2015 Challenge

I shared this "2015 Challenge" on Google+ and encouraged my friends there to ask me these questions about my year. It helped me to look back and reflect on everything that had happened and what God had done in my life. I wanted to save what I had written so decided to post here. :)

(1) New friends that I made this year are my friends from working at camp, Luba and Molly. And the new friends that I made when I went to Southern CA: Mackenzie W and Christian Corse. And I met Hannah Limon online.  I also made a new friend through college Selby L . :)

(2)  Life changes this year was that I lived at camp on my own without my family for three months. It's true that I was close by to them still and saw them on weekends but at camp I had to take responsibility for myself and for my campers. And oftentimes make my own decisions about things. It taught me how to be more mature and responsible.

(3) My favorite books this year were "The Lord of the Rings", "The Chronicles of Narnia" "The Penderwicks in Spring", "Pride and Prejudice" "Anne of Green Gables series" and a long list after that...I did read some new books this past year but not nearly as many as I wanted to. 
I have a long list of favorite movies so I'll just mention my favorite new ones that came out this year. I really liked the live action "Cinderella", "Mcfarland USA." "Avengers: Age of Ultron," and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"!!!
 My favorite music this year was mainly a lot of worship songs especially from Jeremy Camp, Crowder, Phil Wickham, and For King and Country. I also continue to love Country and my top favorite artists are Josh Turner and Scotty McCreery. I enjoy some of Taylor Swift's old country-pop music too. And I have a long exstensive list of my favorite movie soundtracks that I listen to rather non-stop. :)

(4)  My answer to question four is that one of the biggest things that God taught me this year was that His plans are so much better and higher than mine. I had been upset and sad at the beginning because plans of mine that I thought I had wanted to see work didn't go through. But after going through many different things I am constantly awed and amazed at His perfect timing and good plans. This is a lesson that I feel that I am still continuing to learn though.

(5)  One of my hardest moments of this year was getting stepped on by a 2,000 pound horse at my first week of work as a camp counselor. I thought for sure that it was going to be broken and that I would have to quit my job and go home. Miraculously, it was only sprained and the skin was heavily bruised.

(6) Some of the best times with friends and family was the Thanksgiving that I spent in Seattle, the night at the rodeo that I spent with some awesome friends both new and old, the late-night that I spent with my friend Lisa after 6 years of not being able to see each other, and the getting to spend time with my friend, Reilly in San Diego for five days. Also, it may sound funny but since most all my friends live so far away from me I have had some really good times texting, and talking over the phone and Skype with them.

(7) places that I traveled to this year would be Seattle, San Diego, Sea World, Santa Cruz, Chico, and up into Oregon more than once since I live so close. :)

(8)  One thing that I will probably never forget about this year is how much God has stretched me to do new things and to step out and try things that I could never see myself doing when I was younger. Whether it was taking two college math classes, becoming a youth leader for Jr. Highers, climbing a high-ropes course, planning a trip and traveling all on my own, to doing crazy things as a camp counselor it has been quite an adventurous year for me!

My Higlhlights of 2015-In Pictures

2015 was an unforgettable year filled many different amazing adventures, changes, lessons, trials, and joys. It's hard to put into words exactly everything that happened but since they say that a picture is worth a thousand words here is the highlights of my year told to you by photos.

Working at Kidder Creek as a counselor.

Having a ton of fun with my cousins who came to visit this summer.

Seeing one of my best childhood friends, Lisa! It was a very happy reunion for the both of us after six years of not being able to see one-another.

The amazing Kidder Creek staff that I got to work with and become friends with.

 

My siblings and I were thrilled to see our cowboy friend, Laramie Collins at the local rodeo this summer!

I took an amazing trip to Southern CA to visit one of my best friends, Reilly there for her 18th birthday! Had an incredible time with her and family deepening our friendship and for me, getting to make new friends as well.

I went to the a Harvest crusade with Reilly and her family and got the pleasure of meeting some of her friends.

 

 

 

                                      

Visiting friends in Chico with my sisters for a weekend in September.

Going to Seattle for Thanksgiving and getting to be with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and 11 cousins there

I got to see my little cousin Ruby 3 times this year! She is so cute and wonderful.

