Anchorage

Welcome to Alaska! I have been in Anchorage now for a little over a week. I am getting settled in and starting to feel at least a little at home here. It has been a great first week. I started work at the church at the end of last week and I am absolutely loving it. The staff there is incredible and I feel really blessed to be a part of it. They have made me feel really welcome and a part of the staff already. I am also really excited about starting to work a little more with the youth. I have been to the youth group the last two weeks and have been meeting a lot of the youth. A few of them invited me to go hike up Flat Top on Thursday. We made it to the top and went sledding down a huge steep snowdrift (see video below). It was freaking awesome and I can’t wait to do a lot more hiking and stuff throughout the summer! I am also ready to start taking on more leadership with the youth ministry as well. It really is a sweet situation I am coming into though. The previous youth guy is still here through the summer to help with the transition, plus the church hired another new youth director with me to work together, plus 3 interns for the summer. So right now there are 6 people on staff working with youth. It has been a little hectic with 5 of us showing up here in the last week or so, but it is making it really great for me to get eased in. I have also met some cool folks my own age, which is a big relief after moving 3000 miles away from all of my friends. The church has also provided me a house to stay at the first few months I am here, living with a family from Trinity. It is slightly weird living with people I don’t really know yet, but it is a free place to stay (with lots of free food!) and they are pretty cool folks, so I can’t really complain. I really do love it up here and things just make sense in life right now. It’s great. I’m sure I will have tons of sweet stories throughout the summer, so I will try to keep you pretty well updated.