hey ya'll :)

well we are almost through week one of MOVE 2010. let me tell you...time flies when you're having fun, and when you are busy from 7:30am-11:30pm everyday. as expected of the first week, it has been stressful and busy, but everything has gone very smoothly. The Caleb Miller Band has done a wonderful job leading everyone in worship and encountering God daily. The energy in the room is incredible. DJ Blake is very talented and is somehow able to pump up high school kids at 8am... a feat that seems impossible. as quoted by one of the students: "... I just love our music guy!" i think that pretty much sums that up. Our MC for the week, Daniel, has a way with making people laugh and it's always a great way to wake up in the morning.

I can't go through everyone on the tour and brag about how lucky we are to have them... but overall the people that we interact with are incredible spiritual leaders and amazing people in general. our team continues to bond over our team song, break even. i believe that the song count is at the double digit mark... since friday. basically whenever we venture out in the big CIY van (with the headlights ON in the dark... brandon. let's try not to get pulled over for that anymore). so anyways. yeah, the team song. is great. we decided that once we have our technique perfected we are going to record the amazing display of musical passion and send it to The Script. Obviously they will love it.

we are so excited to see what the rest of the week here in Tennessee as well as the rest of the summer has in store for the students attending MOVE. It is evident that God is present and active in this place. Pray that the hearts of the students are open and that they have the strength to stand as God has called them to. It is so amazing to be present in the formation of Kingdom Workers.

God is great :)

Greetings from Milligan College, in Johnson City, Tennessee.

We had our last day in the office as a group of 16 til the end of the summer. It was a sad day. Friday morning Team Somethin Somethin left the CIY office, headed east. Getting up early and facing a 14 hour drive ahead of us was made easier by the lovely ladies Kim Possible, Rachel Heath, Amanda Kobisky, and Molly Kruse. We had a whole Rubbermaid tub full of homemade cookies, chex mix, and other snacks and a Transformers coloring book. :) They are pretty much the best ever. We love them. Oh, and they all decided to put a purple streak in the back of their hair, just for fun. Rachel's scalp turned purple, so we decided to stay away from the hair dye for the evening.

We stopped a few hours into the trip in St Louis at Jimmy John's (Dirty Steve's favorite) with the team headed to Indiana, before we parted ways for a few weeks. Followed by many hours of sleeping in the car. When it got to be about 11 at night and we still had a couple of hours to go, Team Somethin Somethin got slap happy. We now have a team song - Breakeven by The Script. Playing drums is Chad Brown. Other (bouncing) drums is Eric Epperson. Brandon is the back up dancer, while the rest of the team does vocals. It's really quite the sight, and the team song is never listened to unless everyone is present. The Milligan Summer Staff greeted us with a basket of goodies! Including gummi worms!!!!

Today, we did a lot of the setting up of the productions and most of the station is set up! For the first time unloading the truck and getting started on set up, it went fairly smoothly. :) After cleaning up, we went to dinner, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and Target. Everything is fun with these people!! Always a good laugh. Now, we are watching Mystery Science Theater. The boys think it is really funny.... Us girls don't quite get the humor.

Now we have to have a paragraph regarding the fact that Kenzi is not clumsy. She just happens to have "bad luck"....? Today, she whacked Phoenix in the face with our team's spirit stick, got her finger smashed in the truss crank, elbowed Brandon in the head,has a hurt wrist, etc. Just another day in Kenzi's life.

We are very much looking forward to Bible College Representatives (BC reps) getting here within the next couple of days, and the students arriving on Monday to get our first week of MOVE started! :)

Helloooo. Today Emily and Phoenix made the journey back to Joplin, leaving at five in the morning, Indiana time. Emily's dad was was too kind in driving while Emily and Phoenix slept. Only to turn around and drive back to Indianapolis that same day. 17-18 hours in a car. That's an amazing dad. THANK YOU!!! Of course, while in Joplin a few of the MOVE event staff had to introduce Jim to the Joplin favorite - Woody's pizza. So yummy.

The rest of the work day was relatively relaxed, now that the trucks are all packed and ready to go. Learning about the week's events, preparing housing, and other miscellaneous tasks. There was also a video camera set up in the conference room all day... we're not really sure what it's for, but a few of the interns had a little too much fun making faces (Wesley and Brandon) or hand figures (Womble) at the camera.

