"Have you ever been cliff jumping?"

"Yeah..."

"This is like that. You're going to be scared to death at first, but after you jump you're going to be so glad you did."

This was a recent conversation I had with a friend of mine about my summer plans. (This is also where my word of the year, fearless, started becoming vital to learn.) I'll tell you about all that, but first you need to know where it all started.



This past summer my family and I visited several national parks out west. Glacier, Yellowstone, and Rocky Mountain, just to name a few. I loved every minute of our ventures! Being in those massive mountains brought me to my knees in awe of my mighty Creator. While we were in Glacier we decided to attend a worship service that was being held in the lodge we were staying at. Initially didn't want to go, but I followed my parents wishes. We attended a small group of about 10 people or less that was led by three college-age kids. They led us in worship, read scripture, and one of them told how God has been working in her life recently. After the service I felt led to talk to them. I introduced myself to one of them and told him how I understood what it is like being in front of people (because I used to be on staff at a summer camp), and that I thought he did a great job leading worship. When our little conversation came to a close and I went to walk away I heard one of the girls from the three say "Hey!". I stopped, turned around and she started asking me all kinds of questions. How old I was, where'd I go to school, and so on, After learning a little about me she strongly suggested that I apply to work with their organization next summer. This was the first time I had ever heard of "A Christian Ministry In The National Parks" or ACMNP.

ACMNP is an organization that works to share the gospel with visitors and staff of national parks. They put on worship services on Sunday mornings in the parks and work to minister to the visitors. When you are involved with ACMNP you live and work in a national park earning a paycheck, but during your time off you serve the people of the park.

After learning this, I returned to my parents and told them about the things these college student worship leaders had told me. I decided that I would pray about it and look into it more when I returned home. My parents thought that was a great idea. After much prayer and countless emails exchanged between one of the worship leaders I had met, I felt called to work with this ministry the following summer.

When I moved to a new town for college a lot of the friends I was making had been involved with ACMNP in some way. Which was also I God thing to be able to express my hopes and fears about the coming summer with seasoned veterans.

After applying for ACMNP, I quickly began to fear the unknown. Fear flying (because I've never flown before), fear of being alone (because I would be going by myself), and fear of funds (because travel isn't cheap). This is when my ACMNP veteran friend gave me the pep-talk that I started this story with. She compared this adventure I am about to embark on to cliff jumping. Which is possibly the best example to describe what this is like.

There were a few problems and I learned that the parks I wanted to go to weren't going to be able to take me. I was crushed thinking that maybe this wasn't what I was suppose to be doing after all. After about a week of talking to the organization and straightening things out I finally was placed...

As most of you know I live in the great state of Louisiana, which means that we get almost a whole week off from school for Mardi Gras. This break gives us college kids time to go adventuring and that's just what we did.

My friend told me about this place in Mississippi that is affectionately called "The Mini Grand Canyon". It is basically a big, deep pit of clay, sand, and loose gravel. Sounds "fun" right?...It was SO much fun! A group of about 30 of us went. We hiked most of the day all through the valley of the pit. It was such a great time to get to know some people a little better and definitely to build trust. At one point when I was climbing I had to fully rely on my friend to hoist me up onto a cliff, if not I would have fallen to my death no joke. Talk about a trust exercise!

With that said, I'm vowing to bring my camera more places, (so that I can get killer candid shots like this) and to make an effort to spend uninterrupted time with my favorite people. Which means putting the phone away and actually talking and listening to people.