love is all you need.

My computer is in the shop. My brand new computer. I don't want to talk about it.

In routine with the rest of my summer, the past few weeks have been nuts. And awesome.

This past week a bunch of my friends left me and went on the mission trip to Uganda. I was so pumped for them, but weirdly emotional about it at the same time. I still haven't figured out quite why, because I was fine with not going, but whatever.

The hardest part of them being gone though is the fact that I am holding things down in the youth ministry department at church. Alone. I got pretty stressed out like last Tuesday and wondered why Ev and Mark would leave me all by myself, but I'm over it now. I'll be fine.

But let's start where I left off. A couple weeks ago we went on a camping trip to Lake Glendo (Wyoming) with the high school kids. We stayed right by the beach, so the view was sweet.

Plus I got to drive a mini-van of some of the coolest girls ever. We had some serious in-car dance parties to Shakira and Justin Timberlake. It was awesome.

The girl there in the sweet board shorts and soccer socks just happens to be the sister of Mr. Jacob Stooke, Amanda, who was our speaker for the weekend. We were friends before but got to be pretty tight on the trip.

At one point me and her and Max swam across the lake to the other side, which for most people wasn't too far, but I'm not such a strong swimmer so it was a little tough. Plus both Max and I have an irrational phobia of sharks. It was quite an accomplishment to say the least. Plus once on the other side we pretended to be Bear from Man vs. Wild and discussed our survival tactics. Then we spent a good amount of time figuring out how to get across a small patch of 2-feet-deep water. It's hard to explain, but that adventure was the best part of Glendo.

I know I like hot weather, so what I'm about to talk about might be shocking. But I'm gonna say it: Glendo was too hot for me. I think mostly because there was no escape from the heat ever. And when I get hot my bangs drive me crazy, and I never looked in a mirror, so the whole weekend I apparently looked like this:

There are several other pictures of me looking like that and making almost that exact same face from the weekend.

Maybe camping is just not really my thing. But I did enjoy the occasional camping trip when I was younger. I remember the time we went camping with the Poshaks but we forgot the tent poles for one of the tents so Julie and I slept in one of the vans. Good times.

We got home from Glendo on a Saturday night, then went to two services Sunday morning, and met to leave for the Denver Mission Trip at 2 pm. A little rushed. Fortunately Denver is not too far.

Despite the fact we did only travel about 15 miles, the trip was incredibly impactful for the students as well as the leaders. The trip definitely had its challenges, among them being the obnoxiousness that can be Junior High kids, but the need to be patient with them at the same time. Like when they decide it's funny to paint each other even after I continually tell them to stop messing around.

They're just lucky I love them so much.

Back it up. So we were working with this church called Open Door Fellowship, right in the heart of homelessness, gangs, drug deals, liquor stores and strip clubs.

Don't worry, we took all the necessary safety precautions. Open Door ministers to all sorts of different people who are caught up in some of the above lifestyles. They own a handful of houses that people live in to get back on their feet. We did work projects like landscaping and painting to make all these buildings more welcoming and nice for the people in the area.

The church also had a drop-in day care center for kids, and in the afternoons we did a VBS for them. They were way cute and that was a favorite part for most of our students. Unfortunately I don't actually have any pictures of that at this time. Sorry.

But I think the most impactful experiences came from meeting homeless people on the streets. We did this during a prayer walk, a poverty scavenger hunt and when we handed out sandwiches to people. Every person we met hit us in a different way. The staff of Open Door that led us around were amazing at really helping us understand the truth of poverty and all the other problems that exist in the Inner-City.

For me, God put homelessness and poverty and what our response should be into a whole new light. It would take a really long time to explain here, so I'll just use one word:

Love.

God loves. We should love. God tells us to care for the poor, so we should, no questions asked. One thing Walter from Open Door told us was, "Poverty exists because of sin. As long as there's sin, there's going to be homelessness." Profound. Yet so simple. There's no need to judge or play the blame game.

All we need to do is love.

To me, that's a very freeing statement, and that's what I'm trying to go on these days. But I more and more realize how bad I am at it. But by the grace of God, I believe I can love the way He does. And that's a lot of love.

I could write more, but I need to go to sleep, seeing as I am a working girl these days. But...I love you! Seriously. I do.