Yesterday marked the end of the summer internship for 4 of the 6 of us. Everyone packed up their things and headed off their separate directions, some only for a few days as band camp starts on Friday. For one of us he headed home for a few weeks before heading back down to Tennessee. It was a long day for all of us and while tears were not shed it was definitely sad to watch everyone head off.

This summer has been an amazing experience with some incredible people and I am beyond blessed to have experienced it!! There have been changes to the team throughout the summer, but all have been good. We started out with seven, of whom five already knew each other. The two that were new to the team were newlyweds. They were welcomed to the team and we enjoyed getting to know them. Unfortunately, some things just didn't work out and they headed home. While this relieved some stress and made things run smoother, it also added stress to everyone's shoulders as we took on more work and shifted jobs around. This change also meant that some things that everyone thought would be happening didn't happen. While some disappointment was felt, we took it in stride and got excited about the things that were coming up! We ended up having a sixth team member for the past couple weeks and it has been absolutely wonderful!

Without further ado, here is a short overview of the summer via pictures...
(More to come in the coming weeks!!)

Intern Orientation at Streator Baptist Camp

This picture is from our first weekend together as an intern team in June. We were at IBSA's Intern Orientation at Streator Baptist Camp. Everyone in the picture served as an intern through IBSA in various parts of Illinois. The couple of days that we spent there provided all of us an opportunity to get to know these amazing people that were doing the same things as us for the summer. It was truly a blessing and I have enjoyed keeping up with many of them via Facebook. They are an inspiration!

Illinois Super Summer 2013

This picture is from our next big thing from the summer. We went to Illinois Super Summer and we were Family Leaders for the various schools. This was a challenging week for us as none of us had really done anything like that previously. We went into the week not knowing entirely what was going to happen, but we were excited none the less. While the week was stressful at times, this week was such an amazing experience for all of us! Sometimes it is experiences like this that show us just how much we have to left to learn. Speaking on a personal note, this week was definitely a huge blessing to me and really showed me some things that I need to work on in my life with Christ. It was an incredible week! (A post will be coming soon about this camp!!)

Hanging at the beach in Chicago  (...with Joel according to Facebook)

Just a day at the beach

One of our next big things happened to be having the IBSA All State Youth Choir come and hangout for a weekend. We took them to Chicago and took them on tours around the city, then we ended the day with an ultimate frisbee tournament at a sports complex here in town. They then sang at Journey on Sunday morning, followed by Auerlio's for lunch. You may be wondering what this has to do with the above pictures... The tour we took them on happened to be a bus tour. The tickets for the tour happened to be valid through Monday, so us interns took a trip to the city. We hung out at the beach for a few hours, grabbed dinner at Giordano's and ended the day on the night tour. It was a great day to just hang out and spend time with each other without having to do a bunch of work or be focused on other things despite being together. There's nothing like a long day in the city enjoying each other's company to make for a great day off!!

Kenan's Birthday

During the midst of the summer we got to celebrate two birthdays. Kenan's birthday and Kristin's birthday both happened to be in July within just a couple days of each other. Kristin and I, along with Rachel, made a birthday cake for Kenan!

Kristin's birthday was two days later and the guys made a beautiful cake for her!!

Kristin and her cake!! (Picture courtesy of Kenan Keller)

Getting to celebrate their birthdays with them this summer was awesome!! It is such a blessing to know them both and be able to share those special moments with them! Such an awesome time with amazing people :)

All 6 of us interns with the octopus!!

Our next big event came not long after. The day before leaving Bri came down to join us for the last couple weeks and to work with me for the next few. We left the next afternoon to head to Streator Baptist Camp for IBSA Co-ed Missions Camp North. Since Chad was camp director we were in charge of running the whole camp. The six of us were tribe leaders, we lead worship for all the services, filled various other roles from set up and tear down crew to registration and night time game coordinators, and Kenan ran sound and did tech for the week along with running recreation time. Prior to camp Malik worked with a lady from our church to fix and edit Bible studies and missions lessons for the different age groups at camp. The camp ranged from 2nd graders all the way up to those who just graduate high school. It was a long week that put us all in places that put us outside of our comfort zones. We were stretched in various ways throughout the week, some good and some not so good. Yet at the end of the week we had to say that it was an incredible experience!!! Personally, I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else. It was a huge blessing to share with the students and serve God in all of the ways I did.
Also, that thing that Bri is holding in the picture...that's an octopus. Yes, you read that right...an octopus. We played a variation of ultimate frisbee at camp using an octopus. It was quite hilarious!!

Kristin and I at Art Camp (Courtesy of Trent Walstra)

Our last big thing for the summer was an Art Camp that Journey hosted. It was a five day art camp with an art show this past Sunday morning. One of the ladies at church is an art teacher at one of the local schools and she taught the children this past week. They learned about various artists and were given the chance to imitate the techniques of the artists. We had 4th-6th graders in the morning and 1st-3rd in the afternoon.  It was an awesome week and a great outreach for our church into the community! It was tiring but a great experience!!