Shout out to Tom and Whitney Nobis for being so welcoming, even though we sometimes scare Ryne. The homemade spaghetti sauce was wonderful. Emnkenz also enjoyed coloring with Ryne and Whitney :) We even got kisses goodbye from Ryne!!

Later was a trip to Target. They were closing though, and we didn't want to rush our decisions on which coloring book to get. So we decided to wait and go back tomorrow. And no, I'm not kidding.

I must just add that the emnkenz team is getting pretty tight, and loving every moment. God has already blessed our unexpected friendship in ways we would have never imagined!

Tomorrow should be interesting - going over personality tests!! Peace out girl scout.

kenz is really missing em right about now. she left after work today to go home for a wedding. Pheonix went with her too back to Indiana... 9 hour drive! yikes.

today the workload was doubled as we packed 2 trucks instead of the usual one. everything went pretty smoothly and we were done by mid afternoon. can't believe we are leaving for TN in a week! kenzi's purse got hand sanitizer spilled all over it so she had to use a cardboard box to put all of her stuff in. yes, she carried that box around just like she would her purse.

dinner was at Chedder's... which was amazing. kenz's new favorite place. then the gang headed back to the dorms to watch the classic movie "good burger". now strumming a little guitar and going to bed. sleeping in tomorrow however long we feel like it!

well today was a pretty eventful day. scary and fun. Kenzi and the rest of the auditorium and back stage managers had orientation in the morning along with running around town in the big 15-passenger CIY van buying items needed such as rubber bats, sweatbands, old t-shirts, teddy bears... and by far the favorite purchase, the silk nighty. Don't ask what all of this is for. Emily was over at Memorial Hall with the other station managers setting up the merch booths for tonights preview show.

We got off work around 3:30 and had to be back at 5:30. Guess what we did in those 2 hours of free time? that's right, slept. It was so hard to get out of bed after that.

The preview was so awesome. The Jordan Howerton Band led worship--fantastic. There was a pretty good turn out as far as attendance goes. Afterwards we spent hours tearing down the set so that it could be packed up and sent on its tour later on. We were caught by surprise when our boss, Chase, told us that we had to leave because there was a big storm coming through. Then it was decided to wait it out for the next 20 minutes. Well... then the tornado sirens went off--sending Wesley into a panic because he claims "We don't have these in Cali!" Once we were finished tearing down we all ran through the rain (of course Em and Kenz held hands) and then went back to the dorms.

Everyone was STARVING so we decided to order pizza. We figured the delivery guy wouldn't mind driving through the monsoon too much. After many rounds of cards were played and an hour had passed, we all had our fill of pizza. You would have thought that we hadn't eaten in weeks. 4 pizzas gone in about 10 minutes. no joke. Chase is letting us come in an hour later in the morning. Knowing that and having full bellies, this makes us very happy. More packing tomorrow!

Big day today. Woke up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee thanks to Cecilia--our new coffee maker. Mmmmm... The task for the day was to pack the Tennessee truck, which is much more complicated than it sounds. As auditorium manager for TN, Kenzi was in charge of making sure everything was packed by the end of the day. She still has all of her fingers after using the table saw. For those of you know how accident-prone she is.... well you know this was probably not the best idea.

When lunch came around, team somethin somethin seemed to be sucked into some type of time warp because before we knew it, Crystal announced it was 1:00 (our lunch curfew was 1:15). Our food hadn't even come out yet. So.... we were about half an hour late. Considering this was our tour that was being loaded, this was the worst day for this to happen. We're still confused as to how an hour passed without us knowing. Poor Emily didn't really care for her Showering Rama--which was technically peanut butter-covered chicken.

Em also had a big day because she was in charge of getting all of the merchandise for the Station in the truck. Overall, I would say that our team was clutch today. The combination of our 1am run to taco bell and the extremely long day, Kenzi was forced to take a 3 hour nap when she got home from work... while Emily decided to be an overachiever and go running in this awful heat...

Every day we are learning more about what it means to be Kingdom Workers and although our jobs may not be the most glamorous, everyone is important in furthering the Kingdom. Our spiritual gifts were given to us for a reason and it's really neat to find other gifts that we didn't even know we had until we got here. It's so exciting to see God's plan unfold before our eyes as we encounter the Spirit and grow closer to God through fellowship with each other.

Tomorrow we set up and train for the worship session taking place tomorrow night. It's basically so that we can see the final setup and practice for the tours that we are going on. Exciting stuff!