Smelly Horses

This week we are on vacation with my family and this morning we all went horseback riding in the rain. Yes, on our beautiful summer vacation it rained. Not just a little rain, but we're talking about large drops. Overall it was fun and it was pretty awesome seeing Mike on a horse, especially a horse called Buster Brown. Although I felt sorry for my brother who was behind Mike and Mike's horse kept farting. Above are some pics from our vacation so far.

Student Leadership Conference

As I'm sitting here in beautiful Mammoth Lakes, CA on vacation I decided that this is the perfect opportunity to write a blog about my experience at the Student Leadership Conference at Saddleback Church.

Day1- We arrived at Saddleback after a very short drive. Some of our students were amazed at how close Riverside is to South Orange County. The students played on some of the bouncy blow-up toys and Mike and I went to a Leaders Meeting. The meeting went a bit long and Mike and I were some of the last people to eat while all the other students and leaders started pouring into Tent 2. A bit hectic to begin, but we survived. Doug Fields taught about the Make-up of a Leader and had some really good things to say. After the first session we took our students to the Irvine Spectrum were we rode the Ferris Wheel and Some of us had Funnel Cake.

Day 2- The morning session was excellent with Kenny Luck speaking. His daughter was in my C-Group at Saddleback so it was really cool to hear him speak. We also heard Matt McGill who I'd never heard speak before, but I loved it because he was short and to the point (good for my attention span) and he was extremely real with the students. After the session we met with our team to do this race type game called "Experiential Leadership." We were in classrooms before lunch where the students did some team trivia, human knot, ping-pong drop, etc. After lunch the students in these same teams did an "Amazing Race" (my favorite reality show) type game where the students had to build a pile of sand 4 ft. high, count parking lot spaces and much, much more. In the afternoon session we heard from an event planner from Disneylnd and Eric Rees who is the Pastor of Ministry at Saddleback. Listening to Eric made me regret not having gone to Class 301 when we were at Saddleback. At the night session we heard from Nick Vujicic, who has an amazing story about liiving a life without any arms or legs. He is an amazing man of God who has inspired many people. After the night was done we went back to the hotel and played Mafia with the students.

Day 3- The morning session had a few speakers that didn't really impress me too much so I'll just move on to the workshop time. In the afternoon the students were able to attend workshops given by different people, some from Saddleback others from other churches. I went to Mike's which was okay and I also went with some girls to a workshop about Breaking Down Barriers and beginning a Girl's Ministry. It was good to hear that every church struggles with how they can reach out to all girls. The afternoon was fun because we took our students to Laguna Beach and then to Fuddrucker's for dinner. They seemed to have a good time. The night session was pretty good with the guy from Dare2Share, Greg Stier, who has some pretty funny stories even though I'd heard them before. Also there was Erin Kerr the Pastor of Evangelism at Saddleback. They both had some really good things to say. After this session we took the students to Golden Spoon.

Day4- There was a super session in the morning on Friday. The two speakers were Dee Eastman and Jim Burns. Both which were very good and had some really good things to say. We ended the conference and the session with a time for Communion. It was a very awesome experience. After the conference we took our student to Wahoo's and introduced them to the experience that Wahoo's Fish Taco is. We actually arrived home early.

Overall, my experience at this conference is one I will never forget. It was worth the 3 nights in a hotel just to see how much the students learned and to see the look on their faces when they finally got what Purpose Driven is all about. You can only explain things so much but until a student sees it carried out it won't be real to them. We will definitely bring students to the conference for a long time.

Dynamic Duo Strikes

As you can see from the pictures our 3 month old Honda CRV was tagged yesterday. Some high school girls were getting back at Mike for telling another high school student about them tagging his car in pink and white. To make a long story short, they found out and decided iot would be fun to do it to our car while at church. I do have to say that it's better than getting your house toilet papered or your car like students used to do to my car when we were working with Junior High. It kind of makes you feel loved.

I will be posting about the Student Leadership Conference at Saddleback as soon as I get more time!

Rialto, Subways and Hollywood

Yesterday was aweome, exhausting and something that I'm pretty glad is only done once a year. I took thirteen teenage girls and one adult to Hollywood, CA!

My day began at 4:30 in the morning as I was extremely nervous and woke up at that time and could not fall back alseep. The reason I was nervous is that this was the first ever event I have put together and done by myself minus my amazing youth pastor husband Mike. As you can see this might make one a bit nervous taking thirteen girls to Hollywood (or Hollyweird), CA. We met at the metrolink station at 9am in the morning and our train pulled out at 9:36am. Our ride was pretty uneventful until we told some of the girls that they could get off the train to get a snack at one of the stops on our way to Union Station. Little did we know that the train only stopped for 30 seconds at all stops except our previous train station in San Bernardino. The train began moving and five of my girls were not on the train. Luckily the train stopped as they saw the girls running and they all jumped back on. I was glad we did not lose them in Rialto, although its only like 20 minutes from Riverside. The remainder of our two hour trip was uneventful. When we pulled into Union Station we hopped on the Los Angeles Subway and took the Red Line up to Hollywood and Highland. We went to Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum which was surprisingly not that exciting to High School girls (Junior High girls seem to love it). After this we wandered over to Hollywood and Highland. Some of us went into Sephora and ended up getting free makeovers, which was pretty sweet and I ended up buying $20 eyeshadow (Calypso) which is not normally something I would do, but this eyeshadow is the best. After the girls had their makeovers we walked over to Grauman's Chinese Theater were some girls took a picture with Marilyn Monroe, shirtless Elvis tried to get in our picture(creepy), a tall, caped, one-eyed dude scared Julie to death by growling at her, Spiderman hit on Brianna and there were pirtates everywhere. We then took the Subway to Universal City Walk, shopped around, and had an amazing dinner and Buca di Beppo. Some of the girls thought that our waiter was hot and were flirting with him until they found out he was 24 years old. I thought that was pretty funny! After dinner and a little more shopping we took the Subway back to Union Station. The subway was as crowded on a Saturday night as the Subway in New York is at rush hour. We had a uneventful ride back to Riverside and arrived on time. I think parents were relieved that their daughters came back alive and well from Los Angeles. I did not get to bed until 2am, but you can find out why if you read Mike's blog. Overall it was a wonderful day to get to know students and it made me look at ministry and say, "I'm really glad that I'm not a youth pastor, just a volunteer!" :-)

95 Years Young

A few weeks ago my family (minus Mike) went up to Santa Barbara to visit my great-grandma for her birthday. My beautiful Great-Grandma Mildred Ashley just turned 95 years old and she is one of the most amazing women I've ever known. She is also the most coherent and alert 95 year old woman that I have ever known. She is the mother of 5 girls, the grandmother of 15 grandchildren, the great-grandmother of over 30 great-grandchildren and the great-great-grandmother of 2 great-great-grandchildren. She has lived by herself for over 30 years until the last few months and she still loves the Los Angeles Dodgers (Go Dodgers!!) and knows almost all the players batting averages and facts about them. All this and she just had her little pinky toe amputated. Another amazing thing about this woman is that she is always caring about others and their well being. The women in my family all live to be very old; at one point I actually had all 4 of my great-grandmas alive. Amazing!! I hope that if I live to be as old as 95 that I will even just a little bit as awesom as Mildred Nordman Ashley!! :-)

(The top picture is my daddy and my grandma, the bottom picture is my brother, sister, grandma and me)