My Summer

I know that summer has unofficially been over for a couple of weeks now, but I thought I would update the two readers of this blog with what Michelle and I were up to this past summer. It was a really busy summer, but a great summer in my opinion. I am not going to elaborate too much on some of these items at this time, but I might in the near future.

June

June was marked by my being able to exhort at three different URC churches:

June 1 - Grace Evangelical Church in Torrance, CA

June 8 - Pasadena United Reformed Church in Pasadena, CA

June 22 - Las Vegas United Reformed Church in Las Vegas, NV

Other than that we kind of took it easy while I was preparing for July 2 (see below)

July

July 2-8 - One of my passions is doing stuff outdoors. I have always loved backpacking, but never really had the opportunity to do any long trips in the past 10 years or so. Well, this year I organized a trip to do the High Sierra Trail, which is 75 miles long and goes across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It took us seven days and it was great (tough but great!). Here is a link to a trip report and a bunch of photos - VPol HST Trip

July 16 - Michelle and I (along with Michelle's sister Beth) left for Washington State

July 17-21 - Every two years we have gone on a family vacation with Michelle's family. This year it was our year to plan the location and we chose Olympic National Park in Washington. We all stayed at the Log Cabin Resort, which meant we didn't go camping (we couldn't get all our stuff up to WA). However, Michelle and I stayed in a very rustic, but nice little cabin which all it had were two full beds and a desk. It was a great little vacation in a beautiful part of the country.

July 22 - One of the reasons we chose to go on our family vacation in WA was because I was scheduled to do an internship at the United Reformed Church of Lynden, Washington. We left for Lynden on this date and that was to be our "summer home" for the next six weeks. The church was able to find us a car to drive around in and a house to live in!

July 28 - I had only met a handful of people at the church, but yet I was scheduled to preach that first Sunday morning!

August

August 3 - I exhorted at the Bellingham URC in the morning.

Next few weeks - I was able to exhort a lot more at LURC and two weeks did both the morning and evening services. During this time we got to know a lot more people in the church and were invited to houses and events a couple times a week and had a great time. We also got to go horseback riding, hiking, climbing on glaciers, cook-outs, sight-seeing, etc. Part of the time Michelle got a job for two weeks as an aid in a school for the migrant workers.

August 24 - Michelle had to leave to go back to Escondido. So I was left in Lynden for a week by myself. I still had a sermon to prepare so I had stuff to do, but I also drove into the mountains to take photos a couple of times

September

September 1 - I left Lynden to return home. Both Michelle and I had such a great time in the Lynden area and at the Lynden URC that we hope we can return again there in some capacity, even if it is only for a visit.

September 4 - My final year of Seminary started and Summer was over!

Well that is about it. If you have any questions about anything we did, please ask! I hope to talk more about my internship and my HST trip here at some point soon.