Ciudad Valles, Mexico

One week from tomorrow I will be heading down to Mexico on a mission trip, and I am looking for a prayer team that will support us in prayer throughout the whole trip and even for a little while once we return. I would be honored if you would consider being a prayer partner for me and for my team. You can click on the letter to enlarge the photo and read the letter.

Muchas Gracias!

La Pura Vida

Here's a picture recap of our time in Costa Rica/Nicaragua. The Costa Rican slogan is La Pura Vida [the pure life], and it's easy to see why - the country is filled with lush rolling hills and mountains, quaint towns and friendly people. It was a great experience!

Mark sitting in a park in San Jose, Costa Rica, the day after arrival.

A couple days after we got there, we did a little exploring in the hills around Cerro Chirripo, the highest point of CR. It was SUPER beautiful, and since we got up at 5am to catch a bus up there, it felt like we got to explore for a LONG time!
PS: this is a banana tree.

We walked this road for awhile and eventually ended up in Cloudbridge Nature Reserve. But the whole walk was this pretty. Really.

We eventually found this waterfall in Cloudbridge. One of many there.

Mark "rock climbing" on the wall of our hostel in San Gerardo de El General.

All the buildings in Granada, Nicaragua were painted sweet bold colors like this one.

The courtyard of The Bearded Monkey hostel in Granada. The center is open, but the sides have a roof. The doors across the way are the bathrooms. I'm taking the picture from the balcony by our room.

Here we are on the beach in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.

We spent most of our time in Nicaragua with Josh and Kari Jackson, who just happened to be in Central America the same time as us. It was a blast to have friends to hang with for 4 days in the middle of our trip.

Mark and I went to see sea turtles lay their eggs...while we were waiting, we got to see a beautiful sunset.

Here's the turtle laying her eggs. They wouldn't let us take flash pictures of the turtles in the dark, so this is what we get to remember via picture :).

Back in CR for a few days before we left, we spent a day in Monteverde, CR doing a zip line canopy tour. We get to zip through the trees on these lines. Our trip had 11 lines...the longest being a half mile and over 400 ft. in the air!

Here's Mark waiting to get launched.

Outside the zip line place was a pretty cool hummingbird garden.
Does this scare anyone else? This is how the hot water happened in a lot of places in Costa Rica. I don't know about you, but I was always taught that electrical wires and water aren't a good combo...

Our last two days in CR were spent white water rafting. The first day we ran El Rio Pacuare, filled mostly with class 2-4 rapids. Half way through we got out of the raft and hiked up to this waterfall and pool we could swim in.


This is Mark sitting in the waterfall...if you look closely, you can see his arm and leg sticking out of the rushing water.



Day two we ran the Pascua section of El Rio Reventozon, pretty much a consistant class 4 and class 4+ rapid. When I asked the guides how to say "rafting" in spanish, they looked at me and said "rafting" [said with best spanish accent].
This is a picture of our guide and a couple others who paddled back into a big hole to see if they could flip. They did.




And alas, we are now back in the QC, where the tp goes in the toilet and the water is okay to drink [but not from the toilet]. :) It never feels like pictures can capture the fullness of what you experienced, but it at least can give you a taste of what it was like.

Until Next Time....




Oh...PS: check this out!

Hola Amigos!

Hola from Monteverde, Costa Rica! Sorry I have been such a bum about updating. We went to Seattle to climb Rainier and then life was super hectic for a few months before we headed off again. Mark and I have been in both Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and will be returning home in a few days. We have gotten to hike around, see some cool cities, connect with Kari and Josh Jackson, some friends from college, ride a lot of buses, go boogie boarding in the ocean, read some good books, and do a zip line canopy tour. We hope to get in some white water rafting before heading home as well, if all goes according to plan.

One fun thing has been for me to get to use some of the 6.5 years of spanish that I took in school. It has been amazing how much I remember, and so frustrating at what I cant! All the more motivation to keep on trying. Lesson learned for next time: bring a spanish dictionary with. me ayuda mucho.

It has been a wild ride so far. While in Nicaragua, they shut the power off each week to conserve energy at certain times during the day. Our week just happened to be from 7-1030pm-ish ´{times are all "ish" around here...}, and so we pulled into Granada at 8pm in what looked like a blackout. It was pretty crazy. we just got to hang out by candlelight for a few hours each night. It was pretty fun...people would cheer when the lights came back on!

There are plenty more stories to tell, but I will wait until I can post come pictures to tell them. Look back in a week or so and there should be some up!

Hasta Luego!

