We just returned from a weekend in the mountains with InsideOut, the young adults ministry at our church (we help out on the leadership team). It was a great weekend. Strangely, none of the young men came this weekend, so it was kind of a strange dynamic! Oh well, they really missed out.

The speakers for the weekend were old friends of ours from campus ministry days, Paul and Julie Austin. They run the Chi Alpha Campus Ministry at Idaho State University and really connected well with our young women. The theme of the weekend was "Living Inside Out" and they gave some great reminders of staying connected with Jesus, knowing who we are in Christ, building relationships with pre-Christians, and keeping in step with the Spirit. We even got some practice hearing the voice of God for ourselves and for others.

And, of course, we ran our own version of The Amazing Race, Part 2! :) Two teams took an unnecessary mile-long hike and the other team jumped in the wrong lake! Everyone got to eat a "bull fry" (a slice of Rocky Mtn. Oyster--eeew!) and they had a lot of fun. The funny thing to us as the leadership team who planned all this mayhem was that with only girls, cooperation instead of competition became the name of the game! The only team with a man (Paul's team) won the race, while the other two teams became "a team of 8" instead of the original two teams of 4! They were at least an hour later than the first team because they not only took the unnecessary hike, but then they all stopped for coffee together! Ha! Well, we did want them to build relationships! :)

I'm excited to hear more testimonies about what God's been doing for the girls over the weekend. It seemed like a lot of them were really, really touched. Cool!

In other news, Punk no longer wants to move to his big boy room! I have no idea why, but now when we ask, "Do you want to sleep in your new room tonight?" he always says, "No." Hmmmm. Well, we're going to paint his old room this weekend, so he'll have to move over soon! I hope that goes okay!

And, the Jones girls are coming home! Their passports were issued in Liberia at the end of last week, so it'll be about 6 more weeks until they're home! Wahoo! These are the girls that are the exact same ages as Pence and Pea and will live here in Boise. They've had a couple set-backs in their process too, so there is much rejoicing that they are almost home! You can see their photos here (my blog) or here (their blog).