La Sonya

I want to sleep under the stars. I want to watch the constellations move. I want to fall asleep after counting the times I see a shooting stars. Perhaps I can find someone to sleep down at Indian camp tomorrow night.

I am sure most all of you out there have been sitting up late at night wondering what Sonya is exactly going to be doing the next few months/life/year/until you see her again. Because I hate to have you loose sleep on my behalf I am going to do my best to give you a rundown of what I will be up to. Currently I am working as a Summer Camp staff member at Camp Wawona . I've been the Christian Drama teacher and a counselor. It's been a blast. However camp ends a week from tomorrow (Aug 1). At that time I will be switching over to full time year round camp staff! I'll be sticking around here for two weeks to go through our team building week with the other year round staff, then I'm off for a month but I'll be back. After the two weeks I'll head home to Texas for another two weeks to visit family, pack stuff, have a garage sale, do research and get sweaty. After that I'm going on a site visit to Arusha , Tanzania . This is where things get complicated. I'm ...

Dear Diary, Today I almost froze my butt off, LITERALLY! Beth and I floated down the Merced River in the Yosemite Valley. Upon entering it we almost chickened ou t. It was sooooo cold and we only had our inner-tubes to keep us afloat. We managed to get in them with out falling in, oy! I thought perhaps on my stomach might keep more things out of the frigid water. . . nope! I almost stopped breathing it hurt so bad. I had to get in the water and wade back to the shore--painfully. I haven't ever been that cold! I got back on and braced myself for the nice long ride. At one point we poked our bottoms to see if we could feel anything and . . . we COULDN'T! It was a nice float. We had awesome views of the surroundings. Once our bums were numb it was nice. Paddling was difficult at times and we had to keep it short for fear of my arms freezing and falling off. All in all it was a delightful trip. I'd go again. . . in a few weeks when the temperature of the water has had time to ...

So this last week was awesome for a few reasons. Here are some of them. I was able to talk with some of my campers in Spanish (although I have found I use it more with other staff members) If I had of talked more with the doctor I would have realized he was Swedish and I would have gotten to use my Norwegian with him. Then as I was a greeter at the gate Sunday morning I used my French when some French only speaking tourist on Harley's rolled into camp looking for the big trees. I was useful, I was multi lingual and I was at camp.

Quite alone time? What's that?

Well I'm here. After a year away from one of my biggest passions, summer camp ministry, I am back. The staff have all gathered from literally around the world and we are starting to work together. We are practicing our pirate plays, we are singing our camp songs, we are laughing, detoxing from sleeping more than 7 hours a night and most of all we are praying. Last night was our Agape meal and communion. My heart was in, and had been all week, in a state of over drive. I had so many thoughts running through my head and I felt so many burdens on my heart that I was afraid that I might cry. When it came time for foot washing I was praying that God could help me, that He could send someone for me to connect with and that we could support each other this summer. While I had no idea who, He did. As I was turning to look around for someone to pray with I heard my name being called and saw that it was my friend Ashley Angelo . It was so amazing to see how God could help me in such a fast w...

This last weekend I went to a going away party for one of my old high school friends. She was moving up to Canada to be closer to her boyfriend and had one last party to celebrate friendships. The cool thing was I don't live in Texas but was able to go to the party and in that process I was able to see some of our old friends. Friends I hadn't seen in almost 8 or so years! It was GREAT! We caught up on everyones lives and then on our future plans. It was amazing, we have gone from se eing each other every day for four years to not seeing each other for almost 8 years, yet we could still sit down and visit and talk as if we had just gotten out of Mrs Connells Biology class. I imagine we have changed, our world view, our relationship with Christ and so much more. But we could still laugh at the same jokes, talk about the same subjects and well, we still looked almost the same (minus a few curves, curls or colour). Thank you all who I was able to hang out with! I was blessed to re...