A very Minnesotan summer.

As you may have noticed, I took a break from blogging this summer. I know, I know… I’m sorry. There were a number of reasons that I decided not to blog this summer, but that part isn’t very important. In any case, today is the last day of August and so it seems like a good time to begin blogging again. I’ve been at campus for 20 days now—20 crazy, stressful, overwhelming, amazing days. I’m still trying to process all that happened. Once I have processed things a little more, I will be posting about these last three weeks. Until then, I would like to give you a recap of my summer.

This summer, I…

Shot long exposure photos:

Spent time by the river:

Enjoyed Lake Superior:

Shot handguns, shotguns, and rifles with my family:

Shooting a milk carton at 300 yards

Had a Father’s Day picnic at Jay Cooke State Park in the freezing weather:

Shot bows with my dad and brother:

Went fishing with my family:

Watched the 4th of July fireworks:

Created a game with my extended family using giant marshmallows:

Shot photos of my cousin's wedding:

Spent a week as a counselor at one of my favorite places - Sand Hill Lake Bible Camp:

Old friend.

New friends.

My favorite boys.

 

Camped in western Minnesota:

Spent time with my cousin from Florida:

Had a photoshoot with a close friend:

Shot photos of my siblings:

It was an interesting summer. If nothing else, after a summer like that, I’ve never felt more Minnesotan.

So this is what moving is like.

Packing to go home was way harder and took way more time than I thought it would. I had to leave campus at 8 am Friday morning, and I spent probably 12 hours on Thursday packing everything up. About half of my stuff was going into storage in California and the other half was going home with me. I ended up having to go buy another duffle bag I had so much stuff. I don’t even know where it all came from!

My corner just after I had started packing.

There were a lot of people that I didn’t get to say goodbye to, but I guess I was kind of expecting that. A little before midnight on Thursday night, I took a break from packing to go get coffee with a friend of mine. I still had flex left (I had had $80 two weeks before the semester was over), so I paid for our drinks and we sat outside. We sat outside Commons and talked about anything and everything. I asked him what God had taught him during the semester, and I sat back and listened as he shared a bit of his heart with me. I was both challenged and encouraged by what he shared with me. When he was done, he asked me the same question. We went on to discuss how faithful the Lord is. Shortly after 1 am, he was getting tired and I still had packing to do. We walked back to our dorms and said a final goodbye.

I didn’t finish packing until 3 am, and then I slept until 5 am. I got up and ready, and a friend of mine brought me to my storage unit to pack away the rest of the stuff. I was flying out of John Wayne in Orange County, and at 8 am two friends of mine picked me up to take me there. I had a ridiculous amount of luggage. Luckily, I got to walk up to the Southwest counter with almost no waiting. When I put my newest duffle bag on the scale, the woman working said to me, “Umm, this bag is 22 pounds overweight. There’s going to be an additional charge.” Yep, that’s right—my bag weighed 72 pounds. “Don’t worry about it,” I replied, “I’m moving. There’s not much I can do about it.”

Once through security, I sat down and took a deep breath. I couldn’t believe that I was heading home. I called my mom to tell her I was in the airport, and I would call her again, once in Denver. I was unbelievably exhausted. In the last three nights, I had gotten a total of 10 hours of sleep. Once on the airplane, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I stayed awake long enough to make a drink order but not long enough to get it. Luckily, the guy sitting next to me was incredibly nice and had put it on his tray for me. When I woke up, he told me the drink was mine, and I thanked him profusely.

The rest of the day went by like a blur. Once in Minneapolis, I hugged my family, and we laughed at the ridiculous amount of luggage that I had.

It had been a crazy, busy, and stressful couple of days.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so sleep-deprived.
However, despite all of the madness, my last night in California was, well—kind of perfect.

The Great LA Adventure.

During finals week, some of my friends and I decided to travel into downtown LA and do some exploring. We were going to visit a few spots where the movie (500) Days of Summer was filmed, along with seeing a few other sights. Things didn’t go exactly as planned—parking was even harder to find than we expected and we couldn’t always find the place we were looking for—but it was a lot of fun.

By the end of the afternoon, we were starving. We decided to make one last In-N-Out run for dinner. We followed the GPS, which brought us to some random In-N-Out in a far-off part of LA. We didn’t really know where we were, but we really needed food, so we went inside. We then found ourselves to be the minority. Classic.

Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel sat here! Right here!

The crew.

Inside of the LA County public library.

The Bible Institute of Los Angeles used to be off to the left.

Irony?

Identity.

I had to create a video for my photo project using stills and an audio reel. I had an awesome idea for a video about identity, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make it work. Well, my dear friend Sarah went to work for me—she went to Mosaic and found three guys to take part in my video. With them, I had a total of three guys and three girls to be a part of the video. It was going to work out perfectly.

I gave each person five note cards. I told them to take the first four and write words that describe them—good or bad. On the last card, I told them to pick one word to describe who they are in Christ. The idea I was going for is that no matter how we describe our life—whether in a positive or negative way—it can sometimes cloud who God says that we are. Without giving too much away, please take a look at the final result:

Special thanks to Madeline, Hannah, Sarah, Will, Nathan, and Kent for all of your help. I couldn’t have done it without you.

SOS Numbers Video.

For a couple of weekends in May, the SOS numbers video was filmed. The video is an introduction to all of our leaders, and it is played at the SOS kick-off event. Our theme this year was an elementary school storyline. Greg, a crew leader who also filmed Mock Rock, was the one filming the video. I was interested in helping, so my main job was shooting production stills/behind-the-scenes.

The first weekend of shooting included an epic game of dodgeball, which we shot at a nearby elementary school. The kids got out of school as we were filming, and many of them gathered around to watch. They cheered for the two teams as we filmed, and afterward they came up to us and asked for autographs. It was so great.

The kids decided to copy the actors.

Charlie taking a serious hit.

The next weekend, two scenes were going to be filmed in a classroom. Greg had gotten permission to film in the elementary school, but he had to be there at 7 am. I didn’t really have plans for that day, so I told him I would come with and help him out however I could.

We arrived at the school bright and early, and I mostly stayed out of his way as he set up for the actors to get there at 8am. Filming was a ton of fun, and everyone looked awesome in kids clothes. We had two scenes of people come through and finished filming by 1 pm.

Greg pensive at 7 am.

It was Micah's birthday, so he got silly-stringed.

Besides shooting stills, I didn’t really do that much and often felt like I was in the way more than anything else. But I did remind Greg of things he told me to, and it was really fun to be a part of the filming. After we left the school, we stopped by CVS and Taco Bell. We took our food to go and sat on Emerson patio, unwinding from the long day of shooting.

A few bonus photos:

They were heading to school.