Tuesday, August 22, 2006

i did it!!!

well, i finally did it!!! i bought my plane ticket to ecuador!!! mi pais!! :) ahhh, the bliss! the beauty!! i forget how much fun it is to buy plane tickets until i actually do it. i got sick of playing chicken (i know i already used that phrase once today, but it is kind of the most accurate description of this online-plane-ticket-purchasing thing that happens between someone and the online travel pages) and i just sucked it up and paid the $739. which is better than i was prepared to pay, so it's okay.... man, it will have been FIVE YEARS since the last time i was there!! and now sofia can stop worrying that i will blow off her wedding! ;)
and!!
the best part of it is......... (drumroll please)....



I GET TO FLY BACK WITH SOFIA!!!
yay! i get to be sofia's travel buddy that day because (for some odd reason), the barold is flying with a different airline... and i even got the seats right next to her seats, as any good stalker would do... unless, of course, she gave me incorrect seating information, as any good i'm-being-stalked-er would do.... hmmmmmm, i guess we'll see. but either way, i get to accompany the bride back to this country! what an honor! :)

oh boy, i'm excited!! :)

Monday, August 21, 2006

who am i kidding?


i just like posting pictures on this thing... it's fun.

so i thought i would put up a picture of my NEW brother-in-law. my sister has been married now three weeks... and i got this thing kind of after her wedding and so i didn't really write anything about it. i will just say that she was a beautiful, beautiful bride, and matt was classy enough to wear an orange shirt on his wedding day! (see? that's why he's let into the family. that and that one time when carrie and i were driving all over spokane picking up stuff before the wedding and matt called to ask about some detail, but then wanted to stay on the phone just to throw around funny banter.)

anyway
i'm sure i've told most of you this already, but the reception food was a PIG ROAST. and let me tell you, i think it was quite possibly the best bbq pork i've ever had in my life... and they didn't even use the sauce that is the boss!! (the other best bbq i've had was that bbq brisket from that one place in that one town in iowa where we stopped on the way back from the onething this year). wow, i just realized how appropriate it is in multiple facets that it's called "the onething."

so yeah. i went to mad city church on sunday after the service here in fort atkinson, and it was the day that they were commissioning the group that is going to plant the new church in milwaukee--"brew city church." and it was awesome because one of the guys is a msoe graduate, and he majored in some sort of physics or something, you could tell, because he was describing the church (in the broader sense) and the fellowship of believers in kind of mechanical terms--terms that made sense in his head. and it was so stinking awesome because he did it with such passion!! totally geeking out. it was AWESOME. you know when you really just get a glimpse of how God reveals Himself to someone using the specific way that their mind works? like how you get a glimpse into someone's relationship with God and the way that He just reveals Himself into the unique heart and mind that He has given them? and then you see them put it into words? (plus i totally just love it when people geek out. and somehow he reminded me of aaron weiss of mewithoutyou.
and then this OTHER guy was explaining the values that God had impressed upon them in this endeavor to plant this church, and holy moly, was this guy a PREACHER. it was awesome. the fire of God was just coming out of his mouth, and the Spirit just filled the room. the FIRE. that's what i long for!
anyway. dereck was at church, too, and i don't know if God put any of the same impressions upon his heart as He did on mine, but either way, it was a wonderful morning.

okay. that was quite the ramble. i pray that the peace of GOD which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. man, God is good.

Friday, August 18, 2006

and here....

are some of my favorite people in the world. where are we? the merrimac ferry!! which apparently must be one of my new favorite places in the world... ;)
this is brittany, her mom (and my old babysitter) tricia, anne, me, karina, evan, bea, and holden. i love those youths!!!
and...!
i thank god for the person who invented the timer on the camera! :)

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

p.s. NICE GAUCHOS, KELLI!! (see previous post ;) )

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

a classic case of "go figure"

















so of COURSE plane ticket prices jumped up within the last four hours. why wouldn't they? ugh!

and of COURSE this won't let me publish my pictures to my blog without hassle... why would it? ugh!

ha ha.

on a much more pleasant note, happy birthday nate!! we are the same age for a week and a half!

hmmmmm... i've never really liked "titles" so much...
















so i thought i would write another little hello... i am somewhere on the verge of buying my plane ticket to ecuador for barry and sofia's wedding. everyone was telling me i was crazy in thinking that ticket prices would drop, but a big BOOYAH to you! now i just need to pick my return date which, as anyone who knows me even in the slightest can imagine, is a rather overwhelming factor (ie "decision") to make.

