The Firs, B.C. and Friends...a magical combination.

The past three days were spent with the amazing YD staff at "The Firs," a conference center in Bellingham, WA. We were supposed to get to go to Mt. Baker and stay in a mountain chalet, but unfortunately, the excessive rain this week not only raised the snowline back to like, 9,000 feet--it also washed out the mountain road with a mudslide.

What it did mean, though, is that my YD friends and I got to drive to British Columbia! My first time crossing the border--and I didn't even take my passport or a birth certificate....which is apparently bending the rules a bit, but, the border official let us back into our homeland nonetheless.

The funniest thing? My YD friends were sooo excited to go to Canada because they have a Tim Horton's there! I was like, WHAT? Apparently Tim Horton's are Canadian, which I didn't know, because there's one in COSHOCTON! So my Oregon friends are like, "Hooray, Tim Horton's!" because there are none in Oregon or Washington, while I am like, "I drove all the way to Canada to go to someplace I can visit in Coshocton!" So apparently, to YD staffers, Coshocton has the key component to making it an exciting place to visit.

Our three days were intense, and I only got about 4 hours of sleep each night, BUT, I was significantly challenged on lots and lots of things--things related to taking risks, seeking God's will wholeheartedly, managing risks at expense of relationships, and most significantly--on recycling my pain and my the pain of my story to teach kids about the awesome power of Christ.