air mattresses in the missions room

well contrary to what my schedule says, i am back at south hills baptist church in montana city, mt. this was the first stop we made as we started this summer, we did most of the decorations as well as some blitzing (passing out flyers door to door). canyon ferry road baptist, which is who we were scheduled to be with this week postponed their vbs and so south hills so graciously picked us up to work with them. we got here saturday morning at 10 and started decorating the church the moment we walked through the door! saturday night since i had finished what i was doing for the moment, i volunteered to cook the hotdogs for supper, not knowing what i was getting myself into for the rest of the week!! late saturday afternoon we were informed of our sleeping arrangements....on air mattresses that they just happened to find for us in the attic, in the nursery!! we put all our luggage in the library and we store all our mattresses in the missions room during the day...they do have a shower in the bathroom, as well as a washer and dryer and they gave us a car so that we could travel back and forth to helena to keep ourselves occupied during the days. the air mattresses are comfortable, i think...or either its just that i'm so worn out that i don't notice how uncomfortable they are haha

sunday morning at church during meet and greet time, this lady walks up to us and says, "which one of you is kristi" i raised my hand a little reluctantly, cause i mean doesn't that sound like something you hear when your in trouble?? so she proceeds to tell me that she heard i can grill really good and that she needs me to grill the hamburgers for everyone that is staying after church to help with the vbs set up. i did pretty good...only let one of the burgers slide through the crack...yikes!! so sunday night was the first night of vbs and the church feeds dinner at 5 every night before we start so about 4:15 she tells me that we should probably go and heat the grill up so that we can "bar-b-q" again (they never call it grilling - its bbq whether you put bbq sauce on the meat or not) so sunday night once again i grill hotdogs. Ally who was at orientation with us and is working with helena valley baptist church all summer is coming out to help so she and i got to catch up on everything while bbq-ed. i'm not sure how many kids we had sunday night but i would guess about 40-45. monday one of the ladies in the church took us out for lunch and ice cream. on our way back we stopped by her house to pray over her husband who has many health problems, including hepatitis C. it was an awesome privilege to be able to minister in that way!! we will be going to eat supper with them on friday night. monday night i found out that i had to grill once again. we had chicken for supper and the number of people that came was amazing, we cut all the chicken in half and actually ran out. i wasn't able to eat any so i whipped up some shells and cheese after everyone had left!! mmmmm good! luckily that was the last night we have to grill, so i get a little break from that!!

today we went out on the town. we picked up ally (she goes to ole miss, but is super duper cool) and we headed to a local montana eating establishment called the staggering ox. i ate one of the most interesting roast beef and turkey sandwiches i've ever seen in my life, (see picture below). after that i navigated around helena to try and find some places to shop...well obviously, they are few and far between!!! we went to the parrot, which is a bakery type deal. they make their one candies as well as have the really old fashioned ways of making fountain drinks where they put in the syrup then add carbonated water...now that was a sight to see. it kept us entertained for a while. then we went to the mall....well all four stores of it, it was pitiful!!! so we went to the other side of town and found target...we had more fun shopping in target than anywhere else haha it doesn't take much to amuse us!!

tonight there were 64 kids at vbs for the second night in a row!!! most of those kids are not members of this church, i'd actually venture to say that there are probably only 20-25 kids out of that number that attend church here. this is the biggest vbs we've seen! amy and elizabeth are teaching 1st and 2nd graders...on the first night they had 11 and last night they had 22!!!!!! HELLO!!! tonight was the night that the gospel was shared and out of amy and elizabeth's class there were 3 professions of faith...these are the first decisions we have seen, but we know that many seeds have been planted. One verse that i found the other day was

1 corinthians 3:7, it says:

"So neither he who plants, nor he who

waters is anything, but only

God, who makes things grow."

we realize it is nothing we are doing in montana that is bringing people to christ other than allowing him to work through us to accomplish his purposes. it is an awesome feeling to be that instrument. i hope you realize how much i covet your prayers. i appreciate so much all the encouragement that i have received from each of you and you will never know how much it has meant to me. please continue to pray for me as i am still seeking the Lord's will for my life...this summer is changing me and it is an awesome experience to see that in myself, but after this summer i'll be back to the same old routine and i want so badly for my life to be different. i think you all understand those feelings.

carousel...you can make up your own caption...we'd been in the mountains to long without contact with civilization that we acted a little crazy on it...doesn't take much to entertain us!

just doing my duty for the week...this was chicken night, they said it was good, but i wouldn't know...i braved the 100 mph wind to cook these little birds and i didn't even get to eat one!

i'm leading around the 3rd and 4th grade class this week and this is at the recreation rotation...from l to r: riyan (from california), grace, jewel, noa, olivia, hannah, mari (we stayed at her house the first time we were here) and seth. this was monday night and on tuesday night we had 14 kids in the class

the kids again - minus seth and hannah: mari, jewel, grace, noa, riyan, olivia

my canned sandwich from the staggering ox...quite interesting huh?? and notice the mason jar full of coke behind it haha i loved it

and y'all thought our energy was all natural...we frequently make elk shaped sugar cookies topped with cream cheese icing after vbs is over just to give us that extra boost! sorry i look so scary...yikes!!

- mom don't freak out, this is the first time we've done this...we usually eat fairly healthy, but the church at boulder gave us all cookie mix so we just had to make it so we won't have to carry it around everywhere :)