My Friends

I love my friends!
This past weekend was a three day weekend. A couple of my friends and I decided to make plans..though some of our plans fell through due to our committment to our Sunday Morning at the corps, we still managed to figure something out. Saturday was Katherine and Felix's graduation/birthday party, they are now 18! so we had an amazing time dancing various different styles of Spanish music, especially seeing Stephen, Seth, Lindsay and myself seen as though we were the whitest people there! Lol anyway..Late Saturday night Lindsay came back with Stephen, Seth and I and we all stayed at the Ditmers house. We stayed up till 5 in the morning talking about various things. Good things, bad things, this summer..anyway, when we started to hear the birds chirping we realized it was time for bed.
After church on sunday we went up to Jen Genslers house and met up with her and Juliann. We went to the palisades mall and back to jens house. We had a firepit on the deck next to a swing and we sat around sang songs and talked and talked and looked at myspaces lol.. Yes I said we sang! lol we sand we are marching in the light of God for Mrs.Bate! :) and we sang Kumbaya and some partiotic songs for the holiday. As I was swinging on the swing, by the fire, huddeled up with some of my closest friends I was glowing with happiness and I took a moment to thank God! Thanking Him for these wonderful people who I LOVE being around. Although some of you may find it hard to believe we do actually get into some pretty serious conversation. That's what I love about my friends! We are not scared to talk about situations and conflicts with one another.
Whenever I leave things like that, I always get soooo sad. I realize now that some of us are almost done with high school and moving on in life and it scares me! I want to just be in a place with all my friends and NEVER LEAVE! Do you ever feel like that? Like something is just sooo perfect and you are sooo happy andthen you go back into the real world and you feel soo depressed?
So I'm back in the "real world" feeling down, but looking forward to the next time we will be together, like this summer at star lake camp! Wooohoo!

Just a couple pics of me chillen with some cool people at dairy queen during youth councils!
Props to Stephen!

Youth Councils

Haha Aaron took this picture the saturday afternoon of youth councils. We were about to have our Forum and nobody wanted to sit in the front with me :( ...It was just me and my dunkin donuts iced coffee!
Once again the picture was taken in the Tabernacle in the beautiful star lake camp!!

Star Lake Camp

I have been going to Star Lake Camp my ENTIRE life and I still am amazed by how beautiful it is. It is truly a gift from God!

Fortune Cookie!

I got had a fortune cookie tonight and the fortune said this

"Beauty is not in the face; it is the light in the heart"

what a nice fortune!

I'm dieing to see a fortune that says something bad or negative! hahaa that's kinda messed up :)

anyway, I will update about youth councils soon :)

We are Family

Some, well most of the family in Brienza, Italy!

P.S. youth councils is this weekend and transmission is here! yay! please pray! thanks

More and more pictures!!!!

Kia and I walking to the Vatican


Don's Angels. GNY Youth Band Horn Section ROcks!


Seth and I in the Bus on the way to Pompeii


Doug and his little tea cup! hahaa


Aww Father and Daughters! :)

more pictures of Italy!!!!

scroll down to see my actual entry.

tour of Italy

Well..I honestly don't know where to start! Italy was absolutely amazing! I learned allot over this tour. The first couple of days we were there we were in Rome. We were playing during a youth congress. Just a little comparison between Italy and the GNY Division... Officers in Italy 17, in GNY 90. Employees in Italy 10, in GNY 2,252. Number of corps in Italy 17, in GNY 40. Number of senior soldiers 240 in Italy and 2,518 ikn GNY. Nuymber of Junior Soldiers in Italy 34, in GNY 856. As you can see the Army is much smaller in Italy. it was a very different expirience. Anyway, Friday through Sunday night was the Youth Congress. There special guest was actually from Canada, her name was Sandra. she is an officer and was previously stationed in Russia. Throughout the weekend she spoke about becoming one with God and with others. We did not let the language barrier stop us from communicating with others. Sandra was very forward with her messages and told some deep stories and miracles that have occured in her life. Some brought us to tears and some left us in pure amazement! This whole expirience really got me thinking about doing some missionary work at some point in Italy and around Europe. Maybe for a couple months at a time. I actually spoke with some people to Captain Wong, there youth leader about going to Italy next summer and just helping them out. There is soo much work that needs to be done there. I am so lucky to have expirienced the Army in another country.

Anyway there was one particular session that I liked. Sandra talked about lines and how we always divide the world up into different types of poeple. Sandra made a line dividing the room in half. One half was over 25 and the other was younger then 25. Sandra asked us questions like what are our dreams and what is stopping us from persuing those dreams. Then she asked the over 25 group what would they have done differently when they were our age. Then she asked us what is it that makes us not trust the older people and vice versa. Then she asked us both what promises we would make to each other. Promises to listen and not judge, to not be scared to share with you, to realize that you have gone through similar things, to love you and care for you. Then we were asked to break the line and pray with one of the older people. It was awesome.

Anyway we played a couple of open air concerts and visited a corps in Briennza. The Popolardo's are the corps officers there. I actually remember them, they were in trainging here, they worked at star lake for a summer. Anyway, they are awesome people and were soo kind to us.

We had a good amount of time to go around Rome and we also visited Pompeii.. it was awesome. I will be posting pictures for the next couple days! Sorry if this didn't make much sense, JET LAG!