End of July

It has finally been done. I've gone through almost 2 weeks now as full time storekeeper. Chris has taken my jobs, cook and relief storekeeping, although I think he's still trying to switch locations. Either that or he could quite possibly be fired soon, it's not looking good for him.
I still love storekeeping, a very good thing! Although Tuesday was pretty rough for me. Last week while storekeeping I finally had time to get everything organized how I liked it, by the end of the week it was all pretty comfortable, everything had a place and it was all neat and orderly (go figure!). Tuesday, I get in from my "weekend" and after 2 days of Chris' relief storekeeping, I felt like I had lost all of the progress I had made. I was not happy at all for the first few hours of work. We were running out of stuff left and right, not entirely Chris' fault, I guess we're hitting our busiest few weeks right now. But it's my job to bring in what we need, and when we run out of stuff, people come to me asking where it is. Well, I settled down after a bit, and got to organizing things again. The order that we brought in was pretty massive, and I had a few other special things on my lists to do. Getting in at noon, I was finally able to leave around 10:30. Wednesday was a bit better. Another massive order, still trying to keep up with demands, but since it was the last Wednesday of the month we had to do inventory. Basically, we count EVERY food item that we bring in. Prepared or not, we have to count it all and enter it into the computers. I did this with Jenn the head cook, and she was VERY appreciative. I don't how things worked out while she did it with Chris, but she read off the list of items and I told her how much we had of it. It was a lot like when I go through for my daily orders, except I'm writing down how much we have instead of how much we need. Jenn was excited too because we would have one random item in a different cooler, and instead of having to go and find out how much we had, I could remember, mainly because I had already gone through and done my ordering for the next day. It all really wasn't that bad, and today Jenn was asking why I had to leave so early and if I could extend my end date (NOT A CHANCE!). It was quite the compliment though, and last week Frank was asking the same thing haha. Today, we had a few discussions about who will be my relief storekeep. We've got eyes on one guy in particular who works in the pantry, I'm not too fond of him, he's kind of annoying but we'll see what happens. The good part is that I get to train the relief this time, so he'll be learning to do it my way! HAHA!
Sunday we ran the services at Madison again. Sarah preached her first ever sermon, and pulled off an awesome Christmas message! (July 25th, Christmas in July) We sang Christmas carols and she talked about how we can have the excitement of Christmas year round instead of just once. It was very well done! After that, we went to West Yellowstone and hung around there for the afternoon. It was a lot of fun, we visited random shops, and went to the park. I had bought a kite, one of those 5 dollar cheap bird kites and we had a steady wind. I had it up for a little bit then my line got severely tangled. So after about 10 minutes of untangling I finally had it up in the air... then it crashed and ripped. I flew it for maybe 15 minutes :( devastated. After that I pulled out my soccer ball. The size 4, really light one. I kicked it a couple times... then got it stuck in a tree. DEVASTATED!! It was maybe 20 feet up in a lodgepole pine, the nearest branch was 8-9 feet up which I somehow managed to grab and pull myself up to rescue the ball. I played with it a bit longer and a little kid in 2nd grade came and joined me. I showed him a few tricks and we talked about soccer and how he wants to be a professional. I encouraged him to keep practicing and working hard, we had a blast :)
Eventually, we went back to Madison for our final service to find that they were setting up right at our amphitheater for several speeches to be made the next day, one of the key speakers being Vice President Joe "Bison" Biden. We nick-named him thus because, like a bison walking down the road throwing off people's plans, Joe "Bison" Biden was walking into our amphitheater and we had to cancel our night service.
So there it is. Tomorrow, Nam and I are going to be joining a few of the Crusaders to read through the book of John. I'm looking forward to this one because I haven't been able to make it to any of their events yet. I've barely met any of them either and for some reason they don't always show up for our services... Be praying for Nam as we read through the Gospel message!
Less than 3 weeks now, I think I'm preaching this week, and I think I'll be preaching about where we call home... a good sermon for the end of this summer!
Thanks all for your prayers! I'll be home before you know it!