Things are going really well here! I am in love with Colorado. I spent this week on Mt. Bard with a youth group from Tulsa, OK. I had such an amazing time. The group that went up this week was really fun and their church is really striving to be what exactly what they Bible says the church should be. The mountain was great. It is so nice to get away and go into the mountains to refocus. The only downfall was that it rained a lot while we where there, but we did get to summit. I am so blessed to have experienced Dry Bones this summer.I have been challenged every day and I have grown from these experiences in so many ways. I pray that I will never forget them and I pray that you will experience a time the is just as challenging and defining in you faith. God is good and He knows the way to true life.

I am so sorry that I haven't written in a long time! I had a week off and when I got back, things were crazy. So...this is where I am right now -- I am really really struggling with the Christianity I have known forever. You know, the Christianity where you are just like the world and you live just like the world except for the fact that you don't cuss, smoke, drink, and fornicate. A Christianity where we still are materialistic and self-seeking. I am having a very hard time balancing all of the thoughts going on in my head right now. Robbie, a staff member, gave us this article today and it really challenged me. It is written by Greg Boyd. I know it is long, but please read:

www.gregboyd.org/essays/kingdom-living/following-jesus-doesnt-work/

This week was incredible. I worked with an all city youth group this week, which means that I worked with a group that did not go up on the mountain. We spent almost all of our time downtown with street kids. This group was so much fun and they had such compassion; it was a blessing to spend time with them. My 21st birthday was this week and I went out to eat with all of the staff in Boulder- lots of fun! My favorite part of the week was Thursday/Friday. We went camping with the youth group and 9 of our friends who have either lived on the streets or are currently living on the streets. It was such an incredible experience to spend time with so many people who have such different life stories and such different ways of seeing God. It has been really wonderful and very challenging to be around people who see God in such a different way than I do. It has often made me feel uncomfortable, but it is so good for me to be pushed outside the boundaries of my perspective of Christianity. I often think about all of the names of God in the Bible and how I am not able to relate to many of them; the people I have met this summer understand the names of God that I don't. I have learned so much and I can not wait to keep on learning. I do have one request to all of the readers- I beg you to leave the place you grew up, or the place where you are comfortable, and wander into a place where you will be challenged. Go to the dark places of your city, the place where you think nothing good can happen, and take God there. Quit hanging out with only Christians. A light shined in the darkness is so much more effective than a light shined in the daylight. As Francis Chan said so eloquently, "Christians are like manure. When they are all together in a big pile, they stink. When they are spread out, they make things grow. " This is what God commanded.

This week has been an awesome week! We had an all boys group come in from San Antonio, Texas. They were super fun and very compassionate. My favorite thing about the group was that they had a great sense of humor. They were are really cool group. This week JoAnna and Trevor both turned 20! We had fun celebrations on both of their birthday's. This is my third full week- time flies! So many good things happened this week; I will highlight two.
1. Zach, one of the staff members, is a multi talented person, and one of his talents is music. He played at a coffee house in the area and all of the interns went to hear him play. It was a really cool night because I felt so close to all of the other interns. All thanks to God, I have met some of the coolest people here. While I was at the coffee house a sense of overwhelming love for the interns and the others there hit me, and I am so thankful.
2. Going along with the theme of relational closeness, I have made some really cool friendships with some of the street kids. When I first came to Denver, I feared that I would not become close to any street kids because I am not truly able to empathize with their situations. I was afraid that everyone would look at me and think, "Silly white suburban kid, you have no idea what it is like to be in my shoes. Go back to where you came from." And while it is true that I do not have any idea what it is like to live their lives, I do know that I love them. There are so many awesome people who live on the streets of Denver, whether it be because of abuse, mental illness, or one of the other 1000 reasons. I have so much love for the street kids because they are humans who are just as worthy of the death of Christ as I am. As Robbie so often says, they have unsurpassable worth too. I am starting to slowly understand what love truly is. It is such a big thing to grasp, and I am not fully there by any means. I have learned that loving someone is not just doing something nice for them, it is loving them and valuing them forever. Unconditional love means that you love someone no matter what they do to you. No matter if they stand you up, cuss you out, steal from you, etc. I am just now starting to understand that this is what Christianity is. This is what changes people's lives. There is one guy who used to live on the streets who came and spoke to us interns. He talked about a lot of stuff, but particularly he spoke about how Dry Bones changed his life. He said they changed his life because they were the first people in his life that ever showed him unconditional love. He is doing great things for God now and he is getting the Dry Bones illustration tattooed on his back. God truly loves EVERYONE and so should I.

Things are going wonderfully here! The group from Troy was a lot of fun. It was nice to see people from Tennessee. We just got an all boy group in from Texas this morning. They will have a lot of fun on the mountain. Steve Weaver and Philip Nicholas were driving through Denver on Sunday and they came to church with the other interns and me . It was great to see them! The highlight of the past few days was last night. Some of the interns went to a church downtown and some of our friends that live on the streets were at church too! We did not know that they were going to be there, and it was just cool to see them at church. We went to eat with them after church and we ran into some more of our friends that live on the streets. We all got ice cream at McDonald's and hung out. It was a so much fun. Things are busy, so I haven't had too much time to post- Sorry! I will try to do better. Today is my dad's birthday and Trevor's (one of the interns from ACU). Wish them happy birthday if you see them!

