Serving with Joy

"...whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant.  And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Mark 10:43-45

This is one of the verses we're memorizing this summer in the Housekeeping department with the summer staff and work crew.  How true these verses are in housekeeping and doing the dirty jobs to serve the campers.  Most of the girls and guys that we get in the summer don't choose housekeeping and aren't too thrilled about it at first, but it's so cool to see how that changes throughout their session.  Not that they love unclogging toilets, but amazing, deep, real relationships happen that far out-ways a fun activity job.  It teaches humbleness and brings out the true colors of servant-hood in people's lives.  It has been for me the past year and a half and continues.  I'm super excited for my second summer here to start.  It's exhausting mentally organizing, preparing, planning, coordinating presummer groups and to create the summer atmosphere and tone before all the volunteers and campers come, but it's so worth it.  The thing that's been continually keeping me joyful in it all has been everyone's attitudes.  All the interns and my co-supervisor I get to work with are so amazing and truly serve with joy as serving the Lord and not man.  A huge group of us went to the Hillsong concert in Portland last week which was the coolest and best worship concert I've ever been to.  It wasn't a concert to listen to the artist ability (although very very good) but a concert to sing to the Lord with other believers.  It was loud enough you couldn't hear the person next to you because you're singing and shouting unto the Lord not holding back even if you have a bad voice.  It was three hours of non stop worship through singing.  Such a great way too for all of us to worship together before summer craziness and be on fire for the Lord together!  


My puppy Zuela is adorable and a handful.  She's a great companion already but man do I feel like a single mother sometimes!) Her and I go on a walk almost every morning, today we even hiked Fohawk at 6:30am on my day off b/c she was ready to go.  There are a lot of dogs out here so she has a lot of play dates which in turn has made me more social with my neighbors and great friendships that I didnt necessarily seek out before!  Zuela is bilingual of course.  Her word to get her to go to the bathroom is ba~no and of course I talk to her mostly in Spanish and my roommates in English.  I have three other girls living with me now, all seasonal hires for the summer.  It's fun having a full house again, spending time together in many different ways.  Well I'm looking forward to a kayaking trip with some friends next week on the John Day River!  I did it last year for my birthday and want to make it a tradition! Ah I am not excited to know that I'll be in my last year of my 20s though:(  Yet looking forward to Michelle coming to visit in August!