Whoa, that was a crazy week!  I was in Bergholz, OH at Elkorn Valley Christian Camp.  We had 125 4-6th graders and it was nuts!  We were only expecting 70 kids, so that was quite an increase and our 15 person faculty was stretched hard to do it all.  There was some farily large drama, but my drom girls were awesome.  They were the first girls in bed every night and even though they had some trouble understanding what quiet whispering during rest time meant, we had a great time.  Highlights of the week:  being handed a tooth that one of the girls had lost, not being the first one found during faculty hunt, recruiting a guy who will be a really awesome youth minister for Johnson (Come on Austin!), hanging out with an amazing faculty, escape runs to Dairy Queen when it was closed and we had to bring back donuts for the faculty, faculty night swim when it was freezing and I couldn't hit the volleyball for anything, being thrown in the pool by Austin, Ryan and Jason on the last day and subsequently losing both of my contacts, and being asked if I would come back next year.  What a wonderful week.  I'm still catching up on sleep and have one more load of laundry to do tonight since I fell asleep as soon as I got home last night. 

I also got to see my best friend Heather and meet her boyfriend Adam, go to the Air Force museum in Dayton, OH with them, hang out with my parents and stop and see my cousins on the way home.  Needless to say, I was way happy to sleep in my own bed and have some "alone" time last night.  It was glorious. 

It was also wonderful to just see God working and be reminded of how much I love doing ministry.  Yes, I do ministry every day, but it's not in as tangible of a way as last week was.  I love kids and I love working with them and helping them see God as their friend, not just as some big scary guy.  I thrive on ministry.  I live for ministry.  I need things like that.  And through it all, I came to some tough realizations of what life would have been like if Jake and I would have gotten married.  He would have hated last week.  Had I gone to camp and we were still trying to work things out, I would have come back and ended it.  Our lives and relationship with God move in totally different directions.  We never would have clicked on that front, which would have killed me in the long run.  So, thank you God for saving me from a horrible marriage.  I'm excited for what He's going to do in the future with me and look forward to doing ministry with my husband whenever I do get married.  Maybe I should marry a youth minister.  Then I would get to do this all the time! 

Emerald Hills is awesome looking and I'm super pumped to go see it.  I now have my very own hard hat, so I can go up close to the site.  Yay!  Here's the link to recent pictures:  http://photoserver.zenfolio.com/p438560015/.  We have a roof!!  WOOHOO!!

We have a work group from Milford, OH coming tomorrow.  It'll be a group of seniors who really want to just see the property, but also are willing to pitch in and do some things for us.  It'll be a lot of fun to be out there with them tomorrow. 

I have a wedding to coordinate this Saturday.  Debriefing for Pathways folk starts a week from today.  My LASIK surgery is next Friday.  Launch is the week after that and my grandpa has surgery on the 14th.  Then, I'm doing another wedding on the 16th.  Finally, I'll have a weekend to myself the 23rd.  I think I might be painting my bedroom then, so I need to decide on colors and buy supplies.  And, my lamp is about to die and I didn't buy the one that matches my table lamp when I was at Ikea, so I might be going up with Tina to do some shopping. 

And to my camp folks..."Here's a shovel!!"  Ha! 

But I'll be able to see clearly on August 8!!!  Went today for my LASIK full evaluation and surgery is scheduled for Friday August 8.  I could have gone this Friday, but I leave on Saturday to go to church camp in Ohio, and didn't want to be out of state for my week post-op.  The operating room has a viewing room, so if you'd like to come down and watch them cut open my eye, you can!  Let's have a little party at the clinic.   

