Camp Dellwater

Tomorrow we head to Camp Dellwater! The kids from the Red Lake Indian Reservation come on Tuesday and will be there until Friday. We are very excited to be a part of it again and are so thankful it continues to be such a strong ministry. The kids really look forward to it all summer and it has become an important part of some of their lives. Some are coming back for the third, fourth, or fifth time. And there is just nothing like actually living in a cabin together and doing all kinds of fun activities to build those relationships and memories.

One very exciting this is that Valerie is going to share her hope story with all the campers! Valerie went to camp for as many years as she could as a camper and then started coming as an LIT (leader in training) We also keep in close contact throughout the year. It has been a kind of tough year for Val, but she has really taken some time to think about her faith and what God means to her, and now she really wants to share that with others. It is such an encouragement to me and I am so proud of her!

The girls that were we saw on Sundays for most of the year are also going to be there and be in my cabin and I am excited to have this time with them and really want to challenge and encourage them.

Corey will also have an LIT in his cabin, and we are hoping some guys will be more interested in keeping in contact throughout the school year.

Please keep this camp in your prayers!!

Moving!

This last week, after some recovering in my parents’ air conditioned basement, we have been busy moving into our new house! We had planned to be in campus housing for one year and then find something bigger, but while we were gone a house not very far from campus opened up for rent for a very good deal. So through my parents we decided to take it! (This is the second time I’ve agreed to live somewhere without actually seeing it in person…oh well, it’s worked out so far)

We are so excited! What an unexpected blessing! We are looking forward to doing a lot more hospitality and using all that wonderful space! (I think the screen porch is about as big as our whole last apartment…)

Verona and Sirmione

I am finally getting around to writing about our last week in Italy; sorry it took so long. After Corey preached at Milan Bible Church, his official internship was completed. So we went on one more trip with our own time and $ that last week. (Also, we had been warned when we choose to go to Italy that a lot of the country kind of shuts down in August and I guess we didn’t really believe it, but now we do! Almost all of the Italians that live in Milan and inland places like that head to the coast or the mountains for the month of August. The population of those cities drops considerably and a lot of the stores and restaurants close. It is pretty weird. But lucky for us, the really “tourist-y” places stay open.)

We took the train over to Verona, which is about halfway between Milan and Venice. What it is famous for in the summer is that is has a huge ancient Roman coliseum, now called the Arena and where they put on amazing operas. So we got the cheapest tickets, meaning you sit on the stone steps of this place with thousands and thousands of other people, and went to the opera “Aida”! (It was our birthday present to me It is set in Egypt so the sets are huge and amazing. It doesn’t start until about 9:00, when it is dark, and then they give everybody a little candle to light as the opera begins. It was a really cool experience.

We also hit the other main tourist spot in Verona, Juliet’s house and balcony. (Juliet of Romeo and Juliet.) It actually is totally fake and isn’t historic, but it is still fun.
Verona is a beautiful city and we enjoyed walking around before the opera and having dinner at a little restaurant. We also found the San Pietro castle, translation—the St. Peter castle!
The hotel we named at was also called San Pietro. How could we resist staying there after they named it after us?
The next day we went to the biggest of the four lakes in the “lake district”, Lake Garda. (We visited all four lakes during our trip!) There is a town way out on a point called Sirmione. You have to walk through a castle just to get into the main part of town, and then there is awesome shopping and tons of gelaterias. There is also some Roman ruins that are supposed to be really cool, but they are closed on Monday, which of course you do not find out until you reach the gate at the top of a hill. We joined the group of disappointed tourists for awhile, and then headed back to the town for a little while before we took the bus back to our hotel for the night.

Overall it was a great little trip!

More Milan

We spent a day exploring a little more of Milan, the public gardens. We heard about a butterfly exhibit and decided to go looking for it, and it was worth it. There was a tent sent up with about 20 different species of butterflies inside. It was so cool to have all those beautiful butterflies flying around us and get to see them up close! (Unfortunately no pictures allowed.)


There is also a museum of natural history in the garden so we went to that as well. There was all kinds of animals and dinosaurs and lots of different rocks.


We had a picnic lunch and spent some more time exploring (it is a huge place) and headed back on the subway. A fun day!

We made it!

HOME! We made it! I no longer believe in flights being on time and going as planned, and that theory proved true again. Our flight from Poland to Chicago was delayed a few hours, which should of meant we missed our next flight. But...that was delayed too. So we finally took off from there at midnight, and then made it to Minneapolis. And so did our luggage!
Since it was so late we stayed at my aunt and uncle's for the night after my parents picked us up. Thank you again, Livingstons! It was really fun to get to see them, and Corey's brother Cole and his wife Laura live in the same town so we got to see them too. Yay!
We had a wonderful summer, but it is so good to be back.
There is more to tell about our adventures the last week we were there, but just wanted to let you know that we made it safely! Thank you for your prayers!

Update

Hello everybody!
Sorry there hasn't been much in the way of posts lately! We haven't had internet access all week. We had a very fun last week here filled with some fun travels that we will write more about later, including an opera, another lake, and lots of butterflies.
We fly out tomorrow at 10:55 am Milan time and will hopefully arrive in MN at 10:50 pm that time. Please pray that our flight goes as planned and not as eventful as on the way here!