the girl bent over again, reaching across the wooden pallet to turn over a upside down peach. the 90 degree sun blared hot down on her back and the slight breeze made dust dance through the air all around her, sticking to the sweat on her face and neck. as she crouched over the pallet, she looked over the peaches scattered over it, searching for pits, rocks and other things that shouldnt be there.  she tossed a pit behind her and stood up. her head spinned and she blacked out a bit dizzy as the effects of so much moving up and down so quickly.  as her sight returned and she regained her balance, the girl gazed at her surroundings. the dirt field that she was working in was filled up with about a hundred wooden flats of peaches,  drying in the sun. the foreclift over there was beeping as it moved backwards, followed by people laying out more wooden plats filled with peaches. she had a drink of water and wiped her face with her sticky hand and moved on, looking for peaches to turn over. if she did not turn the peaches over, so the juicy side was facing up, then they would stick to the wood after they had dried and it would be nearly impossibly to get them off. behind her, a large hill stood overlooking the field and its workers. blocking the wind as it blew to send it flying back over those in the field, as a slight relief from the california morning sun. flat after flat after flat, she moved along the rows flipping the peaches upright to dry in the sun. thoughts of the high school kids that had acompanied her to this mission field filled her head along with songs and long talks with God. she reflected upon her past week, working in the peach factory every day alongside missionaries from idaho and canada.  she thought about the dried fruit that they were producing and how it would be sent to far ends of the globe to feed starving people. the testimonies of how the fruit had blessed so many warmed her heart as she crouched down to pick up a pit.  God had been good to her.  knowing her weaknesses and her limits, He sent her out to do things that she would never want to do. He sent her out of her comfort zone, away from her home and the familiarities of her everyday life. he set her umong people she did not know, strangers, and challenged her faith in him. she thought about how God challenged her dependancy on him and thanked him for the chance He gave her to serve him.  the girl stood up again and placed a rock at the end of the row, marking that it was done. it had been inspected, all the pits thrown out and all the peaches flipped over. looking around her she saw that all the rows had rocks at the end and everyone was getting ready to go back in from the field.  the girl sighed, smiled, and slowly walked back to the mission base to clean up her things. the week was over and she was going home, her heart filled with the blessings and peace of God.

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so, im back from gleanings... this past week was extremely hard in several different ways.  but God blessed my sincere efforts and took care of me as he always does when im willing to accept it.

i might have told you this already, but gleanings for the hungry is a YWAM mission based about 30 minutes from where i live. they take all the reject peaches from various farms, the peaches with bruises or any sort of imperfection... the ones people would not buy in the store, and they process them in a plant, cutting them open and laying them out on wooden flats in the sun to dry. after they are completly dry, they are packed up and shipped off around the world to starving people.

the factory runs peaches and nectarines all throughout the summer time and people from all over the world come to serve and help run the fruit lines. its hard work,  and unlike other missions where you are working with and blessing people directly, you do not really see the fruits of your labor. you dont see the faces of the people when they recieve a bucked of dried peaches. but we hear the stories and are blessed to trust that God knows whats up.

if your interested in coming out, check out the web site... http://www.gleanings.org.

i did a lot of hanging out with my high schoolers this week. and lot of sitting around. sleeping drugged on tylonol PM. it was good.

and of course, i have a crush on a guy who was on staff.  not really a crush, actually... i just thought he was really... pretty... he had dark hair and dark eyes...  really, all i wanted to do was sit and look at him. he was a mechanic and he drive the foreclifts and on the last day i found out he knew how to drove a deisle truck. all i really wanted to do was look at him. God makes some really good looking people. he was really pretty... and he is from montana.

i finished reading frankenstien. it took me 6 months to read the first half and then the last three days to read the second. i feel good about that. next i'll start dracula.

im going to calvin crest tomorrow.  i wont be back for a week. im already exhausted. a little prayer would be nice, guys.

peace & God bless...

this is it... don't get scared...
 

neighborhood outreach is over...
 
i still have to tackle the delema of finding a spiritualy mature college age male to council spiritualy imature high school boys at church high school camp in a week... frustration abounds... why does it always seem like woodlake is the ONLY place in the world where no college age guys want to minister?
 
now im going to go watch a movie and put together a puzzle. peace...
 

yesterday evening at the neighborhood outreach i told the story of the shepard and the lost sheep (with a wonderful cast of imporomptu actors). during the story the kids were fiddling around and maiing noises and talking, but as soon as i began to pray outloud for them, everything became absolutly silent. it was really neat... God is good... beautiful.
 
charlie!!!
 

screaming yellow zonkers?
 

someone stole my commenting system...

last night was the first of three nights of neighborhood outreach in the woodlake city park. we had about 5 kids come over and play with us... play doh & bubbles. then we did a skit for them, small lesson and craft and snack. sometimes i have to remind myself that it doesnt matter if we have 20 kids or only 5 kids, God can still use us. He can still shine through the love that we have for the children that he has sent to us to minister too. just playing with them with the home made play doh that we found in a brown paper bag in the church can be an awesome ministry.

