Congrats Patrick Fry!

First off.. Happy Birthday to my amazing big/little brother, Dwight. He is now officially 17. YIKES!!!!!

now....moving on to the actual post.

WOW! Crazy day!

But I have to say it started out amazing. I might do a more in-depth post on this later, but I read Acts 6 this morning.. It was waay cool considering the circumstances!

Today was our first full day of orientation. We got to have a nice late start, and didn’t have to leave for ASU till 9 this morning. BTW, the free breakfasts @ Hyatt Place’s are a-ma-zing.

Orientation was great. No offense to the New England people, but I definitely think I liked AZ’s better! We had a lot of information being thrown at us, but it definitely was all very good, relevant, useful info. We had two evangelism 101 classes, both of which were actually pretty cool. It’s always refreshing to get new material, new perspectives, and new “methods” I suppose. Eddy Pearson was the teacher for those two, and he talked about the contents of the Gospel, and then talked about testimonies. He finished by giving us tools to help us form a “mini-testimony” of sorts, in 100 words or less. Its something I had never thought of, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Especially since I really like to talk and tell stories.. so my testimony always ends up being either really long, or very incomplete.. so needless to say, it was very helpful to get some tips on super-focusing it down to a paragraph, but still have it be relevant and complete. I’m still working on mine, but I’ll try and share when I get it figured out. :)

After E-101 we moved on to Leadership. I couldn’t help but think of the “leadership lectures” @ Carey, and cringe! But Keith Henry did a great Job. He covered how Jesus led and served, as well as leading with Integrity. Both were really insightful and info-filled! Just how I like it :p In fact, he has so much stuff that he was having to move really quickly through it to stay on time, and I didn’t get it all written down in my notes  if I had known I would have brought my computer! Haha.

After the leadership sessions we moved on to living “by the book” with Jeff Smith. He talked about Being in God’s word, and all of the types and aspects of being in the Word. He used the hand/get a grip model which I hadn’t heard in FOREVER. It was a neat reminder. Especially since I’m such a visual person. : ) thumbs up to Jeff.

After that we got to come back and take a nice, well needed break/nap before heading back over to ASU for dinner (Pizza Hut galore! Pizza, pasta, wings, breadsticks, and cinnasticks!) and the prayer time. The prayer time was great and definitely a great start to the summer. Tomorrow we will talk about being stretched while serving in missions, great expectations, and issues that guys/gals face. Then we get to meet our supervisors! Eek! I’m kinda wigged out, not gonna lie. I’m super excited about meeting John and getting to see the church, but I’m also nervous too. Also I’m sad that I have to say good bye to the rest of the AZ missionaries, and probably won’t see them the rest of the summer. PLUS there is no debrief like in NE. Sad times. Oh well.

Oh yeh, one last thing. After the prayer time we all piled in the cars/trucks and went to walmart. Tonight was Patrick’s (one of the SM’s from AZ) high school graduation. But he left right afterwords and came back to orientation to be with us instead of going out and celebrating. So we went to wally world and bought streamers and congrats signs and ice cream and all that fun stuff and threw him a surprise party in the lobby whenever he walked in. I’ll try and get pix up as soon as I post this.. Check the comments if you aren’t my facebook friend and I’ll post the link. Or just look on my FB page.

Aight… think that’s all folks. Time to do a quick upload and hit the sheets. My plan is to get up at 6 and go work out/jump in the pool before getting ready and going to breakfast. We shall see how that turns out. Ha.

Night all. Be safe. Love ya. Don't do anything overly stupid tomorrow!

Blessings,
~Kat K.

p.s. the yogurt place from last night was Yogurt Land!