Hello family and friends,
Sorry it's been so long since you've heard from us. Life here is much busier than we anticipated. We arrived on Sunday, Aug 30 and were shown to our house/room. We spent the rest of the day meeting people and getting unpacked. They also treated us with a steak dinner that first night as a welcome! Not bad, eh? We hit the sack early because breakfast was at 6:45 (yeah, right) Monday morning with class beginning at 8:00 for all of us. The first few days were a blur of new faces, new schedule, getting to know our housemates, etc, etc, etc. We went to bed early because all the changes wore us out! Now we feel much more settled so I have a few minutes to tell you about our life.
The YWAM base is a few miles NE of Chico, CA down a very, very, very bumpy tar road. There are many springs in the area that have ruined the road. The road follows a mostly dry creek bed through the canyon between some mountains (don't think huge, Rocky Mountains!). The surroundings are mostly brown, dead grass and many trees with greenish/brown leaves. They can go for 6 months in the summer without a drop of rain...VERY different from MI! The center of the base is the hotel from the 1920's (see www.ywamchico.com). We have all our meals in the dining hall/banquet room of the hotel. We also have meetings, worship time, prayer time, some classes and coffee time in the hotel. There are many regular hotel rooms upstairs that are used for conferences and summer youth camps. There are a few larger buildings around the hotel where the younger DTS students live, the house we (Crossroads DTS) live in and a few cabins for speakers and such. Also scattered around are numerous tiny houses where the rest of the staff lives plus a bunch of tiny cabins for visitors (hint, hint). There are lots of trees on base and we are surrounded by mountains on three sides. It's really beautiful! There are a few flowers and bushes sprinkled around to add green to the place. There is an Olympic size pool which is very much in need of a new paint job if anyone is interested. Oh, yeah, the school is by the hotel along with tennis courts and a small playground. Definitely a place we could be very happy at for a long time!
Our schedule starts with breakfast every morning at 6:45, usually only Dan goes, the rest of us have cereal at our house. At 8:00 school starts for the kids and we begin with either worship time, prayer time or lecture. At 10ish (depending on the day) there is a coffee break at the hotel complete with coffee cake or some delicious, fattening treat. Then we have lecture again until 12:00. We meet the kids at the dining room for lunch all together and at 1:00 school resumes and we have lecture or other activities until 3:00. School is done at 3:00 so the first week we went swimming everyday after school. This week will be different...work duty begins. All students are required to work 2 hours a day during the week for the 3 months we are here. Dan is doing breakfast cooking/prep so he has to be in the kitchen at 5:45 am M-F. Ugh, not for me but it's what he wanted. I was assigned to grounds so I'll be helping to weed flower beds, mow some lawn, rake leaves and other outside duties. I'm glad I get to be outside but also nervous since it'll be hard work and the temps are predicted to be close to 100 again by Friday. I prayed that I would lose weight here, God is having me sweat it off! Dinner is at 5:30 and most evenings are free but they go very quickly since we go to bed earlier.
There are 5 other students in Crossroads with us and they are all around 50 yrs old. Karen is a widow from Colorado, Chick and Lynda are from Colorado and Frank and Denise are from Arizona. Frank and Denise have 5 grown children from previous marriages and now have 5 children together ages 5-12 and all 5 are autistic. They are gluten and dairy free along with a number of other food and environmental restrictions. We can barely tell that they are autistic, they have come along way in "healing". The oldest is Caleb, he's 12 and since they are all a bit delayed he is a perfect fit with our Caleb. Nathaniel and Josh play great with the younger boys. Unfortunately, they have one lone girl that is 10, she is really outnumbered. We live in a house with Karen and Chick and Lynda. It has a kitchen, dining room, family room, living room, laundry, 2 bathrooms and a bunch of big bedrooms with lots of bunk beds. We have a room with 2 sets of bunk beds pushed together, a big desk and a big closet. The boys room is attached to ours, they have 2 sets of bunk beds and a dresser to share. There is also a big front porch which I LOVE! We have plenty of space and so far sharing has been easy. Lynda actually said that our boys were 'so quiet and well behaved'. WOW! We said that school was tiring them out.
Stay tuned for more updates!!!
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