so instead of making the large online purchase, i thought i would write and say that i had the pleasure this weekend of being visited by some of my favorite people in the world: the BAROLD, formerly of wisconsin and now (hopefully temporarily) and illinois cat, sandra, josh, isaac (who i am convinced is not all that fond of me even though "babies cry. don't feel bad. it's what they do."), and michael the stud gorter. the non-russows and i had quite the entertaining little self-portrait photo shoot as well (don't you just love digital cameras?).

and i also wanted to make mention of my week at the disciple farm (where i was buddied with the 18-year old named derek who is autistic). what a great week. i wish that i had some big reflection to make on it, but all i can do is thank god for having given me the opportunity. two observations i made were: 1) people don't give kids with special needs nearly enough credit. in SO many ways they just totally know what's up. and no matter how different we might think we all are, we all just completely need god's mercy to cover us in this life. -and- 2) in some ways, people don't expect enough out of young people (jr/sr high). i can't even explain to you how encouraged i was by seeing so many middle and highschoolers acting so lovingly and selflessly. it's totally in there. i suppose that's what happens when god comes to dwell inside you, though, right? it was a good week.

it was cool, too, because on the last day there was this barbecue, right? and there was like a parade that families were invited to and all that, so there were a lot of people there. so there were three different little tents set up as food lines to ease the whole line problem. and derek and i were in line (his family wasn't there), and he kept walking back and forth from where i was standing over to where the food was... some might have assumed he didn't understand the concept of lines, but i understood that he was totally just trying to figure out what kind of food they were serving. the kid was hungry. ha ha. and so then eventually he came back to me, kind of put his hand on my shoulder, looked past me a bit, and started saying something. and, see, he has a speech impairment and so it can be very difficult to understand him (in fact, throughout the week it had been quite the source of tension in some moments because i simply couldn't understand what he was trying to say to me and it made me feel awful and he would get frustrated), but i immediately knew what he was going to say. so i told him, "derek, there is the same food at all three tents; mr. rheinghans said that before we all got in line." and he looked at me and smiled and said, "how did you know what i was going to say?" and i asked him, "well, was i right?" and he said, "but how did you know?" and it was cool. because you might meet someone for five minutes and you learn a little something about them, but you get the privilege of hanging out with them for a week, and you can really get to know someone a bit. and so it was cool, because it was like hey; we're friends.

anyway, that was a long story i suppose. i will let you go. gotta go check out these plane ticket prices. god bless!!

Wednesday, August 09, 2006


so apparently everyone is wondering where i am... where is missy? has missy been kidnapped? is missy dead? has missy been attacked by the flying monkeys? how loved am i! to have such friends that care so much about me!! :)
well, truth be told, i am volunteering at a camp for children/youth with special needs all this week, and it is taking up all of my days. a challenging camp to help out at, but it is awesome! i am buddied for the week with an 18-year old autistic guy named derek. god is stretching me and teaching me, that is a certainty. i have two youth that are volunteering, too, and we are having quite the adventure!
so i will probably write more later, but i just wanted to let everybody know that i am alive and kicking (don't know if anybody even reads this thing or knows about it...), but i thank you for caring and i love you!! :)

Saturday, August 05, 2006

typie typie

so i totally just typed a whole post and then LOST it! unbelievable! i thought that didn't happen in the 21st century! i'm kidding. technology--UGH!
it wasn't anything exciting anyway--just me giving out the WINNING LOTTERY COMBINATION for tomorrow's POWERBALL!! and since i didn't even have it written down on a piece of paper, i guess we'll all remain poor. oh well, i quite think i prefer it that way anyway.

i ALSO said that i am currently uploading a bunch pictures to my new walgreens (go figure) account so that i can send some pictures down the street to some one hour development. which is pretty sweet. because despite how much i love my digital camera (and i DO love my digital camera), i like flipping through pictures. there's just something about it, you know what i'm saying?

so we took some middle schoolers to devil's lake on thursday. and it was the most beautiful day outside of the whole YEAR! i promise!! god's really got himself some handiwork over there; i don't care what the name of the stinking park is. we hiked at this "natural area" (for some reason i find that funny) called parfey's glen and it was BEAUTIFUL!! even the complainers loved it by the time we got in by all the rocks and boulders and the stream and stuff.
and!! this just in!! there is a FERRY that crosses lake wisconsin--and it's FREE! WHO KNEW ABOUT THAT AND DIDN'T TELL ME!? ha ha!!

and here's something i learned yesterday: little isaac, only four weeks old, is intent on becoming an avid reader and a percussionist! God bless him!! :)

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

just keep swimming


swimming, swimming!

my name is missy's sister, and i got married last saturday.
congratulations, carold!