Summer Recap

  This post will recap things that happened this summer.  Some of those things will include Nationals, Youth Camp and much more.

  This summer started out in a very sad way.  In a city called Bismarck, about 110 miles south of Minot, a quiz tournament took place.  The results of this tournament made some of us take a deeper look at our life.  It made me realize that I could study just a tad bit harder.  Many of my former coaches know how hard I work.  The results of this tournament hinged upon one question...it ended up hurting us very bad.  Our feelings, pride and confidence were diminished in that loss to Bismarck.

  The good news was that the next day we took off for Oregon to enjoy our summer vacation.  we arrived in Hubbard on Monday night after driving straight through.  We had a fun vacation with our family.  It was great to see them and not our quiz cards.  We also enjoyed going back to Bethel.  Here is a link to our family vacation photos.

  We got back from Oregon on Friday night and were able to watch some fireworks in our church parking lot as we arrived at our house.  Sunday night we took off for Family Camp to enjoy a great week with friends and God.  As I wrote in an early blog post Bro. Erskine from North Carolina and Bro. Conners from Arizona came up and preached the Camp for us. It was a great week.  It was especially great that the kids beat the preachers in the softball game.

  The next weekend was our Youth Trip.  We ended up going on a canoe trip to Riverdale.  It was a lot of fun we camped Friday night and the next morning we took off in those canoes.  There was a great adventure that happened on this trip that I recapped in a previous post.  On Friday we were practicing and somehow the canoe that I was in got tipped, if you want all the details you can click on the link I made.  I have forgiven the person that tipped the canoe and have gotten contacts since then.  Hopefully that will not happen again.

  We got back from this trip on a Saturday and on Sunday mooorning my cousins got from Oklahoma arrived at our house.  Melanie, Mark and Matthew arrived like at two in the morning, I was not awake to greet them.  We had a great time with them visiting several different places. Here is a slide show recapping those moments...


The Saturday following their departure we had a parade which our church participated in.  It was a lot of fun walking however log it was in the sun and handing out fliers.  After that our youth group went to the State Fair.  That was a little bit more fun.  Here are a couple pictures of the parade...


  The Thursday following the Parade we took off in the church van and headed for St. Louis.  Of course our plan was not to lose the two games that my team played, but it just happened that way.  We stopped at the Omaha Zoo on the way down.  On Saturday we visited the St. Louis Arch and went on a vessel that was able to carrier you on water.  Later on that day we would find out how tough of a draw that we got in the first round.  Our feelings, pride and confidence that was hurt at finals was smashed so bad at Nationals that we have put a search warrant out for it.  If we were in the army it would be called either a prison of war or MIA, I am not sure of which one it would be considered.  Either the other team stole it or it is MIA.  After both our team had lost their two games we headed out to a mall that was in St. Louis.  We consoled ourselves by spending money, what better way to do it.  We enjoyed the go-karting and laser tag that we played.  On our trip home we went out of the way a little bit and stopped at the MALL OF AMERICA.  The quizzer (except me), Bro. Vaughn and Jessica went to the amusement park and enjoyed themselves while my father and I played some miniature golf.  The next day we headed for home.  Here are a few pictures of the trip...


The Tuesday we got back from Nationals we headed our for Youth Camp.  Bro. Shay Mann from headquarters did the preaching and teaching.  He did a great job in both sessions.  I had a fun time hanging out with friends, staying up late and, in reality, not getting into too much trouble.  I tried to but it did not work out fro me.  Better luck next year I guess. 

  Other than all that we did not really do that much this summer.  Today we loaded the schoolwork on my computer and got the dates all set for school.  This coming Wednesday I am going to have to try and knock some stuff of the walls.  Jared started school at the beginning of this week.  I hope this post was not to boring to read.  Hope you all have a great school year!

~Jonathan