

So that's life for now. I love you all and look forward to being back Aug. 15th or so.

in Christ,
jason