We have resurfaced from the underwater ocean of Summer in the USA!

Okay, we are back to real life!! We apologize again for the delay. I am sure you are beginning to notice that we aren't good at updating the blog when we are really busy. I know it's a lame excuse but it's the truth :-)

Many of you know that Chris and I work for an organization called Summer in the USA/Impact Alliance. "What is that?" you may be asking. Well, it is a language immersion program where high school students come over from the Basque Country for one month to live with American families and learn English. Part of their month here they attend a Young Life camp in eastern Oregon called Wildhorse Canyon for a week. Chris and I have been working as Area Directors this Spring under Bill and Jane Robinson who started the organization. There were 54 students who came to our area, 9 students were in Portland, and 20 were in Fort Wayne, Indiana for a total of 83 students (the most we've ever had). We find host families through local churches, which we call "home bases" and in our area we had 8 different home bases with 5-12 students at each base. Each home base creates a calendar with planned activities such as a welcome dinner, cultural activities, YL camp prep day/night, camp, Farewell Dinner and other various activities. Our real goal has been and is moving to Basque Country in October indefinitely to work as Summer in the USA workers.

To give you an idea of what we do, here are some of our responsibilities included this Spring/Summer: Plan, administer, and train the 8 Interns prior to and while the students were here with a 3 day training session and bi weekly discipleship meetings, Help the coordinators from each home base with trainings for their host families before the students got here/problem solving while students were here, Attend/help with the various home base activities with the students, host one of the Adult Helpers, Jon Larrea at our house, Camp/cabin leaders at Wildhorse (my favorite part :-)), hang out with students going for coffee, shopping, skate boarding, etc., helping the families interact/get to know their student and lots of other things.

Now, that the students have left, Chris and I have been able reflect and think about all of the GREAT conversations we've had with the students, formed legit relationships with some of the students, fun memories at camp, good times with the interns, and connecting with the families. It has been a "really hard at times that it makes you cry, really busy, laughing your head off because you're so tired and a SUPER fun" kind of a month. We were blessed with really rad students.We can't wait to get over to Basque Country to follow up the students from this year. I will post pictures of it all. Thanks for hanging in there with us.