July 20th

These updates are getting further and further between. I guess in most part because not a whole lot happens during the week, just work. Anyway!
Work has been pretty good still. Frank still wants me to be the storekeeper. On Friday he told me that they would do something about it on Sunday. For some reason I thought that he would have done it sooner, but I guess he's not allowed or something. Anyway, he told me today that he talked to Jen and that they'll be doing something soon... we'll see.
Something to pray about, on Saturday there was a little incident with Amber. It just happened that my roommates wanted to go to lunch at the EDR at the Inn instead of our usual Snowlodge EDR. So we headed over there and had lunch. Amber was in there and I said hi, but not much more. We were just finishing up when I noticed her and another guy a few tables over. The guy was almost yelling at Amber and wasn't too happy (fortunately there were other people with Amber). As we were leaving I felt like I should talk to her about it and make sure she was ok. She has had some trouble with this guy in the past. He's a Christian, he's showed up to a bunch of our service, but he has some kind of mental trouble, I'm not entirely sure what. We're pretty sure he's got a serious crush on Amber and she's had to tell him off a few times in the past. That day it just happened that he had told her that he bought her a present while he was in West Yellowstone. Amber figured what he was up to and told him that she didn't want it because he wasn't going to be able to buy a date so to speak. This upset him pretty good I guess, and he got angry and was saying how she isn't really a Christian because Christians don't act like that etc. then he stormed off. Amber has talked to her managers since then, and they know that he's caused problems like this in the past few months. They said that they could get him out of here on grounds of harrassment. Amber was pretty shook up, she almost started to cry when she was telling me about it, she was afraid he was going to get physical. I prayed for her there and told her that if she ever needed anything, anytime, to contact me. I feel a bit responsible for the girls on our team since I'm the only guy in the group. Anyway, she went back to work and she's still trying to avoid him as much as possible. It's a tricky situation because we know we're supposed to show love to him, but this is almost getting dangerous, and Amber isn't the only girl this has happened to. Please be praying!
Sunday, the college team had the day off, and Staci, Sarah and I have been plotting a camping trip. We got our permits and started looking at the gear we had and realized we were a bit short. So we drove to West Yellowstone and bought some stuff, just kinda the bare minimum survival gear in my opinion. We then drove out to our trailhead, on the East side of Lake Yellowstone, called 9 mile trail or something like that. It was 5 miles in to our campsite. Not a horrible hike at all, mostly flat travelling, but the mosquitos were THICK. A couple river crossings which I managed to find a way across so that I wouldn't have to change intno sandals, or... ahem... go through in my boots. I stayed dry! We got to our campsite at about 5pm, which was great because we had a bit of set up to do, I was worried that we wouldn't have enough sunlight to get it all done but we were fine for time. The site was BEAUTIFUL, and the wind coming off the lake once in a while kept the mosquitos manageable. The edge of the forest behind us and Lake Yellowstone in front. We built a fire and got that going first. I cut a couple lodgepole pine trunks and lashed together a lean-to: I hope we got a picture of it... I'm pretty proud of that one! :) As rough as this trip was, it was great being able to use skills I learned from Royal Rangers. Thanks so much to Mr. Nast and the rest for teaching us all, I loved it! So we had a good fire going, I had bought a pot to use for cooking so we had potatoes and bacon. The first real meal I've cooked in almost 2 months... it was great! After that, we had to boil water for the next day, I really miss those water filters now, but no one got sick so I guess we did ok. Sarah didn't have a sleeping bag so I gave her mine, and her and Staci shared the lean-to. I stayed by the fire and kept it going, we were a little worried about bears as we weren't exactly following the rules on food prep and all. I slept for a little bit, but for the most part just watched the fire and the stars. I enjoyed it but I missed my buddies, you guys make a trip anywhere loads of fun! We had a couple doe deer that kept wandering near our camp, they would get about 30 feet away and just kinda watch us. Around 4 pm I noticed one of them had laid down near our site. It was comforting having them around, it was like they were guarding us, in that they wouldn't have been there if a bear were around. We got up around 6 and I made breakfast. Potatoes, eggs and spamwiches hahaha. I haven't had spam in YEARS, but it wasn't half bad. We broke camp quick and hit the trail, we needed to get back ASAP because Sarah had to work at 4. Uneventful hike back, although, right by our campsite we started following bear tracks down the trail, fresh poop and what looked like what was left of a grouse. It all wasn't there the day before! We made it back to Old Faithful around 1. I showered and fell asleep for about 4 hours.
Tuesday, I got into work and instead of spending the first few hours doing food prep as usual, I had a bit of work to do reorganizing. Again, I'll have something real nice working in one of our coolers and it's a complete mess when I get back. Keeps me busy! I might miss working with some of these people. I really like Steve, our morning sous chef, and Adam, who was our Pantry lead, but he just took over the evening sous chef position. They're both pretty neat guys to work with. So I guess that's all for now. Next week Sarah will be preaching, her first time ever, and we're going to have a Christmas service for July 25th. Normally out here, they celebrate Christmas on August 25th, they get a huge tree for the Inn and have cookies and music, since we're all going to miss it we're doing it early! Should be fun, I'm looking forward to it.
So, good night for now. Keep praying, I'll be home soon, now less than 1 month!