So much love...

So it's been 2 years since the magic went down and I still love you guys and remember it like it was yesterday. I moved to Highland, UT with my family so....yeah...party time! haha just want you all to know that I'm thinkin about ya!

Badger Creek DVD

How can I get a copy of this priceless gem?

And also...

Who is going to be in Rexburg this coming fall? We should do fun things like knitting mittens or something. I actually don't know how to knit.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Letter From Elder Perkins!

I also have gotten a few emails from Jeremy. Here is one for everyone to read and enjoy:

Things over here in Chicago are awesome!!! I've been in the suburbs for about 3 months now but I served the first year of my mission in downtown chicago, i rode my bike around the sears tower, through little Italy and Chinatown. Little Mexico is sweet too, I got to ride public transportation inbetween and underneath the skyscrapers all winter long and go street contacting in Grant park over by Navy Pier. I've seen a lot of ghetto and had some interesting experiences, haha :). But had some great success too. There is no doubt that this is the Lord's work. Funny story though, they made me a zone leader a while back and part of that responsibility is to teach at zone conferences. So Last week at our conference, I drew a picture of the power pole on a chalkboard and told some of the experiences that we had and I related it to missionary work and how faith applies in the aspects of our lives. It went really well, I keep using all the old badger creek stuff that I learned as object lessons and analogies when I teach. Its been very effective. Badger Creek was an amazing place, I loved it! Did max ever finish that DVD of all the badger pictures? Would it be possible for me to get a copy of that?
Take Care ashley, Great to hear from you,
Love,
Elder Jeremy Perkins

Letter From Elder Kim!

I've been staying in touch with Abe through email for a little while now. Here is the last email he sent me. Sounds like he's doing really well:


What's also exciting is that we had a baptism. Let me tell you about it after a quick update.
All righty then. Well, the weather here in Toronto has been weird latley also. In the past week or more we have had a lot of rain. A lot more than last year. It'll be wierd, one moment it's sunny and nice the next it'll be pouring rain. For example. Yesterday there was only a 40% chance for rain then it rains all night. I'm not saying that rain is bad, but it does make missionary work a bit harder. Not to mention it makes it more humid when it starts to evaporate. I hate humidity. Well, this week has been a little eventful. Towards the beginning of the week it was normal missionary work, tracting, talking to people and such, then towards the end of the week is where it starts to get interesting. One of our members was moving and they asked for our help, to make a long story short we helped for a long time. Then the next day we had to do a softball practice with our branch because we had a stake softball tournament thing on saturday the next day, and that took a whole evening. Then on saturday we had the tournament in the morning which lasted all morning, and the sad part was it got rained out. We got one game and a half in before the stake leaders in charged cancelled it due to rain. But, it was all fun.Then on Sunday, we had a baptism!Lim, Duk Nam. He's super sweet. He's a older guy who really was looking for the truth. The baptismal service went great and the members and he all talked and fellowshipped eachother very well afterwards, which I'm super happy about. So funny thing at the baptism. We filled up the font to the water level we needed, but the plug wasn't functioning properly so water was leaking out. By the time I got in the water with Bro. Lim the water was only up to my thighs, not even groin level. So that means a low dip for him. I'm glad to say that it all worked out fine in the end. Even though it was a low dip we only had to do it once. So that was our week. Pretty good. Now we have to go out and find new investigators. Yay.Oh I guess some other updates. G20 is here in Toronto right now and what's going on here is a lot of bus and subway routes and a whole block downtown have been locked down for security measures and so traffic is horrible at times. Since we can't listen or watch the news as missionaries we here that there are a lot of protests going on there and a lot of people arrested. We are avoiding having to go down that direction because we dont want to wast all that time in the car. Another thing, I heard that korea and US is out of the world cup. Oh well. Well that's all for me. Hope you have a great week. Hope you enjoyed. Write back!
Loves, Elder Kim
ps. hope you had fun at badger creek. I miss that place and all you guys. I got our badger dvd slideshow a few weeks ago and i got to watch it. Needless to say, it was awesome!!


Not only did I get this, he also sent me pictures! Yay! Still the same facial expressions...

I LOVE getting mail.

Badgers, I don't know if you're familiar with the Missy Higgins' song, "Going North," but it's been running through my head a lot lately. I report the the MTC this Wednesday and I am STOKED! Good things to come. I love you all and I'd love to hear from you. Write me and give me updates when you get the opportunity--better yet, just make the opportunity to write. My address info. of on the side here, and on facebook too.

