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Friday, August 8, 2008

Update by Randy!

I guess I've been slacking on my postings on here. There is quite a bit to catch up on so this one could be a little longer than usual.
One of the things that has been consuming our time lately is running. Hannah and I are both training for races on September 14th in Chicago. I will be running the half marathon and Hannah is going to be running the 5k. We have been training with Mark and Rebekah, some friends of ours here at Mooseheart. As part of that training we have been running in some local 5k's. The area where we live is pretty active and running is huge in this area. It seems like there is a 5k in the area just about every week. It's definitely been nice to be able to be more active. It's been a lot of fun so far, but 13.1 miles is still pretty intimidating. If anyone wants to come up on that weekend to cheer us on let us know!

Mark and I proudly wearing
our t-shirts from our first 5k,
the Windmill Whirl in Batavia.

Our group grew for the Viking Sunset
5k in Geneva. A couple of girls on campus
went with us and ran the one mile fun run.


A couple of weekends ago we were able to take the Oregon Home girls to Wisconsin Dells for a weekend of camping and waterpark fun! Special thanks to the Wisconsin Moose Association who paid for Mooseheart Day at Noah's Ark, the world's largest waterpark. We had a great time and it was just another example of the extreme generosity of the Loyal Order of Moose.
We were able to go camping, visit local shops, spend a day at the waterpark, and go to a drive-in movie. I really wanted to go bungee jumping while we were there but it didn't work out, maybe next time!


Trying on some pretty cool hats at one of the shops in Wisconsin Dells.








Hanging out at Noah's Ark waterpark.







Posing before the movie starts at the drive-in.
This coming Monday we are leaving for a home trip to the Green Bay area. While in Green Bay we will be visiting several Moose lodges. The Moose members always appreciate being able to visit with the students that are supported by thier financial generosity and commitment. We will also be going to a Packers game, (Hannah wants to wear our Colts jerseys but I'm not so sure that would be a good idea), going to the beach, and touring the Jelly Belly factory as well as visiting a few other local attractions. It should be a great chance for the girls to be able to have some fun before going back to school.
Speaking of school, Mooseheart school begins on August 2oth which means that our girls who have been visiting thier guardians for the summer will be coming back soon. Some of these girls left shortly after Hannah and I started here so we haven't had a chance to get to know them real well. We are also going to be getting a new girl into the home who we haven't met at all. This will put us to full capacity with 10 girls in our home for the school year. Please keep us in your prayers as these new relationships are formed.
In one of the last posts Hannah mentioned our desire to be able to give the girls a Bible translation that they would be able to easily understand. A few weeks ago one of the girls noticed me reading my Bible and started talking to me about it. She told me that she had a
Bible but didn't really read it because she had a hard time understanding it. She brought her Bible to me for me to see and even though it was a fairly modern translation it is very difficult for our girls who have no church background at all to make sense of what they read. Our students are also on average a year behind where they should be academically so that just adds to the problem. We just found out this week that Hannah's mom has ordered The Message paraphrase bible for each of our girls and want to thank her for that!
Once all of our girls are back we hope to be able to implement a bible study of some sort once a week. We have discussed purchasing some Nooma videos to use as part of this. If anyone has ideas of video or other materials that you think would be useful for this we would love to hear your thoughts. We are also excited about receiving our clearance to be able to drive the girls soon. We have to wait for the Department of Child and Family Services to approve us but once we have that we will be able to take our girls to church off campus every once in a while. We are praying that we will receive clearance soon!
Wow, this was even longer than I thought it would be! I will try not to take such a long break between posts next time!
-Randy-