The Month of October

I wrote this post a long time ago, and saved it, but never got it up…so here it is!

Taylor Invite:

The first weekend of October, Emily Kieser and Whitney Stickling and I headed over to Taylor, Missouri for the invite. This is always a weekend to look forward too and I have never missed this weekend since I started going about four years back. This year was vastly different, though. Before, I would come into the fellowship hall and only see new faces. It was my mission to meet as many new people as possible and get to know new friends, but I’d never been one of those who already knew people. Well, this year, at one point I looked around the big room and realized, I know just about everyone’s name or at least where they were from or what group they were associated with. So, instead of getting to know as many new people as possible, this Taylor invite, I hung out with a smaller group of some friends I had gotten to know this summer: Anneliese Hoerr from Phoenix, Ben Lindberg from Georgia, Dallas Haerr from Taylor, and Emily. What a blast it was to stay out late at the 18 Wheeler (a quaint little truck stop) trying to have a good conversation but all being too hyper for it. The only problem with the Taylor Invite this year was: in the back of my mind, I was constantly taking notes for College Weekend, and by the end of it, I was realizing how much work really goes into these things.

Morton Invite

The next weekend was busy. That Friday was an AMAZING Bible study given by Ken Hoerr on Memory verses. We were each given a stack of cards of verses to memorize each week (and I have been faithfully doing just that.) It was such a blessing to see the young group after the Bible study was over, as everyone was still hungry for God. We ended up continuing a discussion for probably thirty minutes more. Then, even as we broke for a snack, around the room everyone was talking about God. Well, it was only a matter of time before David got out a guitar and we sang out one the porch. I couldn’t stop smiling after that Bible Study.

Saturday was the Morton invite. The only problem was, I was also invited to hang out with a group of friends that I spent all summer with that I hadn’t seen in a long time since they all moved to ISU. This sort of thing has been a real conflict for me for a while. It seems as if there is always several things to attend in one night and no matter where you go, you are missed elsewhere. Well, in this particular situation I was able to make an appearance at both, which isn’t my first choice. It’s like you only get to enjoy half of everything, but whatever. The Morton Invite was small, but we had fun as we headed over to Timber Ridge Home for the Handicap for our service project and played games with the residents. I left before supper to go to Bloomington. There we played some frisbee, then went to Sarah Sceggel’s apartment at the Crossings (which she wasn’t even there) to have hamburgers and hang out. After supper we sat in the living room and just talked for a long time until someone suggested we go for a walk. So a group of about eight of us went for a 2 mile walk to the ISU campus a 11:30 at night. Part of me wonders what were  we thinking, but part of me is glad we did it. It was unbelievable to see what a university is like on a Saturday night. The crazy stuff you see in movies is real! There was a party in almost every third or fourth house we passed and the people walking around…oh my. Oh, and don’t worry, we had several guys with us in our group. I think we were safe.