My family and I got to see "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in 3D at the theater together!!

I finished off the year with a great Christmas with my parents and grandparents.

                        Thank you God for this year. See you all in 2016!

Christmas 2015

" For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
                                                                       Isaiah 9:6

This years Christmas was an amazing and beautiful one in many different ways. For several years now we have gotten very little snow up here in Siskiyou county and so most of our Christmases have been pretty dry. This year though on Christmas eve it snowed a lot! Christmas morning my family and I awoke to find a sparkling white world outside. It had snowed about 6 inches! I was praising God for that and also for the fact that my family was healthy and all together. There has been so many shootings, so much death this year. I couldn't help but think about the families that had lost their loved ones and were now having to spend this Christmas without them and I was saddened by it. Family is truly one of the greatest gifts that God gives us and I was so thankful and fortunate to have mine with me.

We spent the day with my grandparents at their house and had breakfast and opened gifts together. Afterwards, my siblings and I headed outside and spent our afternoon sledding on the hill in front of my grandpa's house. It was so very fun! The rush and thrill of sliding down the hill and screaming with laughter and trying to avoid the tree branches that sloped down across the sled track. We also took a lot of pictures and so I'll share a few of the best ones here.

Um, yes, I like the Avengers...a lot!!! ;)

I may have been just a little excited that it had snowed and that it was Christmas...

Joshua loved sledding so much!

Week 9: In Which I Come to the End of this Adventure

Week 9 was a very different week at camp for me. It was my final week there. I did not counsel any kids. It went by very quickly and each day was filled with both a good deal of work and much needed rest. I lived at the Timberline camp and did maintenance and kitchen work with a different group of people than I was used to working with a ranch camp. I cleaned bathrooms, took out trash, did dishes, helped with meal prep and clean up and had lovely long afternoons off with lots of time for watching movies in the staff lounge either by myself or with my friend, Luba.

I also did things such as sleeping in a hammock for the first time out under the stars. Which by the way was a very cool experience, literally! It gets cold at night up in the mountains even in the summer at times but lying there being rocked to sleep by the hammocks motion and staring up at the thousands of brilliant stars in the sky while listening to epic Lord of the Rings soundtracks from my Iphone was an experience I'll never forget!  Then I got sick with a stomach bug for a day. (That was just a big nauseous blur). So glad it was only for a day! I learned to make friendship bracelets with a country music singing, guy counselor from southern CA and watched the stars come out with a group of girls on the Etna summit and had a good time talking with friends from the camp around a campfire at one of their homes.


My final full day there was filled with lots of emotions for me. I knew that camp had to end. I was ready to go home to my family but yet at the same time I was really sad to leave my new friends that I made there. I had come to the end of this adventure. This I copied from my Facebook page. I wrote it on August 14th, the day before camp ended as kind of my final thoughts about the summer."Today is my last day at Kidder Creek camp. I go home tomorrow. It is so hard to believe how fast it all went by! And yet how long ago it feels too. It was 11 weeks ago today since I came here and started work. My heart is so full of so many good memories and friends that I have made. I will miss them a lot. I thank God for letting me work here this summer and for all that he has taught me and blessed me with."

On Saturday camp officially wrapped up for the summer. Many people said goodbye and headed home that day and many others had already left. Before we all broke up though the directors of the camp let us know that God had used the Kidder Creek staff to bring many children to come to know him that summer and impact lots of lives. God working through each and everyone of us had used us to make an impact for eternity. And that was what made the whole summer worth it. The ups, the downs, the days that went well, and the days where everything fell apart, the times I had strength and energy, and the times I was weak and sick. It was all used for his glory and we had made it to the end and finished this race together.

As a thank you the camp paid for the staff to go to a rock climbing gym together and then out to dinner together. It was the perfect way to end it all and celebrate together. Afterwards there was a lot of hugs and goodbyes from each of the staff members to one another and then it was over. Everyone headed home. And I went back to my family and home a tired, but happy girl. I knew that this adventure had changed me in some ways. In some ways I was not the same as when I had started out on it. I had been stretched and grown. I had learned more responsibility and maturity. I had grown closer to Jesus. It was a good thing. As I walked through the front door I smiled at my family excitedly awaiting my arrival and said "Well, I'm back." ~Anna 
                                                                    
To these memories I will hold
With your blessing I will go
To turn at last to paths that lead home
And though where the road then takes me,
I cannot tell
We came all this way
But now comes the day
To bid you farewell
I bid you all a very fond farewell~"The Last Goodbye"

My friend Luba and I. :)

The Kidder Creek staff rock climbing together.