Recap

Here's a bit of a recap of the last couple weeks of our lives. We got to spend two incredible weeks out in the Washington/Oregon area, with our main goal being to summit Mt. Rainier with our good friend, Paul. We gave it a good go, but due to extremely high winds, we made the choice to turn around at 12,350 ft. at the top of what is called the Disappointment Cleaver [gives new meaning to the name a bit] :). Unfortunately we were a bit low on food and supplies, so we had to descend from Camp Muir, where we were staying around 10,000 ft, and didn't have time to go for a second attempt at the summit. So after a bit of deliberation, we decided on a day of sea kyaking in the San Juan Islands before parting ways with Paul. We had a blast and met some pretty cool people in the process.

Mark and I spent our second week hanging with our friends Aaron and Annie, and had the good fortune to summit not only Mt. Adams, which we attempted last year, but got turned away by weather, but also Mt. St. Helens. It was an amazing couple weeks that fits into this wierd dichotomy of being super physically straining, but also super exhilerating and refreshing at the same time. Below are some of the pics that sum up our trip and give you a visual of what it is we spent all our time doing. Enjoy!

The night before we left for vacation, Mark was ordained! I'm so proud of him and excited for how God will honor this commitment he's made to serving the church and building His Kingdom. Congrats honey!

A clear shot of Mt. Rainier: 14,410 ft. What a sweet looking mountain!

This was a random hotel we stumbled across in Elbe, WA near Mt. Rainier National Park. It's called the Hobo Inn and you stay in railroad cars made hotel rooms. This red one was ours.


Mark and Jess gearing up for the hike up to Camp Muir at 10,000 ft.

Mark and Jess hiking up in a snowy cloud. Luckily the route was wanded so we had some clear direction. We broke through the cloud deck at around 8,000 ft. which made visibility much easier and was a beautiful view.

Mark and Jess hanging in the public shelter at Camp Muir: 10,000 ft. We basically spread our sleeping bags out on some wooden platforms. It wasn't heated or anything, but was definitely nice to be out of the wind! Notice the sweet puffy jackets we're all wearing in these pics. We rented them for the few days we were on Rainier, and they were awesome! It was like wearing a sleeping bag!

Jess, Mark, Paul. Right behind Paul's head is where we went up and over: Cathedral Gap.

Jess and Paul sitting on the top of what's called the Disappointment Cleaver [DC]. This is around 12,350 ft. We sat here for a long time trying to decide whether or not we'd continue on. You obviously can't tell from the pic, but it was stinkin windy! We probably faced 50 mile an hour winds, which is why we decided to turn around. The wind was steady and bearable, but the gusts would drop you to your knees so that you wouldn't be blown over. They sometimes felt like they might even pick you up off your feet a little, which isn't cool when you're on an exposed ridge. When it picked up Paul's weighted backpack and sent it flying toward a cliff, we decided it was probably time to turn around. We found out later that no one summited that day due to high winds.

Paul headed down the DC.



Incredible Crevasses. Glad we didn't have to walk over/around those...we just got to walk by them and look at them. :)


Jess and Mark on Ingrahm Flats, just over Cathedral Gap from Camp Muir. Behind us is the Ingrahm Icefall. The rocks you see off to the right are part of the DC. Looks nice out, right? But it was still really windy. We lost a water bottle and two sleeping pads due to wind on the mountain that day.

On our way down from Rainier, we stopped to practice our crevasse rescue skills we acquired during our class we took a few days earlier. That's my head peaking above the snowline in the back. I "fell" over a snow "cliff" and needed to be rescued :). Mark is setting the anchor.

Paul during our rescue scenerio.

We had an extra day so we googled sea kyaking and found out that the San Juan islands off the coast of Washington are a prime place to do so. We had a great day, but unfortunately didn't see any of the Orca whales that hang out around there. We did see some harbor seals though! If you look closely behind us, in the distance is Canada's Vancouver Island!

Paul and one of the guides who [random] just happened to go to high school together.

We got the chance to drive down to Bend, OR to connect with our friends Aaron and Annie. It was so fun to get to see them again! We miss you guys here in the QCA!

Our tent camped at the Lunch Counter, a flat spot on Mt. Adams around 9,400 ft. We got to this spot last year, but woke up in a cloud and snow/rain. The view behind the tent is where we climbed the following morning to a false summit. The real summit is hidden behind it and up about another thousand ft.

Jess in the tent keeping warm.

A great sunset from our campsite.

Jess and Mark standing at the false summit with the real summit behind us. It's the little knob in the middle.

Mark on the summit of Mt. Adams: 12,265 ft.

