Forgotten Moments and Other Good Times

We are in New Mexico right now at a brilliant homestay in Farmington. Tomorrow we head to camp in Ruidoso. In the meantime we are having a bar b q/Xbox Rock Band party at Dentist Jackson and his lovely Dental affiliated wife Katrinas.Needlesstosay, its a darn good time this Friday.

I was searching through Kendalls pictures and stumbled across some great memories that I forgot to post! There is really a Nazarene Cuisine Cookbook! Shennanigans... also, we fit our bus in a driveway and were extremely proud. It may or not be an illegal feat, but an accomplished one at that.



Here is us trying to be a rock band on xbox. I don't even know what's going on right now. Even as I type this there are horrendous sounds echoing the living room walls... I have recently become fond of the song "Creep" by Radiohead though... it's hilarious, and just today I learned that they have been around since the 80's and are all about 100 years old or something. Who knew?




And here was the tour of the tour bus that got lost in the shuffle... oh the memories.
Tour de the Tour Bus

just kickin back

So here we ALL are in Palm Springs. Our boss gave us 3 1/2 beautiful days of rest and retreat to catch our breath and catch up with one another. Our days have been full of quiet time, laughs, cooking, swimming, playing music, watching Dave and John play music, groceries out the ying yang (there are 14 hungry college mouths to feed yeah?) amazing dinners, acting like bums and meetings with the boss man. Here are some windows into our world!

Reunited and It feels so Good

So we have had a glorious encounter with our sister band Transparent... also known as by unaware jr.high boys as "Hologram" or "Transluscent". We had lunch with our boss man George at the Soup Plantation. I don't know what part of my soup was plantated but it was refreshing to eat veggies and fruit and frozen yogurt with chocolate for dessert.

Kendall, Justin and Shelby tellin' stories of the days of old...


Special K feelin the shades...


Our dear boss givin' us the run down for the rest of the weekend/upcoming week of retreat with Transparent in Palm Springs


Justin Wright ladies. Yes he is single. And extremely talented. Especially at posing in the front of a moving bus. :)


Lindsay and Garrett enjoying the spectacular fireworks show at Shelter Island in Point Loma, San Diego.


Garrett (sound guy in Trans)rockin the Regeneration sweatshirt.


And here are the glorious fireworks from our view on Shelter Island.





More updates/crazy fun videos/life remedies next week!

Con mucho amor,
Megg

And then there was Mexico

The Adventures Continue with Styrofoam Houses Indeed:


I know what you may be thinking; how did they ninja all those suitcases/sleeping bags/instruments/frivolous belongings into that tiny little van. Well, my friends, it just comes with the job I guess.  The guys were amazing at getting everything that was on our bus inside of the back of this one relatively tiny cargo van. As you can see in the perif of our bus Special K (aka girl Kendall) is doing a great job of moral support through the whole process of men heavy lifting things.

It has been a long week in Mexico with our fellow youth workers. I don’t feel like going into graphic detail of the week so bear with me as I just list all things necessary (technique courtesy of mutual besty/fellow ninja Calen Lucas )

1. Accidents Happen: We had a little bit of a mishap with food that had the whole team on the toilet for a night and day… it sent our dear girl Kendall back to San Diego to recover but we are all united again and back in action!

2. Melissa Tucker (Boss Lady of the whole Youth Works Operation) is an upper case ‘G’ and always will be to me. (G for Good, Great, Grandisimo, orGanized, Gangsta at Mexican missions and life in general…)

3. Our team loves each other… despite shenanigans during nap time. See pic below.




4. Missions+Music+Outdoor work in the heat+Diarrhea=Difficult and excellent opportunity to really put our faith and trust in our Maker, who is greater and smarter than ourselves. We are learning about the importance of leaning on the strength of God and not on our own strengths because like our over Americanized bowels, they repeatedly fail miserably.

5. Being a part of a revolutionary housing project for underdeveloped communities will really do something for the self esteem/fulfillment of some altruistic purpose on earth. We have had the privilege of working alongside a dedicated team of Mexicans and other people from the states on something called the Lazarian Project. Google that! Long story short, really inexpensive, indestructible houses made from STYROFOAM (yes the stuff you get coffee in at a church pot luck). I’m actually dorming across one right now while I type this magical blog. Take a peak into our hot foamy world.



Here me and Spesh were assigned the task of organizing the lego-like foam pieces by shape. It took me back to my prime… the pre-school days.