Friendship bracelets. One I made myself, the other two were given to me.

The kitchen at ranch camp that I worked in that last week and ate in all summer.

The cabins at Timberline.

My sister Kyra and I with our friend Caleb from the Timberline part of camp.

We loved hanging out with Leera and with Rachel and Sarah, and Ali and Annie from Ranch Camp.

Week 8: My Final Week of Counseling

Week Eight at Kidder Creek was my final week of counseling. It was also one of the best weeks and most fun that I had counseling at camp this summer. God allowed so many good and fun things to happen and I got a very fun and sweet group of five highschool girls ages 14-16 in my cabin. Each one of their personalities was so different and unique from one another but they got along and we all helped each other through the week.

One of the cool things that God did that week was to give me the courage to finally speak in frong of a crowd without being afraid which was something that I had been struggling with all summer long! Sunday afternoon when all the campers came in I was asked to give the message that evening around the campfire. Most nights I had been teaching on Tuesdays and had a message and outline all written out that I usually gave. This time though I had very little time to prepare anything beforehand. I was a little nervous about how everything was going to go but prayed about and jotted down a few notes about what I wanted to talk on. Up to the very moment before I was supposed to talk I was scared. Right before I was supposed to speak I prayed about it again though. Suddenly I felt like all the fear I had been struggling with vanished in an instant. I stood up and in a clear, steady voice addressed all of the 20 or so girls staring up at me and started to talk. I didn't have much of an outline, my message wasn't written out but I know that I had a message from the Bible in my heart that I wanted to share with these girls and so started in on it. I felt the Holy Spirit work through me and give me the courage to speak unlike I ever had before. It was awesome experience and I praised God for speaking through me and getting to share the gospel message with people who had perhaps never heard it before.

The rest of the week after that I spent a lot of time talking and getting to know each of my campers and hearing stories about their lives. We played card games together, had some good discussions during devotions, and made each other laugh a lot during horse science and vaulting throughout the day. In the afternoon I had a blast kicking soccer balls in the grass with them in the afternoon.

I did have a very sobering evening at camp though that showed me that underneath all the smiles and laughter of a bunch of the girls at camp they had also been through some very tough or terrible experiences throughout their young lives. It was during the Thursday night campfire that many of the girls shared their life experiences and how God had helped them through some really sad or rough situations and by the end of it there was hardly a dry eye to be seen. All of the girls cried and prayed together and I know that God helped to heal some hurts and wounds and bring these girls closer to Him.

Week Eight ended on a high note with one of the best dance nights we had, had during the whole summer and we all celebrated a fantastic week together. I finished that week strong. I found out that weekend also that I was not to be counseling for the last week. I was going to be put on maintenance. The race that I had been running as a counselor all summer long had ended. I wasn't even going to be in the same cabin for my final week there. That Saturday I packed up and cleaned up the "Paint" cabin that I had counseled in for so many weeks. In the quiet and solitude of my cabin I thought about each and everyone of the girls that had passed through it in the many weeks of my counseling. I sat down by my bunk and prayed and thanked God for each and everyone of them. No matter if they were easy or hard, whether they were Christians or not, whether they liked me as their counselor or not I was thankful for each and everyone of them and for the chance that God had given me to make an impact upon their lives in that one short week that they had each had there. And then I thanked God for allowing me to be a counselor this summer. His ways are so much higher and better than my ways and plans! I thanked him for both the good moments and the bad that I had experienced. He used them all for his glory and I grew closer to him through it. Below are several pictures from the week. Enjoy! ~Anna

My campers and I at breakfast together.

That's me doing a trick in vaulting called "The bunk bed." Not easy!

Katie and Bayleigh. Playing soccer with these two was so fun!

Four of my campers and I right before they headed back home. We had so much fun together that week!

Me in front of my cabin.

This was my home for the summer.