Mark on his way up Mt. St. Helens...notice it's a gradual climb. We weren't sure exactly what the conditions would be so we hauled up our ice axes and crampons only to have day hikers wiz by us in shorts and t-shirts and tennis shoes :).

Jess at the summit. I know it looks like snow goes up higher than I'm standing, but the edge of the crater has huge cornices of snow [snow that curves over the edges of the actual lip]. Obviously you don't want to walk out on that b/c it's not stable and will probably one day fall into the crater. If you look a couple pics down, you can kind of see some of the cornices on the crater rim.

A view of the glacier that rings the lava dome down inside the crater. Wierd to think a glacier could form inside a volcano huh?


Looking down into the crater.

A view of the outer crater.

Second Year, Second Mountain

As of Sunday, May 27th, Mark and I have been married for two whole years. In one sense it has flown by; in an other sense, it feels like we've been married for much longer. In both cases it has been amazing time of growth, discovery, and adventure. I am so thankful for the incredible man God has given me as a partner and companion on this journey called life.

Last year for our anniversary, we took a trip out to Oregon with the goal being the summit of Mt. Hood [11,245 ft]. We met our goal and then had a blast snowshoeing around on Mt. Adams and white-water rafting on a whim.

This year, we've set a new goal: the summit of Washington's Mt. Rainier [14,410 ft]. Mt. Rainier is unique in that it is one of the lower 48's most coveted summit and serves as one of the premier training grounds for mountaineers who set their sights on bigger peaks, such as Denali in Alaska and even some of the Himalayan peaks, such as Everest. It is the sight of the largest collection of glaciers south of Alaska, and while 8-13,000 people attempt to climb it every year, only about half are successful.

So, come June 8, we hop a plane to Seattle, with high hopes of being in the 50% that summit. We will be meeting our friend Paul, who will join us in our pursuit. The quest for the summit usually takes 2-3 days, although inclimate weather could push us longer. We've spent weeks in the prep process. Whereas the route up Mt. Hood ended in an elevation gain of 5,000 ft., the climb up Rainier is significantly more demanding at approximately 9,000 ft. and translates into two days of 8-12 hours of climbing. I don't know about you, but it hurts my legs even thinking about it!

As strange as it sounds though, I am super excited about spending a vacation camped on a glacier and walking uphill for hours. Couple that with great company, and it has the makings of an unforgetable adventure.

I'll be sure to post pictures when we return!

Reflections on Sharing a Job with My Spouse

When Mark and I first came to Heritage in July of 2005, we came sharing the position of Young Adult Pastor. We did this for a couple different reasons: first, we both wanted to do ministry and the church only had one full-time position open. They were willing to go along with this arrangement, and so, we were optimistic that we could make it work. Second, we realized that since both of us were called to ministry, we knew that the odds of us finding a church that was offering two full time pastoral jobs that fit us both were really slim. We realize that this will be an issue for us for a lot of our life, so we decided to take an opportunity that was presented since not all churches would necessarily be open to something like this. Third, we were hoping that if we did a decent job together that maybe someday down the line another position might open up that one of us could apply for and eventually we would both have full-time positions. We knew it wasn’t a guarantee by any means, but we knew it was a possibility. And finally, we felt like Heritage was a great church that we could learn and grow a lot at, and we wanted to give it a try. So, we came sharing a position.

I have to say that when we came, we knew it might be a challenge. For starters, we were newly married, moving to a “new” place [even though Mark grew up here and I was familiar with the QC], had to make all new friends, and we shared a job, a car, and an office. And did I mention it was our first year of ministry as well? There were a lot of variables in there that made for disaster, and to be honest, it was challenging. But we dove in and made the best of it. Luckily for us, due to both of our youth pastors leaving at relatively the same time, we ended up with two full time positions after about a year. Mark stepped over as the interim High School Pastor, and I took on the Young Adult Ministry on my own.

Shortly before we split into two positions, I had a friend email me and mention that she was thinking of sharing a position with her new husband as well, asking for some advice. So here are some things I told her as I reflected on sharing a position with my husband [taken mostly straight from the email I sent her]:

Probably the biggest thing I would suggest is make sure that your position/responsibilities are divided out. Make sure there are things each of you are responsible for that don't require you to always ask the other person for permission to do. Have stuff that each of you can run with and invest in. That has been the most hindering thing for Mark and I trying to do one position together. If your gifts are really different and compliment each other, this could be easy, but we both wanted to do most things [or there were things neither of us wanted to do]. It was harder for us b/c we didn't have a clear plan of what was expected of us. You may both find that there are places that you will sacrifice...where you will give up an area that you would love to do, but that is expected. I'd also say, though, that you should experiment with different things...even if it scares you to teach, try it at least once...step out of your comfort zone and who knows...you may find that there is an area that you are gifted in that you never knew about before.