So there is a quick overview of the summer, some details were omitted and hopefully I will get a chance to share them in the coming weeks. I just wanted to right this post to wrap up the summer with everyone here. We are an interesting group, but we all bring different things to the table and that has been huge this summer. It was such an awesome opportunity to work with Andy, Malik, and Kenan again. Last summer was awesome but this summer was amazing!! I couldn't have asked for a better chance to get to know them better and spend more time with them. They continue to teach me new things and I am blessed to have them as friends, and as brother figures when they pull the card out. God knew I needed them in my life and He has continued to use them in positive ways. Such an incredible blessing to know them!!! And getting to work with Kristin and Bri has been awesome. Yeah, we knew each other at school but spending so much time together we haven't got to know each other in different ways. I can definitely say that they are both absolute blessings to me and I look forward to getting to know them better throughout the school year!!!

I can't say enough about each of them, as that would take forever, but I can say that I can't possibly put into words how much of a blessing they have all been to me! They have seen me on my not so good days and on the days where i'm just happy as can be. They have seen me be lazy and totally checked out and they have seen me pull crazy antics out of nowhere. This summer definitely proved to bring me out of my shell and they got the chance to see that first hand...whether they wanted to or not. :)

I pray that God will guide their paths and lead them to do more incredible things for Him! I pray that God has His hands on them through everything they go through this school year, whether it be good or bad. May He provide everything they need. May He give them peace in every situation and joy as well. I pray that He uses each of them to share His love and grace to everyone they come in contact with. May He bless them and use them to bless others.

While this post could go on for days, I will wrap it up on this last note. I couldn't have asked for a better summer with better people. I was right where I was supposed to be with the people I was supposed to be with. It was truly a wonderful blessing and I am glad I get the chance to share about it! My words are many but those that are spoken are jumbled at best. Like we've said all summer....Words are hard. Words are very hard.

Thank you all for an incredible summer!!

Sincerely,
Shelbi

Still Doing Office Work At 1am

Hey everyone!!
I know that I said I was back and would be posting more just a couple weeks ago, but then things got kind of crazy around here and all of us interns have been going non-stop for about three weeks.

I am definitely serious now about being back and posting about the summer.

This coming week will definitely be much slower paced and therefore allow me some time to work on writing.

I have a lot to share with you all and can't wait to do so!!

God has been doing some incredible things!

So as I am sitting in the office attempting to finish up the Worship Folder for today's church service, I will leave you with this lovely picture of the awesome intern team I have been working with!!!

I will be sharing more about them soon as well :)

Malik, Kristin, Bri, Kenan, Me, & Andy at Co-ed Missions Camp

Also, props to anyone who can figure out what Bri is holding in this picture!

I will share exactly what it is in an upcoming post!!

I highly doubt that anyone will guess, but you are welcome to take a shot :)

Anyways, it's back to work for me!

Goodnight everyone!

Number 1 & Number 2

Hey y'all!!

Sorry about being MIA the past week, week and a half or so.

I have been busy with the start of my Mission Internship with my church.

I have thought several times about writing a post but usually by the time I do I am too tired to do so.

So this post is going to be an overview of the past week.

Some of you may know that I am doing a Missions Internship with my church.

Well, the last weekend of May was the beginning of that.

I spent last week doing some prep work for the rest of the summer before the rest of the team arrived.

Andy also started the same time as me.

Everyone else arrived in town last Thursday.

We went to Aurelio's as a team with Pastor Chad & his family, as well as our Connection Pastor Kyle & his family.

We went over the basic rules & guidelines for the summer, as well as basic position expectations.

It was a fun night to get to know each other and hangout.

Friday we all left and went to Summer Missions Orientation in Steator.

We spent Friday evening hanging out with the other summer missionaries & getting to know each other.

On Saturday we had training, which consisted of several sessions of people talking about different aspects of being a missionary, leadership qualities, and discipleship practices.

It was a long day and we got restless by the end of the day, but we got to know a lot of really awesome fellow college students who are serving as summer missionaries across the state.

This is a group picture of all of the IBSA Summer Missionaries.

The seven of us our sort of spread out throughout the picture.

We got to talk with a lot of our fellow missionaries & I have to say that the above group is full of some amazing college students who really have a heart to serve God through missions.

I am blessed to have had the opportunity to spend a couple days with them!!

One of the highlights of the weekend was the spur of the moment jam session in the cabin lobby.

We had a couple guitars and a cajon.

One of the guys even had a small amp with him!
We played some random songs but the majority of what was played & sung was worship music or contemporary Christian songs.

We added our own twist to a few and they turned out pretty cool.

The jam session lasted a couple hours and it was definitely an awesome evening!!

To say the least, a lot of these college students are crazy talented!

Upon getting back the seven of us here have been busy getting into the swing of things.

We have done a lot of office work, which includes scheduling summer events, planning all of the details, and contacting the right people for everything.

