Moab, Farewell, and Life in General

Today was Saxxon's (my cousin) "farewell" talk. He will be serving in the Maryland Baltimore Mission (he leaves Wednesday.) I am so excited for him! I think he'll be a great missionary--he has an awesome testimony that will help him show others how to come closer to Christ. (He's also really outgoing, and easy to talk to--so he's got that in his favor as well.)

We all went to

his house after church today and we saw a local celebrity there--can you tell who it is? I'm on the far left, my dad's next to me, the "celebrity" is next to him, then it's Craig, my brother-in-law. Suspense killing you yet?!? It's totally the chicken farmer off of Napoleon Dynamite! Haha--we wanted to take a

picture with him so we asked and he was happy to do it. He's an awesome guy.

Anyway, this weekend I went to Moab with my singles ward. We had a blast! The first day, we set up camp, ate dinner, watched a movie with a neighboring singles ward, and played some awesome card games. Most people got about 30 mosquito bites in the first couple of hours. ("Most" meaning everyone but me--I wear my deet religiously.)

The next morning, we hiked to Delicate Arch--it was beautiful! Every time I do that hike I am amazed by it. It gets my brain thinking really hard. This was the first time I have gone to Moab since I decided to major in Geoscience. I think it is amazing how many things I didn't notice before. By just having one year of schooling in this subject, my eyes have been opened to a whole new way of thinking. I am SO glad I was able to see all the formations--it brought my lectures to life! It was like a million lightbulbs turned on in my head and put the spotlight on all the things I learned. I love school. I love hiking. I love Moab.

Later that afternoon, we all got together and played volleyball. I had a spectacular time! It was really windy at first, then the dark clouds started rolling in. We kept playing even when we heard the crashing of thunder and the sparks of lightning. We didn't even quit when the sky opened up and started pouring gigantic raindrops all over the soft dry sand (which quickly turned to mud.) What can I say--it was awesome and there were about 18 people playing at the same time. All of us on the court at the same time. I LOVED it

.

Even a little bit later that day, it started raining again, then it turned to hail for a minute. I got an awesome shot of the hail that I will showcase below.

The next day was the river rafting trip down the Green River (I think) which was awesome. If the water wasn't super cold, I would've jumped in. It obviously was, though, so I just stayed in the raft and got soaked anyway. All along the way there were mini battles between all the rafts--I think our boat got the wettest. (It was fun!)

--Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it! (By the way, I haven't been knitting--so I'm sorry about the lack of knitting-related material. Maybe on the next post I will write about the bag I sewed with my friend--it's awesome.)

--Lindsay--