Monday, February 16, 2009

Fun in Colorado

It's really been a crazy new year so far! We left Michigan January first and we just got back this week. We were in Little Rock visiting my parents, Kansas City visiting my sister, we spent a week in Denver helping Jason and Erica get ready for their wedding and then after they got married we went to Palmer Lake, Colorado for three weeks of missionary training. It was great to see my family (I've already posted a few blogs about that part of the trip) and we had a great time seeing Colorado!

Over the past month I've come to the conclusion that it's pretty hard to be in Colorado and not be impressed by the hugeness of God. Everyday when we woke up, we looked out the window, and just stared at the gorgeous mountains surrounding us. They were breathtakingly beautiful. It was really weird that everywhere we went had such awesome scenery. You just don't expect to see a McDonalds with a spectacular mountain view!

This is the building where we had slept, ate,
and had all of our classes
for three weeks.
t was really well designed and we had a great time.



This is another shot of our building on a really frosty morning.
There was a lot of open space around us for hiking.

I love hazy mountains in the distance!


One evening a group of friends and I climbed this mountain
(just behind our building) to watch the sun set. It was so worth it!

Another picture from the hike.

One cool part of our training was that we had both of the weekends in the middle of the three weeks off. So, we spent both Saturdays trekking up some pretty sweet slopes and visiting some awesome natural wonders with friends. Since we were already at 7225 feet when we started hiking we got quite a lung work out! One cool place we visited was the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.

When we were in this crevice a pigeon made a
loud flapping
noise right behind us but because of
the acoustics in the cracks
it sounded like an
army of pigeons!
I jumped and almost fell out of the rock!



So, maybe even after just this little glimpse you can agree with me - God is huge!

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

New Game

There's this funny looking game that I keep seeing people play during the evenings here at MTI. I got so curious that I finally tried it out this past weekend. It's called Settlers of Catan and the best way that I can think of to describe it is a combination of Risk and Monopoly. I'm still learning the ropes, but all in all I really like it. If you're looking for a new board game you should check it out!



I actually won the third time I played, so it's not super-hard to learn. (Jason would like it noted that he traded me the cards so that I could win on that turn and if he hadn't traded me he would've won on his turn - so technically it was a co-win... hehe)