I'm learned so much from you all and I wish you all the best. Seriously.

If you want, my mom is setting up a blog for my weekly mission letters. The link to the blog is listed on this page, and the url is:
http://hermanastevens.blogspot.com/
...ha. I just realized the link is Hermana Stevens (hermana is sister in SPANISH). That's cute that my mom thought she knew where I was going :)


KRD 999 clear...well, just for a while

My Many Husbands

I've been reading everyone's stories and I was starting to reminisce. (I want you to all know that I spelled that right on the first try, very proud of myself) Willie inspired this post with her last post. I don't know why but it seemed like the participants were obsessed with dating and marriage. Must come with the age; although I'm pretty sure that isn't what I was always thinking about when I was 15. Maybe that's why I'm not married yet...hmmm, something to think about.
I'm pretty sure I had a participant ask me if I was dating or married to one of my fellow counselors every single week. Willie reminded me of the time when one of her participants asked her if I was dating Max. When she asked them why they came to that conclusion they said "well she was sitting by him at lunch..." Oh dear.
But the best one by far is when I was on group with JP. When we were setting up our handcarts one of our participants came to me and asked me why I wasn't sharing a handcart with JP. After a question like that I was obviously worried about this boy's thought process so I asked him why we would do that. He answered with, "well aren't you guys married?" I quickly told him no and without even pausing he then said, "then you're dating right?". Once again I told him no but I don't think he believed me. Because it must have been so obvious to everyone in the camp that we were dating. We talked to each other, we could laugh together, and I'm pretty sure we sat by each other during a lot of the meals. So according to their definition if we weren't married then we were obviously seriously dating. I guess we can't blame the participants for thinking that we were all married; it only makes sense, right?

Love Is In The Air...Dang It.

Ok, don't be fooled by the title of this message, I am all for love except when it is between participants. So, I was talking to a counselor I worked with in 09, by the way 09 was fine and all but 08 was great ;), any way we got on the subject of sleeping habits. He talked about how he never would wake up in the night at Badger, and how is kids probably ran a muck during his pleasant slumbers. This statement reminded me of the first week of OYA when I was on group with JP.
We had two lovely kids in are group named Jessica and Clayton, yes this memory is so vivid I can remember the names of my kids. They had been flirting with each other all week, and it was known they liked each other, but nothing that me and JP couldn't handle until Wednesday night. It was probably 1 in the morning and I had to go to the bathroom, so grudgingly I got out of bed. I was at Gully camp and for some reason still had not been able to locate the secret outhouse up there, and was required to trek up to Mountain Man. As I was just a few steps from camp I noticed a strange object on the ground, it was large and resembled two people. You guessed it there lying on a blanket was Jessica and Clayton. I was shocked. I quickly asked, "What are you two doing?", I admit I might have slipped into my "Willie Got Hit By A Bus" voice because I was startled by this discovery. Clayton responded, "just looking at the stars." Well, I calmed myself enough to quickly tell them that wasn't appropriate.
They then asked me what I was still doing up. I stated that I needed to use the restroom. JP was awakened at this point, and I left it to him to make sure they returned to their respective teepees. I continued to head to the bathroom, and tried to comprehend what had just happen. The best part of the story that once I got to Mountain Man outhouse I was so worked up I didn't even have to use it anymore.

Canoes and Shoes

So, I sat down at my desk today and slipped off my shoes and thought, oh how I love taking off my shoes. This thought reminded me of how we had to wear shoes in the pond, that rule never was a problem for me, I don't want to know what is on the bottom of that pond. :-/ Any who, my train of thought then turned to canoes and our canoe trip down the Teton River. I for some reason remember there being an abnormal increase in the mosquitoes population that day, a couple of tipped canoes, a lost lunch, and one Korean with a full body welt at the end of the day. I also remember Ashley, Mackenzie, and I being in the same canoe, and how we were so proud of ourselves we hadn't tipped are canoe the whole trip. Shortly after that moment I wish I would have knocked on wood, because lo and behold 2 seconds after our brief self appraisal we hit a strainer. This strainer cause are canoe to do a complete 180 in a vertical fashion. Thus, we were all wet, we were shocked and me slightly disappointed with the rivers cruel way of showing us it controlled our future till we were out of the water. I loved that trip and loved the adventure it provided.