Laughing like crazy. Just cause it's fun!

Week 7: A Time of Testing and Trial

I don't even know how exactly to talk about what this week was like for me. It was unlike any other that I experienced at camp this past summer. It was a time where God gave me some very broken and hurting girls to each and everyone of the counselors there to love on. I had some very young girls, (it was another Intro camp), who had been through some rough and really tough trials in their young lives and they desperately needed to feel Jesus's love for them through others.  I heard some really hard, sad stories that broke my heart for these children.

I so wanted to make things right in their lives and heal the hurts that they had gone through. But I couldn't. Only God could. All I could do was ask Him to help me love on these kids and give them one of the best weeks that I possibly could while they were at camp. And then pray that somehow circumstances would change for the better when they returned home. It wasn't easy but I felt privileged and blessed that God allowed me to give them comfort and any help that I could while they were there. One night when I was putting some ice packs on some of my campers who had gotten hurt they suddenly spoke up and thanked me for being there for me. They told me that a lot of other people weren't very nice or kind to them but that they felt very loved by all those at this camp. That brought tears to my eyes. During the night-time the girls that week oftentimes got scared or lonely even though they were all together and safe in the cabin. I played worship music from my Iphone for them and they all very quickly settled down as the words in the song praised God and talked about His love for us. And I heard some of the girls softly singing along to the songs in their bunks. Those songs soothed and comforted us all.

I myself though went through a lot of anxiety for my campers that week. I started experiencing stomach pains which I couldn't connect or trace to any other physical problems and felt a lot of overwhelming sadness. I was really helped and comforted by the verse that says: "And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." 2 Corinthians 12:9.  I knew that even in my weakness God was still using me for his glory!

That was the week that I didn't see to the end though. By Friday morning I woke-up feverish and sick to a very hot early August day. My wonderful friends Luba and Ellen took over watching my campers that day while I rested in the room set aside for sick people at camp. It was all kind of a blur for me and I didn't even say goodbye to my campers. I wrote them farewell notes on postcards instead. Good thing because by that night my fever still hadn't gone away. I was sent home from camp to get a full weekend of rest. My dad came to pick me up. At home I crashed into my own bed. There at some point in the night my fever finally broke and the anxiety died down at last.

That weekend though turned out to be really fun. I slept in late on Saturday and woke-up feeling so much better. My friend Luba invited me to go shopping with her and I gladly accepted. We drove up to Medford together and had tons of fun shopping at the mall and then going to the see the new Marvel movie, "Ant-Man" afterwards. I was so thankful for the time to recover and be with a friend away from camp from a while. It was a special day that I love looking back on.
~Anna

Week 6:A Week of Fun

 Week 6 at camp had a lot of good times for me as a counselor. I got to counsel my favorite age group of kids, jr. highers! They were so great and fun to work with. :D Like any other week their was some sad and hard moments but also a lot of joy. By then I had gotten to know those around me really well and had made or was starting to make some closer friendships with the girls I was working with. One of the toughest parts of the week was saying goodbye to my new friend Molly that I had become good friends with and had talked with a lot. She had to head back home to start a new job as a teacher and was definitely missed at camp! Before she left though we went out and had coffee together which was a lot of fun. I also had a good time taking walks and talking with my new friend and fellow counselor, Luba. Her kindness and encouragement to me blessed me so much and I loved getting to spend time with her. Below is a picture of all the gal wranglers and counselors at camp. One more counselor, Annie, also came to work with us but it was after this photo was taken. As you can probably tell already, I love this photo!!

One of my sweet campers that week, Emma.

Devotion time with my campers in the grass.

All in flannel!

The Kidder Creek staff that I worked with.

My friend Chris teaching vaulting. He was my favorite wrangler to learn vaulting with.

My sister Kyra also became really good friends with Molly. This picture was taken right before she left.

On Saturday night after camp was finished for the week my whole family went to the rodeo where we got to watch our good friend, Laramie Collins, win all-around cowboy. It was an awesome night filled with good times, and friends both new and old. We made some of the best memories.

My siblings and I were really excited to introduce our friends from camp, Rachel and Sarah, to Laramie. Our professional cowboy bull riding champion friend. ;) We had so much fun with them all!