We swept out this home… it’s in it’s baby stages of being built, and as a matter of fact, I just noticed two diligent men out there at 11 pm tonight finishing up the assembly of this bad boy!



I don’t know exactly what was going on here but I think the band was working, or just rockin out with a 2x4 outside a halfway there foam home. As you can see, there is cement that is sprayed on top of the foam and on the inside it gets insulated, that way it doesn’t do something crazy like blow away (the way our koolaid cups do at picnics).

In other news, I forgot to pay my electric bill before I left the country so here is me and my dear friend/hero Liz Kalama seeking wi-fi in the women’s bathroom at all hours of the night. God bless online bill pay yeah?




Mas luego. Happy fourth! Buenas Noches.
PS
Here is a video from earlier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLPNu8MtYQ0

Let's Recap

Here are the beautiful girls from our cabin at jr.high camp in San Luis Obispo… from left to right it’s Kendall, Tess, Me, Julia, Haley and Jordyn. We had a lot of sun with these energetic, hilarious chicas!




One of the coolest things about this camp was that the kids got to own the closing service. Through out the week they had been meeting in groups including Worship, Drama, Preaching , Acts of Service and Art and on Friday each group contributed to the closing service. Here is a praise wall that the fabulous art group did in construction paper/mosaic fashion. Rad yeah?




Obviously Tay was STOKED to play his beautiful drum set in the dirt.  It sounded good Robbie! Don’t trip potato chip!



Yes my friends, that is Anthony Pistotti signin’ a graph… an autograph that is. It’s very weird/fun/different/interesting to have our faces on post cards and to have kids actually want to hear from us again. It’s also very much a privilege to have music and worship as a sort of channel of influence in these awesome lives through out the summer.

Who knew that something so good could be so bad...

Has anyone every had food poisioning? Ever had food poisioning in Mexico? WE HAVE!! That's right out whole band got food poisioning Monday night and we spent the night getting to know the toilets and wishing it were over! Thankfully most of the guys got it out of their system early and headed out to work in the morning with the occasional siesta through out the day. Meg and I however got the short end of the stick with our weak stomachs and were in and out of the bathroom almost every 45 minutes Tuesday morning/afternoon.

With the help of some Pepto-Bismol and some other miracle drug our trips slowed up and we found ourselves lying in sweatbeds wishing we were dead. My stomach however did not stop there and I was the lucky "vomitting girl" who got it at both ends (if ya know what I mean!)and was sent home to San Diego. Miss Meg was stronger than me and stuck it out to be with our band and support the team...Thanks Meg, you really are amazing. Calen picked me up at the boarder and I wanted to break down and cry when I saw him. He drove me back to San Diego where I sayed at Jessica B. and Kelsey U's house for the night.

The girls here have been so wonderful to me and I am slowly begining to eat food again. Today I even got a whole banana down and some soup! Woot woot! I am hoping that tonights rest and some more food tomorrow will help me feel ready to head back to Mexico tomorrow for the final fiesta. I am so greatful to everyone in the band for understanding that I needed to leave and just get better...I cant wait to be back with them tomorrow. Alright, that is enough for now. I am going to get some sleep and wake up hopefully feeling 110% Thank God for his protection and love over us.

Mexico!

Well, here we are in Mexico...yes that is right Mexico, where our band is expected to sing AND make powerpoint presentations in Spanish. Now if any of you know me as well as I think you do, I have NO Spanish skills at all! Yes yes Mom, I know I took three years of Spanish but still, it is no help here when we are trying to throw together a set in a short amount of time. Meg and I are basically running around trying to put together a Spanish/English set and everything is going wrong. First we have to get those little squiggly things over our "n's" because we dont want everyone saying wierd things just because that little sguiggly thing was missing! Then we were trying to print out word cheat sheets for Meg and Kendall J. for their Spanish words and guess what...the printer doesnt work!

Ahhhhh! It has been a LONG few hours. We are all short on sleep for various rediculous reasons. Anthony, Taylor, Evan, and I were with our GF's/BF trying to take in every last minute we have with them until we come back in August, and Meg actually spent her evening in the emergency room with Elisha and Will because Will lost his toenail and had to get it pulled off!!! So gross! Anyway, we really need all of your prayers this week as we are going to be faced with MANY new challenges-language barriers, lack of sleep, small living conditions, heat, and everything else that could possibly get in our way of praising God. We miss you all so much and wish that you could be here to support us. Hope to hear from you all soon! (But not too soon because phone calls here cost an arm and a leg!!!!) XOXOX From us all!!!