summer blessings

I was a little unsure of how my first summer in Colorado would go. For the past several summers, I just have gone away to a certain place for a long time (like Chile or YouthFront), and that was pretty much my summer. Granted, my summer is full of trips, but it's been awhile since I've had this spurts of down time in between.

But let me just say now, it's been awesome.

I have just been so blessed by the friends I have here. And they are friends in a whole different way than I've ever had friends before. So now I'm going to try to explain how cool they all are.

For the fourth year in a row, I am part of a rec league softball team.

Yeah I look good. Even though it's a church team, I really don't know many of the people on my team. I was friends with two of the girls, but then they moved. So one of the ways I've been blessed is by people coming to watch my games. I'm pretty sure at least two Wysockis have been at every game.

Angie and Sophie are like the sisters I never had, and their family has blessed me in so many ways from giving me a room to feeding me to attending my sports events--and I'm not even that good.

Those pictures are from my game two weeks ago when Jeff G. and the girls came. I only know Jeff from being Mark and Angie's friend and from visiting, but for some reason he quickly became a part of my family of friends as well.

Then a week ago at my game eight people showed up to watch. And this place is at least 15 minutes away from Arvada. Jean and Angie were there of course, then my boys who are finally back Jake and Seth, two of my El Salvador girls Kristen and Kim, one of the senior guys Max, and Joe Kingry--along with his two dogs.

I was a little disappointed because I was playing right field that night, but I did get two hits which is rare so that's good. But anyway, I remember just kind-of pausing that night and thanking God for the people he has placed in my life here in the past 9 and a half months. Who knew rec league softball could be such a profound experience?

Sherpas, I'll always remember you.

On Wednesday Angie left town for five days. She gets back tonight. And Sophie and Mark and Nic and Ev have all been gone for the past 10 days in Alaska, and they get back tomorrow. So in all of those people's absence, I think I was forced to kind-of step out of my box in my friendships, or else I was gonna have a boring five days.

Praise the Lord for the El Salvador team because on Wednesday night I hung out with about half of them. All students. Wednesday night can also sum up why these past few days have been so awesome.

Jesse told me him and his cousin were gonna play disc golf, which I have been missing a lot here in the CO because not too many people play. So I passed the word on to Ben Gager, which is where another friendship blessing comes in.

The Gager family. I feel like I'm becoming one of them.

That's Ben and Beth and me. There's eight kids in that family, six of whom I'd say I'm friends with, with one more a soon-to-be-friend I think. Not to mention the parents are da bomb as well. That Wednesday they invited me to dinner before disc golf time, and after disc golf we went back there and watched a movie with like the entire family. On Saturday, I spent like six hours at their house playing on the trampoline, trying to beat Ben in this stupid tennis game, watching Star Wars, and of course, having dinner. The very next day they invited me to lunch with them after church and when I walked in, Mom Gager was like, "Oh here comes our eldest daughter."

As I told Jean the other night, the Gagers are like the big family I never had. Not that I don't appreciate my own family, because I loved growing up in the Tate house. But it's like life at the Gagers is never boring, and when I'm around them, I really do just feel like part of the family. Plus people always say Beth and I look like sisters.

Back to Wednesday night. Ben, Beth and I headed out to the disc golf course to meet up with Jesse, Laurel, Brittany (all of them from my El Salvador trip), Morgan and Jesse's cousins. The actual disc golf game was not all that awesome, considering the course is full of really tall grass, Ben and I were having allergy attacks, I lost my frisbee in this swampy tall grass area for 20 minutes and practically broke out into hives looking for it, but the company was good for sure.

Near the end of our game, we were joined by Kristen Felten. She's another new blessing to my life for sure.

That's us in The Salvador. Her best friend Rachel (also really cool) was out of town this past week as well, so Kristen and I turned to each other and it's been sweet. She's the first high school girl from church that I really feel like I've connected with.

So after the high-allergy game of disc golf, and before movie time, me and Ben and Bethany and Kristen all went to Cold Stone and talked about how we all miss our siblings in Alaska. And got in the fountain.

Not quite sure if that's allowed, but whatever.

Also in the past few days we've played two games of ultimate frisbee which is always bomb, spent some time with my junior high girls, went to a fire at Max's house with the boys and had a...somewhat okay day at Elitch's (the Six Flags of Denver) with the junior high youth group.

So to sum it all up, I'm finding that in this new stage of my life my friendships look much different than the usual all-peer friendships in the past. I've been blessed by cool people in my life from ages 8 to 50-something recently and they are all the reason this summer has been, well, da bomb. Plus after experiencing like the worst winter ever in Denver, we're now having one of the hottest summers ever, which you know makes me happy.

And speaking of my bomb summer, here's where I'll be for the next couple months:

July 1-7: Kansas for a week at YouthFront Camp South!!

July 12-15: Dallas for Aunt Melinda's wedding and practically a family reunion.

July 19-21: Glendo lake trip with church.

July 22-27: Denver inner-city mission trip with the junior high kids.

August 12-19: Wonderful beautiful Florida with the fam.

Holla! And don't forget to read my El Salvador blog right below here if you missed that one.