Four-Wheeler Adventure

This is a very long post. Ye be warned.

Oh how I loved Badger’s yellow four-wheeler. I never volunteered to drive the Badger truck, and I only drove the vans two times over the whole summer; but the four-wheeler was a different story. I would always try to think of excuses to zip around the ranch on that bad boy. During the second week of OYA Jodi was GL and I was WCL. It was Thursday and the kiddies were heading up for the trek (which was also our first trek experience because it had snowed the week before). Sarah, Jason and I were uber-excited to get some of our tasks done while everyone was gone, but at Brother B.’s request, we reluctantly agreed to accompany OYA on its maiden trek voyage. We needed to be extra careful on this particular trip because the truck needed to take up all the food on the TREK TRAIL because the back road was too treacherous with all the snow.

My job was to take up the rear on the four-wheeler with extra containers of water. Nice! Long story short, I’d never seen the trek trail before and I was scared beyond all reason to drive the four-wheeler on those deep ruts. I also ended up staying overnight to help out with something. But the next morning I wanted to beat everyone back to the Ranch to get some last minute work crew jobs finished before clean-up. I asked Brother B. if I could take off on the four-wheeler, and with the go-ahead, I drove off alone.

I think the trek trail had one—and only one—fork in the road. When I got to that fork I couldn’t remember anything from the day before. So, being me, I naturally took the wrong road. I remember driving along a really unfamiliar path. There were these huge houses with the longest driveways leading up to them and tons of dogs barking at me. Finally I decided that I’d taken the wrong path and I started turn around. Now here’s when the problem arose. The road wasn’t wide enough for me to turn all the way around…and (I kid you not)…I’d forgotten how to put the four-wheeler into reverse. I know, stupid.

So there I was, this dumb 19-year-old girl in the middle of a dirt road on a four-wheeler deciding what to do. I didn’t know how to put it into reverse, so I thought I’d take my chances turning around on the tight road. That was a bad idea. Instead of making it full circle to head the other direction, I got about 180 degrees to my left before I drove off the road, over a small log, and into some Aspen. Great. My front two tires made it over the log before it ran into the tree. My thoughts at this point? “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Yeah, it was. I let out a big sigh and thought, “well, I guess I can push it back over the log facing the right direction…maybe…”

I put the four-wheeler in neutral and got off to push it.

Problem #1: The Aspen I drove into made it really difficult to push the four-wheeler because it was completely up in my face and just really in the way.

Problem #2: Those dogs that were barking at me were taking it a step further; literally. They were barking and had proceeded to walk towards me, and they didn’t look very friendly.

I pushed. I pushed and I pushed and I pushed that stinkin’ four-wheeler. “Come. On. MOVE!” I gritted my teeth and I kept sliding further and further back as I put my feet deeper into the ground until I was literally rolling around in the grass and leaves with an Aspen tree in my face. I began to panic as the dogs were getting uncomfortably close and growling. “Agg! Stronger!!!” I told myself. “It’s GO time!!!” I gave it another earnest push and I felt the front wheels start to go back over the log. “Yes, yes, yeeessssss, yeeesssssss!!!!” The four-wheeler finally came free and I jumped on to make my escape from the threatening dogs. “FREEDOMMMMM!!!” It felt so good to be driving back up the road to the fork where I messed up.

As I was driving away from the dogs two things happened. First, I remembered how to put the four-wheeler in reverse. This realization made me laugh out loud. Oh the irony. Second, I called Brother B. on the radio to see if the group had left the camp site. I didn’t have to wait long until they met me at the fork in the road. I still remember the look he gave me upon explaining that I’d gotten lost and that I didn’t want to explain why I was so dirty and why there were leaves in my hair. The look was a beautiful combo of confusion, frustration, amusement, and humor. A classic look I received more than once that summer.

My lesson learned from this incident? Never forget how to put the four-wheeler into reverse. I may not remember how to tie the knots for the rope courses, I may not remember the horses’ names, and I may not remember who was GL what week, but I can fervently assure you all that I remember how to put the dang four-wheeler into reverse!

Thunder and Lightning.

I just had a random memory today of one night on the weekend when a thunder storm rolled over the valley. We got chairs and sat them out side of the bathrooms under the roof. I don't remember specifically what we talked about but I do remember the simple pleased feeling I had at the amazing display we were given and the good company.