i am honestly trying to get on a better morning routine. mom comes in and wakes me up at 8:00, but i manage to fall back asleep untill 10:00. then i get out of bed, have some coffee and watch tv for the next two or three hours. ah well... summer vacation...

i decited that i want to spend at least an hour reading every day. reading something. i have been reading mary shellys frankenstien for the past almost 6 months now... it would be nice to finish the last 1/2 of the book some time this year. pray for me in my efforts to have this new routine.

ive been watching a lot of movies... spartan, cold mountain, raising arizona, spy kids, 1969, true romance, hairspray, fargo, a river runs through it, jurassic park, 7 years in tibet... those are movies from the past couple of weeks. the next two weeks, i will pretty much be away from home... going to gleanings and calvin crest.

so, the update on my layout comes from a shirt that i bought at the goodwill last week. i scanned part of the fabric and thats what you see over there on the left. i added a link to joes web site and to the white stripes web site. i also updated the blogger archives. i am working on the art page right now.

its nice today. it would have been nicer if i had been paid yesterday, so i could get the burden of bills off of my back... but thats alright. peace...

this morning i went down to the church to make a few phone calls and i noticed that a couple of ladies were inside of the santuary decorating for the VBS next week. i offered my help and wound up spending over an hour decorating the church for the "lava lava island" VBS next week. it looks really nice in there and i feel good about spending the time that i had originally planned on doing nothing, down at the church doing something. fun things happen when you start your day off asking God to suprise you.

sometimes natural instinct can be sort of creepy...

... post edited ...

so... heres a fancy entry about what ive been up to...on monday, heather, woody, laurel, lacey and i shimmyed on up the narrow windy road to mineral king mountain. we saw benji. i explained to him about how i saw his brother a while ago and then warned him about his new pen pal. and then we drove up the road a bit where we saw some serious marmot prevention taking place amungst the cars parked on the mountain. we were there for about 1/2 and hour untill we all decited we wanted to go home. so we took a vote (we won) and drove back home...

after i got home, i vegged out on the couch for a while and watched full house. then i made some phone calls regarding the mission trip to gleanings that we are going to later this month... gleanings is an awesome YWAM ministry that my high schoolers have been going to for quite a few years now. we consider it a mission trip. im blessed by how many kids love going and look forward to going every summer. this will be my first time actually spending a week over there. im excited and aprehensive at the same time. im looking forward to it though... theres a photo of gleanings...
yesterday morning i discovered a snake in the back yard. my mom and i caught it under a big purple tub and set rocks on the tub so the snake wouldnt get away. usually dad cuts the snakes heads off with a shovel, but he didnt want to do that this time. i kind of didnt want him to anyway. the snake was just minding its own business, he didnt need to have his head chopped off. but no one wanted to touch it to throw it back in the feild out back of the property. i brought one of the high school boys home, who LOVES snakes. he was going to get it for me and take it home to his feild. unfortualy, by the time we got home to get the snake (about 9:00 at night), the snake had gotten out. so, now the snake is free somewhere. free to wonder around in its snake-like ways, eating mice and what-not. someone saidf it was probably a king snake, wich is good becuase king snakes eats rattle snakes (remember that rattle snake we saw in new mexico? also, remember that dream i had with the three snake references leading up to my having that dream? weird...).

so i had another snake dream last night... only this time kiefer sutherland (the 1969 version of kiefer, my favorite version... actually, my favorite version of any boy...) was fighting snakes back with me. in my garage. a big fatty rattle snake almost got us, but that king snake came and ate it...

tomorrow afternoon we are going to san simeon beach for the church family camp. every year a bunch of people from the church im working at go to the mountains for a weekend to have a church family camp. its pretty awesome. this year, for the first time, we are going to the beach to camp. its nice to have a church family so close that they do stuff like that together... its cool to be able to enjoy the company of such a diverse group of people, but know that we have something in common... i guess this year we get to see elephant seals. it would be cool for you to go with us, if you were here.

thats pretty much it i guess. God has been good... changing and re-shaping my heart more and more every day... i have the faith of an empty hand... just living, learning, playing... ministry has been good. i have been blessed big time. there are still so many things that i need to learn though... so many good habbits that i need to get down...
ive been drawing some. watching a lot of movies. sleeping in untill 10 (thats got to stop, i know), painting my van, eating peanut butter and honey toast... i hope your summer is going as great as mine. peace be in your hearts... untill next time... i wish you were here...

so, while everyone else was out watching spider man, woody and i went to see harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban... gary oldman rocks.

i took me on a date this evening and saw Two Brothers. it was really nice... beautifly filmed... and of course, guy pearce rocked my socks off...

also, the new Jars of Clay album is unbelievable... peace be in your hearts...