So, the entire surgery will take 30 minutes.  It'll take a few minutes to create the corneal flap, then I have to sit for 10-15 minutes and let it full separate.  Then, I go to another room for the actual refractive surgery part and that will take 3.5 minutes per eye.  Amazing.  It'll be over so fast.  I'm a bit creeped out about the part that I'll be awake and able to see, but they tell me that I'll just be seeing a bright light...the laser.  So, hopefully it won't be too bad.  It's actually really cool how they do it.  I knew they used a laser to create the corneal flap, but I thought they sliced horizontally across the top of the eye.  But, they take a laser and shoot it vertically across the surface of the eye.  It goes down to a specified layer of the cornea and creates a tiny gas bubble.  It goes all over and makes these little bubbles, then the bubble become one giant space of gas in between two layers.  The sitting and waiting part allow the bubbles to get bigger and join together.  Then, they use a special tool to pull the top layers back.  A laser moves in the same way to reshape the cornea's lower layers that are still attached.  Then, the flap goes back over, is irrigated and smoothed across and I'm done!  I go home and have to sleep/keep my eyes closed for 6 hours.  Oh, and I'll have fun little shields that I have to tape over my eyes when I sleep so that I don't accidentally rub them.  No rubbing my eyes for 6 months, I have to take special vitamins and put in drops for the next 6 months as well. 

I'm very much looking forward to all of this.  And, in the process I've found out that my prescription wasn't strong enough for my eyes.  They've worsened to -5.75 in the left and -5.77 in the right.  They were -5.25 in the left and -5.5 in the right.  And, my eye pressure is rising a bit, too.  It's up to 15 in the left and 16 in the right.  Still acceptable and normal, but that's something I watch closely with my family history. 

Oh, and anyone who might be wanting this....my doctor does it free for 1 missionary a month.  He prefers it to be someone serving overseas, but I kind of snuck in there.  So, Erin and Tim and any of you other folk out there serving God overseas, just let me know if you want the contact info and I'll pass it on to you. 

I just can't sleep!  My body clock is all messed up.  I had a migraine yesterday and today and slept too much during the day.  It's way annoying.  I just can't sleep.  Argh.  This has been happening a good bit in the last month and it's hard.  Julie calls it my jet lag.  And it really is.  I just didn't get to go on a cool trip anywhere.  So, in my way late night boredom, I thought I would update ya'll.

The NACC was last week and I have to say that it was probably the best NACC I've ever been to.  Kim H. and I shared a room at the Hilton and it was amazing.  The bathroom was small, but everything else totally made up for it.  Working the booth was rather tiresome for me this time.  Several people asked how the wedding went, so I had to explain.  Time after time, I am completely amazed at my support network.  I got even more offers of places to retreat.  I'm so blessed.  I'm trying to figure out when I can take advantage of some of these offers.  I'm headed to Denver in September, and will try to make it to Knoxville in October to enjoy the fall colors on campus.  Overall, I got to see some good friends and make contact with several church groups about coming to Emerald Hills to do a work day.  It was great. 

On Friday, I went to Ikea!  I love that store.  I want an Ikea house.  Seriously.  I love their kitchens.  If I ever get to remodel a house the way I want to, I'm totally having an Ikea kitchen complete with drawers instead of lower cabinets.  It's my dream.  I did manage to only spend $30, which is a huge accomplishment for me. 

This last weekend, I headed to Scottsburg for the family gathering.  My aunt and uncle and cousins from IL came in and my parents and brother came down from Indy.  It was great fun.  They had kittens and I got to play with them.  I really wanted to bring one home, but I'm just gone too much.  If it was an older cat, it would be much more feasible because I could just have someone come over and feed and water it and change the litter box every few days.  But a kitten is much harder work.  I got some really great photos of them though, so I'll be posting them soon.  It was also just really good to be surrounded by my family and not have to talk about anything.  They love me and accept me for who I am.  What a blessing to snuggle on the couch with Hannah, Bethany, Sara and Leah and watch a movie.  Just good downtime with family.  I needed it. 

Tonight I got a haircut and I love it.  It's supa short...as in barely touches my shoulders.  She cut off like 6".  But it's great.  I needed a major change there and I'm really happy about it.  No more wedding hair for me!  I also had my first appointment with my therapist.  It's the guy that Jake and I went to before we broke up (we actually ended things in his parking lot).  Just a really good session.  He affirmed a lot of what I had been thinking, encouraged me, gave some really good insights about myself that I had never even thought of but that totally make sense, and told me that I was being too hard on myself.  Excellent.  I'm looking forward to working with him these next few months.  My insurance covers 15 visits for "behavior management" a year and I'm taking advantage of it.

Okay, this is way long.  And I'm gonna play a computer game or two until I get tired enough to sleep.  Ciao!