so now the real work starts!

we are sitting now in the helena airport waiting to pick up the last member of our four person team!! Casey should be joining us at any point now. We got to clancy which is maybe 5 miles from helena around lunch and since then we have been touring helena. its such a quaint old town with some of the most beautiful old houses. we actually saw a mule deer eating lunch in someones yard! friday morning we took the most beautiful drive from billings to butte to stay the night with our supervisors, Jason and Debbie. the mountains just looked like they had been painted right on the horizon...it was absolutely breath taking!!!! we made it to their house just in time to meet all 5 of their children...ages 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. we played some wii games, made up the beds, cooked dinner for them then headed to park street baptist church where jason is the pastor to help set up for a marimba concert. (marimba is just a big xylophone) that was fun...interesting i should say. Their church is in an old elementary school building that they purchased for $1 fifteen years ago. they currently only utilize the basement and first floors and have around 100 in attendance on a good sunday. After the concert, the three of us went to a drive in movie with the youth pastor and the three oldest kids. we made it back in around 12 and went straight to sleep...woke up this morning and packed up again for lets see the 4th or 5th time and headed to clancy...and so now youre caught up!

So i've noticed a couple of things...every exit you take off the interstate has a cattle gap just to keep all the cows off the interstate (and they think we are rednecks!) the biggest hole in the ground in the world is in butte, butte also has this HUGE statue of mary that overlooks the city and actually glows at night lol i have seen several deer and 1 antelope at a distance and other than that its absolutely gorgeous!! we are spending a couple of days in yellowstone next weekend...

summer missionaries: the guy behind me and the woman next to me are our supervisors, Jason and Debbie Rasmussen. the guy next to me is Danny who will be in Missoula all summer; in the front is Ally who will be doing youth in Helena all summer, Elizabeth who is on my team and Amy who is also part of our team.

on the drive from billings to butte

downtown butte from the third story window of park street baptist

mule deer in a yard in helena

First day under the belt

alright so i am safely in Montana. i arrived at the college dorm where we are doing orientation last night around 12:30 this time. and we have been going non stop all day long. last night as soon as i got into the room i brushed my teeth and got a handful of water to take my medicine. this morning while talking to my roommate and getting caught up on all i had missed last night, she said "oh yeah, dont drink the water in here" i was like oh yeah, why? she said, "im not sure, the lady said it might make you sick because its a cistern and there is alot of farm runoff around here." all i could think is great! i missed my original flight, arrived in Montana at midnight, lost my luggage and now i've drank water that is going to make me sick!! but i've survived the day and haven't gotten sick yet so i'm good. I haven't really seen much of montana yet, i was in billings today and we went in to town to the mall and another store to randomly talk to "Montanans" - that was awkward!! and I am staying the night in laurel. on the drive here i was able to see some snow capped peaks in the far distance and a humongous pheasant on the side of the road, but other than that I haven't seen too much. i have noticed that there are absolutely no brick houses out here, or at least i haven't seen any yet. a bit odd, i don't understand it. umm well i guess i should get going to bed...we (elizabeth and i) are sleeping on a air mattress that has a known leak, so this should be an interesting night...

friday morning at 10 we (amy, elizabeth and I) will move to our first location in clancy, mt. tomorrow we will get training in lifeways vbs so that we can be completely geared for the summer!

well talk to y'all soon!!

What an eventful morning

well, I guess you could say that I lived up to my name this morning...I was late to my flight from Jackson to Dallas...but before you start saying anything, let me say in my defense that I was given the completely wrong flight plan so I had no clue I should have been there at 5 this morning to get on a 6 o'clock flight instead of the 9:30 flight I showed up for. Anyway, after a bit of panic and worry and phone calls, the travel agent booked me on a flight out of Jackson at 1 pm. AS of now, i am in Charlotte, NC waiting to get on board another flight to go to the other side of the US - Denver. I'll finally arrive in Billings, MT around 11pm their time tonight. Boy what an adventure!!! I guess this is teaching me to be ready for anything this summer.

Here are some pics of me trying to leave this morning!!

For those unfamiliar with blogging

well I just wanted to show everyone who doesn't know how to, how to leave me comments. Below each post that I make there will be a small line that shows the number of comments on that particular post. If you click on that line it will open up a new screen and will have a box on the right where the comment can be typed out. The best way to let me know who left the comment is to select the "Name/URL" identity and then once it is selected you can type in your name. After doing that just hit publish comment and your done!!

I just didn't want anyone to have an excuse for not leaving me a comment...(I am completely directing this post to daddy, momma and kale!)

New Idea

Well, my Aunt Alison uses this site to keep everyone informed of their busy lives and I love it cause it allows me to keep up with some of the stuff they are doing and to see pictures. I figured this would be an easy way to "mass communicate," if you will, so that everyone could see how and what I am doing in Montana over the summer. I'll still do emails and all but I figured this was an easy way to keep everyone informed, pass on prayer requests and show pictures of what my team is doing. I am not sure how often I'll get to update it but I am shooting for once a week. I hope y'all will enjoy it, and continue to pray for me as I make this big step in my life.

I'll be leaving one week from today, MAY 27th and will be returning back to south Mississippi on August 2nd. Please don't be a stranger, leave a comment or something, because I might get to missin you fine folks from Mississippi.

Also, I can get snail mail, and we all know how much fun snail mail is...so if you feel the urge, shoot me a letter sometime. My address is:

Kristi Hatten

% Treasure State Baptist Association

PO Box 5084

Helena, MT 59604-5084

Thanks in advance for your support and prayers!!