What I am doing...

I realized that most of my posts do not accurately describe what I do each day, so I will tell you!
Sunday and Monday- Off
Tuesday and Wednesday- Bible teaching time in the until lunch downtown. Hang out with street kids downtown until 5. Hanging out involves talking and providing anything that our friends need- basically being a good friend.
Thursday- Set up places for Elevations to kids to sleep (youth group kids who have been on the mountain). Serve lunch to the Elevations kids. Take Elevations kids on a turf tour (show them the street kids homes). Go bowling with the street kids. Serve dinner to the street kids.
Friday- Serve breakfast to Elevations kids. Take Elevations kids downtown for Urban Plunge (kind of like a small homeless simulation). Downtown outreach. Picnic in the park with street kids. Clean a lot of stuff.
Saturday- Serve breakfast to Elevations kids. OJ saves (give food to older homeless and have meaningful conversation). Picnic with street kids. Take street kids to a movie. Hang out with street kids. Have last big meal with Elevations kids at Denver Diner.

Recently the interns did Urban Plunge with one of our friends who we wil call Tammy, a street kid. We had to accomplish certain tasks with very limited resources. We had to check our email, very hard to do because you have to have an ID to get online at the library and we had none. If you want to get and ID, you have to have a birth certificate. If you want to get a birth certificate, you have to have ID. Getting ID is not easy. We had to find a place for all of us to stay, very hard because most places have age limits and are gender specific. It is also very hard to get into a shelter because so many people who want in. We had to find free food for each day of the week. We had to find day labor, very hard because the day labor place closed due to the economy. The simple stuff was very complicated and there was so much walking. Tammy was very patient with us and our sheltered suburban questions about homelessness. After a long day, we sat in a park and she let us ask her any question we wanted. She told us her story- very sad and powerful. She has gone through so much terrible terrible stuff; I would say she has been through hell on earth. After her story, I asked her what her biggest accomplishment was (because she has changed so much since the time of living on the streets). In my materialistic mind, I expected her to say that her biggest accomplishment was getting an apartment and getting off the streets or being clean. I was wrong. She looked at me and said, "Nothing. I have not accomplished anything. I have not done anything good, God has done everything good." She went on talking about how she is nothing without God. Her humility was beautiful. The way that Tammy depends on God is incredible. Her story is obvious proof that God is in control.

The reason for living.

Hey guys! I am sorry that I have not been posting every day. We don't have wireless here and we have been getting in late, so I have not had the chance to get on the internet that much seeing that the computer is in Sherry's bedroom. Things are going really well. Today the first elevations group got here. They are from Troy, TN. Elevations is when a youth group comes and our mountain men (Zach and Stephen) take them up the mountain and show them God in nature and in many other ways. This is kind of hard to explain, but when one is on a mountain there is definitely a connection with God that is indescribable. When they come back down, the city interns take over. Our job is to show the youth group kids the life of a street kid by taking them to their homes (the streets, crevices under bridges, tunnels, etc) and introducing them to each other. This is the thing I love about Dry Bones -- not only do they focus on ministering to the homeless, but also the Christians. The staff likes to say that they spend 51% of their time on the streets and 49% of their time in churches. The time that they/we are on the streets is primarily spent building relationships with street kids who have not had many stable influences in his or her life. The staff focuses on being a friend to everyone on the streets and lavishing love unconditionally on all in God's name. Dry Bones is not a shelter, it is an organization that gives value to individuals who are so often overlooked by everyone in the world, including Christians. The time that the staff/we spend with church people focuses on those who are searching for meaning in Christianity. It is an outreach to those who are sitting in a pew wondering if there is something more to life than what they are living. Dry Bones tries to bring back to life those who feel dead in church by showing them that loving and serving others in the name of God is the point of life.



I am so blessed to be in Denver right now. God knows what I need, and I can not imagine a better place for me to be. I love every intern so much. Each person has such a different story and a different passion for life. I could write paragraphs about each intern and staff's passion and my love for them, but I will spare you that because I do not know that you guys want to hear that.



I can not explain how much I love it here. Maybe I love it because I have gotten to meet so many different people with so many different perspectives to offer; Maybe I love it because all of my spiritual beliefs that have been so comfortable in the past are being challenged daily; Maybe I love it because I feel a true sense of community with the interns, staff, church people, and street kids; Maybe I love it because I am actually doing what God tells us will make us happy- serving. Whatever the reason may be, I know this -- I never want to live a life that is not focused on service ever again.





Interns at Red Rocks from L to R: Mark, Trevor (back), Tyler (front), Me, Liz, Stephen, Kenli, JoAnna