Make sure you are encouraging and supporting each other as much as possible. People may naturally look to the husband as the leader simply b/c he is the male. He may have to be really intentional about letting people know that he alone is not the pastor, but that you are in a sense, each 1/2 a pastor. He will have to be intentional about pointing people toward you for the areas that you invest in. Mark has been super intentional with his actions and words in helping people see that I am also a pastor. Also...communicate, communicate, communicate! If you thought you had to communicate a ton as newlyweds, it ends up being multiplied by the fact that you are working together as well.

Try and find ways to not always talk about ministry. It can get easy to "take work home with you" and one day you will realize all you talk about is ministry. Be intentional with date nights and having evenings where all you do is hang out and be together...I've had to say to Mark, "Let’s not talk about the church at all tonight." Make sure you're having fun together.

See if you can work some hours that are not overlapping [assuming you will share an office]. When Mark and I first started on here, we worked all our hours together. We began to realize that we needed some time apart, so we changed our schedule, so now we each have a day in the office where the other doesn't work [at least in the office...we may go to a coffee shop or work at home], and we still have a couple days where we overlap, but it made a HUGE difference for us to not have all our hours the same, sitting side-by-side all day. If you don’t share an office, this might not be as big of an issue.

Just realize that you will do things/approach things differently. For a long time I always felt like I was doing things/approaching things wrong b/c mark would want to do it differently. It's not wrong...we are just two different people with two different personalities, and we approach different situations differently sometimes. That's okay...probably even good. The first several years of ministry are ones of great discovery – of your gifts, passions, and abilities…take time to understand yourself and realize that people with different personalities do ministry differently sometimes, and that that’s okay.

Looking back, I am thankful for the season of life where we shared a ministry position. I learned a lot and it freed us up to have a lot of time together [we really tried to only work only one full-time positions worth of hours]. I learned a lot about myself and a lot from Mark, and although I’m not sure we’ll ever share a position again, if it ever were to happen, we’d be much more prepared to work in that situation effectively. I know that time was something God used to shape me as a person, a wife, and a leader, and I know it helped lay a foundation upon which we can build for future ministry.

What do you think? Any thoughts to add to my list?

March Madness

So, I just noticed that my last post was in February and now it's April. So, if anyone still reads this blog, sorry!

March has been one of the craziest months in a long time. I remember looking at the calendar thinking it was going to be one heck of a busy month, and it certainly shaped up to be just that!

What have we been up to, you ask? Well, since you asked, I'd be happy to fill you in a bit :).

Starting at the beginning of the month, on March 9-10, the Heritage Discipleship Dept, of which I am a part, sponsered what we called a "Spiritual Growth Experience." Essencially it was a Friday night and Saturday morning time that we called "The Road Less Traveled." Kevin Myers, the Senior Pastor at Crossroads Community Church near Atlanta, GA was our main speaker. Kevin was supposed to share the speaking with Dr. Bud Bence, one of our profs from IWU, but unfortunatley, on his way here, Bud stopped at a fast food restaurant to get some food, stepped on a railroad tie, and it rolled underneath him. We got a call that said he had dislocated his elbow and that he was rushed to the emergency room. Luckily he is doing okay and Kevin was able to take over the extra speaking times and did a FANTASTIC job. It was a VERY powerful weekend, and I think a challenging weekend for those in our congregation who were able to make the commitment to come.

After that, Mark and I headed out to Denver for a wonderful week of snowboarding and hanging with Em and Josh in their sweet new downtown apt that sits on top of the Tattered Cover Book Store on the infamous 16th St. Mall. We had a blast hanging out, walking around, and spending time on the slopes of Winter Park and Copper Mountain.

We returned from Colorado on a Friday, had two young adult events that weekend, and a couple days later I hopped on a plane and headed for Stroudsburg, PA for a FLAME Church Leadership class...my final class needed for pastoral licensing. And when I say "hopped on a plane," what I really mean is "sat in O'Hare for 11 hours before barely boarding a plane." Yeah...I figure it's my penance for never really having been delayed before. Luckily my teacher was gracious and still gave me credit even though I missed the first four hours of a 2.5 day class.

Well, Looking forward to a less crazy April and a warmer spring [it's APRIL and the high is in the 30's! Brrr!]