Week 1

The students have arrived!!!!!! :) It is so much fun finally having the students here. The schedule has picked up, relationships are beginning to form, and Michael's challenging talks have returned. This is going to be good.

Tuesday morning was an early one, and a morning full of EXCITEMENT! There are very few nights I have trouble sleeping, so I must have been even more excited than I thought since I woke up at 6:45am ready to start the day. I knew the day would be full of welcoming students, helping them move in, and showing them a glimpse of life on summer project. They settled in and met on the porch of The 3 Jacks at 5. To their surprise, it was time to go sharing. A huge part of summer project is sharing your faith, so each year project starts off with exactly that. Why not do it early and get rid of any nervousness?! The night continued with dinner at the church, fun games to get to know each other, and worship on the beach.

Wednesday = JOB HUNT! After the students spent hours searching for jobs, Bible studies met for dinner :) It was fun getting to hang out with the girls a bit more and to hear about how their job searches are going. Please continue to pray for jobs for the students...about half of them are still unemployed. After dinner Michael gave a talk and we all went on the boardwalk with our Life Groups (group you go to church with) to pray for the rest of the summer.

Thursday = JOB HUNT - Round 2! Jon (the other staff assigned to our church) and I started making dinner for the students around 5 :) Frozen lasagna, salad in a bag, and frozen garlic bread...we're chefs. Our Life Group hung out for a bit, ate dinner, and headed to the church to choose ministry teams! Each student had the opportunity to choose which team to serve on this summer - Community, Family Night (weekly meeting), Prayer, Outreach, and International Student Ministry. I am leading the Family Night Team this summer :) I was excited to welcome Rachel, Bailee, Casey, and Karen to the team! They each have such creative ideas for the weekly meeting and I am excited to see them put into action this summer.

Friday was what I had been looking forward to all week - life stories. Each Bible study spent the day together going over significant things that had happened in their lives up until this point. It's a good way to get to know someone quickly and gain a better understanding of why they are how they are today. Not only is this helpful to gain trust and get to know each other better, but it also helps the Bible study leader know what content to go over in the one-on-one meetings with the students. After spending bits of our day at the bay, the beach, my apartment, and an adorable coffeeshop in Berlin, we headed to the park where we would meet up with the rest of the group :) We finished the night off with a cookout and presentations from each ministry team. My ministry team, The Family Night Team, did a remake of "The Brady Bunch" in order to inform the rest of the project of our values and goals. So fun.

Today was long! The staff women woke up early to make breakfast for the students. We greeted the 19 beautiful women with delicious "heavenly pancakes", eggs, bacon, coffee, OJ, and milk...mmm! Women's breakfast = awesome...always. Each staff woman gave a mini introduction and we wrapped it all up with each of us praying for 2 or 3 girls. Then there was outreach training, outreach, debrief, and getting ready for the "social". Little did the students know, our event tonight was a staff hunt on the boardwalk. Each of the staff dressed in disguise and hid on the boardwalk! The students had to approach us and ask "are you pregnant?" and we would tell them a word from a verse. Once they found all of us they could piece the words together and find Psalm 119:128 Therefore I consider all your precepts to be right; I hate every false way.. That was their ticket into the party tonight - which consisted of chips, cookies, and a whole lot of fun games!

The past two weeks have been busy and I am starting to feel it.....good thing tomorrow is the Sabbath and I will have time to REST. Thank you for all of your support!!!! If you want to write letters :)

503 N. Philadelphia Ave
Ocean City, MD 21842