I am working with Students (6-12th grade) along with Malik.

So we have been working on planning events for them and connecting with all of them.

We have really knocked out quite a lot the last couple days and I am excited for everything that we are working on!

I wish I didn't have to leave this coming weekend, but I know that Malik is going to do a great job of making sure that things get done and done well for our first big event of the summer!!

Overall it has been an awesome week with the team!

We have had lots of time to get to know each other and most of the time it seems as though we've been friends for much longer than this short week.

It is such an awesome thing to see how we are all working together and how God is already working through all of us both as a team and on an individual basis.

I have no doubt that this is going to be an awesome summer & that God is going to do some awesome things!!

I am getting more and more excited the farther we get into the summer!!

While I would love to keep writing about the amazing team that I am blessed to be a part of, I have to be up early in the morning, so I am going to end this post here.

I will try to post at least once a week with updates on what happens and hopefully some pictures!

But for now, Goodnight!!

Throwback Thursday & Summer Interns

Hey everyone!!
I feel bad for not posting much this past week but it's been a little busy.

There's been lots of prep work to get ready for the summer intern team that is here for the summer.

Today happened to be the big day.

All of the summer interns are finally here!!

I have been anxiously awaiting this day for weeks now.

With all of the rain and crazy weather we have been having I am glad everyone made it safely.

It was so awesome to get to connect with Kenan as I hadn't seen him in almost a year.

It was good to spend some time talking with Kristin since we haven't seen each other in almost a month.

It was even better finally getting to meet 'The Married Couple' as they have been dubbed at church.

Andrew and Anna got here this afternoon and it was great to get to meet them and talk with them.

I am really looking forward to getting to know them better!

We went over rules and guidelines for the summer, as well as what our responsibilities will be each week.

It is going to be very different from last summer but it's still going to be great.

I'm looking forward to everything that we have planned.

It is going to be awesome to see how God uses all of us this summer!

The fact that all the interns got here today made for a perfect Throwback Thursday post.

It was only about a year ago but so much has changed since then.

This was the mission team, plus a few others, from last summer.

This was an awesome group of interns, all of whom I am still friends with.

They were such a blessing and we all learned a lot about ourselves and each other through everything.

God knew exactly what He was doing when He put that group together and I have no doubt that all of us on the intern team for this summer where put together for a reason.

What that is I don't know.

However, if it is anything as awesome as last year (hopefully much more awesome), then it's going to be an awesome summer and a true blessing.

I have no doubt that God has big plans for this summer and I look forward to seeing what they are!!

Here's to an awesome summer full of adventures, relationship building, personal growth, and spiritual strengthening!!

Send Me

Summer just got over about a month ago, or a little shorter than that for some of us.

You would think that I should be focusing on today.

Yet I am spending time figuring out what I am going to do next summer.

I think I already have it figured out, which may seem kinda crazy to some of you out there.

But I do not think it is crazy.

Rather I think that it is a good thing that I feel lead to what I am doing next summer this far in advance.

I can more adequately prepare and make sure I am spiritually ready for it.

It releases the stress of trying to figure out what I will be doing in April.

I can relax and just spend time with God getting myself ready to face whatever challenges may come my way.

For those of you who may be curious as to what I am planning on doing this coming summer, I will give a quick overview.

I am planning on staying here in Illinois and doing missions work with my church.

This can, and most likely will, include various aspects of ministry.

From office and administrative, to kids and students ministries.

If I can figure out some instrument stuff, then quite possibly some music stuff will be in there as well.

The specifics are yet to necessarily be nailed down, but they will be the closer the summer gets.

Now some of you may be asking why I would want to spend my summer doing this.

Simply put...I feel like God wants me to.

It isn't anything complicated that requires a ten page answer.

I just simply feel called to do it.

To some this may seem odd, yet to some it may seem like a tremendous opportunity.

I see it as another step in my journey with God.

He has a plan for this coming summer and I have no clue what it is, but I am extremely excited to find out!

I could not ask for a better opportunity.

God has opened a door for me and I feel blessed to be able to walk through it.

 

I feel that although I feel called to partake in this opportunity, I am going to be faced with many people who are greatly opposed to the idea of my staying here and doing this.

I have an idea of who some of these people are.

At first I do not think that they will necessarily approve, but I think that eventually they will be okay with it.

I just do not want to back out of this because of what people think, because ultimately it is God who will grant the ultimate approval for this opportunity.

If I feel like God has called me to do this, then I am going to do it.

It may upset some people or even make some people blow me off because they don't understand.

But I'm not supposed to be pleasing people, but rather God.

I may feel sad that people may feel negative feelings toward this, but I feel like if it is in God's will I will feel at peace about this decision that I have made.

 

I am just going to be continuously praying that God will provide whatever is necessary.

I am also praying that He will give me confidence in this decision as I move forward in the application process.

I am trusting that this is where He wants me to be and that everything will work out for His purpose.

I am confident in His plan and am willing to follow where ever He may lead.