A morning walk on the farm..

This morning I decided to get up early and go on a walk before I went to work. I've been needing some prayer time, and I always pray best outside :) Something I've been noticing lately is that there are a lot of things that God is trying to work on in my life, but I get so caught up in my busy day-to-day life that I forget to listen to Him. I've been letting my friends down in ways I shouldn't, I've been ignoring little things about myself that I need to work on, and in some ways, I've acted like I was too busy for God. I'm sure all of you have been there, I know I do it all too much.. So anyways, this morning I decided to spend some time soaking up His wonderful creation at my favorite time of day- just before sunrise through about 30 minutes after sunrise. I brought along my camera so you can see some of what I saw :) For me photography forces me to slow down and pay attention to what I'm seeing as I'm looking for that perfect shot. However, my card reader is out in my van, so I'll put the pix up later. Sometimes just a short walk like that can do a lot for me! I was feeling all down about my life, but by the time I finished my walk I was happy again :)
Many of you have heard bits and pieces, or maybe even a lot of the things that I've been going through lately in my life, and one thing I REALLY have to work on is contentment. I have never been the most patient person in the world, in some ways it's been good, because I get things done quickly, but in others, I need to work on it. Particularly in the area of loneliness I feel every day of my life called being single. I see many of my friends in relationships, and start wishing soo badly that I could be there too, but again, I need to learn to let God use me right where He has me now instead of trying to be where He has other people. I find myself doing my utmost to put myself there, when really God is not ready for me to be in that season of life yet. I could use your prayers in this area in particular, because of all the discontentments in my life, this is by far the one I struggle with the most.

Another thing that really has been a problem with me lately is that if I'm feeling down I want my friends to feel the same way with me, so I'll say different things to make them be sad with me, without even realizing that that is what I'm doing. Spending time with God really helps me "learn to be content with where I am, and getting where I need to be" as Relient K puts it. Sometimes I feel like I am left out of the loop, because I don't do as much social interaction as some of my friends do, but then I have to remind myself that I always have God, and there is no better company than Him. Something that is really strange about me is that I often feel like people don't like me, or don't want to be around me. For one thing, I'm sure that's just an illusion, and besides that, I always could be spending that time with God, because He will never be too busy for me!! :)One of the local names for this flower is hobo pea. However, I'm not sure what it's actual common name is. Lovely flowers nonetheless.I'm not sure, but if I remember correctly these are Blue Vervain.. whatever they are, they sure were proclaiming their creator!Psalm 19:1 ..The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky proclaims its builder's craft..

A Black-eyed Susan that posed for me ;)

I'v always liked daisies, even though they are not the most beautiful of flowers, they always seem to make me happy :)

I know, these aren't the best of pictures, but right now I'm dealing with a fairly cheap camera, and this was like the second time I've ever used that camera, so I'm not used to it yet.

I think something I would like to challenge you all to do is try to get up early at least once a week and go on a walk with God. Don't try to go sit on the couch with God, because you will most likely fall asleep. Besides, at least for me I feel a lot closer to God when I'm out in His creation. Maybe for those in the blogosphere, take a camera and take time to slow down and appreciate each little part of the beauty of nature, take a picture, thank God for those little things, and share it with the rest of us. I think that if everybody would do this, a lot of problems would be solved. Let me know your thoughts on the idea, I think it would be good, but who knows, maybe you won't ;)

Well, there you have it, "confessions of a teenage Christian" lol
God bless you in a special way today!! (or tonight depending on when you read it..)

It's Summertime, and that means.. ATV superfun!

Well, on saturday I took our brush-hog over to my papa's house and we welded it back since it broke over at the Riefers. While I was there, I also borrowed his atv that he lets me use. It was like 4:15 when I left there, and I had to be to rolla by 5:00, so I hurried home, took a quick shower because I was really dirty, then headed off to town. Got there at 4:57.. good timing eh?? lol

Yesterday afternoon I took "the beast" out and had fun! here's some pix.. sorry they're not the best ones ever.. all my good jumps got missed.This is a pretty decent jump shot.. ususally I went higher, but we never had the camera ready then.. I had to sort through like a hundred pix to find these ;) it's kinda hard to catch something going 40+ mph.. lol

ok, this would be a cool shot if I were in the pic!! :)

This might give a better Idea how high I go.. it's about 6 ft off the ground, and to make it more exciting we have built a pond right below the jump so if you miss not only will you probably get hurt, but you'll get wet too! lol it's a good thing I never miss... :)
Now this time was a very rare riding session... no, not that I rolled, but that I only rolled once. I've gotten to the place where I'll probably never get hurt from a sideways roll because I do it so much :) Actually I only roll when I'm out doing stunts or something, and expecting to roll. Here's a shot of me just leaving the jump :)

sorry these videos are not very good... but they're all I have right now..

Crazy people + wal-mart + eggs = FUN TIMES!

Ok, so you're probably really wondering what on earth this post is about. Well, tonight after youth group, Ben Stickler made a bet with Colin Welshymer- Ben will give Colin $20 if Ben can smash three eggs in Colin's hair. Of course Colin went for it. So, we all went over to wal-mart (well, almost all.. Ashley and Josh had to go home I guess.. we missed you guys terribly.. it was a lot of fun!) So, Ben went in and got the eggs.. smashes one egg on Colin... smashes another egg on Colin... then yells "ok, we're done, and runs off.. :) (He said he would pay $20 to smash THREE eggs.. hehe) I tried taking a video with my cell phone, but it was really dark where we were.. :(


Sorry it's so dark.. and my laughing sounds horrible.. I guess since I had the phone right next to my face or something.. lol


Ok, this is pretty funny actually.. Ben and Colin went in to clean off the egg on their hands, but thte men's restroom was closed for cleaning, so Colin's little sister went and made sure nobdy was using the ladies bathroom, and they used that one.. I told her that this would go
on my blog, and she just rolled her eyes and walked off.. so she didn't say not to! lol

Afterwards, we all hung out in the parking lot for about an hour.. well.. Ben and Brett had to leave pretty soon after... but the rest of us hung out and listened to music, and went and got random things from wal-mart.. and then ate some of the random gum and candy from wal-mart.. and then colin and one of the other guys did some skateboarding.. :)

So, it was pretty fun actually.. since Brandon said it was better than old youth group, and he doesn't usually like the random hanging out stuff.. it must have really been fun! lol

Well, that's it for now.. tomorrow I have to go do some bushogging for a guy, then Friday and Saturday I have to be on staff for the big rodeo. So.. lots of stuff going on!

Hopefully the third day farm will be doing their annual haying soon... apparently I'm just not in the loop or something.. but it seems like everybody else other than me knows when it's supposed to be... oh well.. they told me this evening, but... anyway.. that was random.. lol

So, until next time.. adios! It will probably be a few days until I can post again since I'll be so busy, but I will try to soon! I'll probably get a few pix from the rodeo :D
later!

Huzzah Valley Roping Event :)

Well, today was the big day at my job, It was the big roping competition, it started at 11:00 am, and ended after 10:00 pm. My job was to keep the cattle going through the alleys and chutes to be ready for the ropers to have at them. Usually the cattle didn't want to go where they were supposed to though, so it was a pretty hard job all day. I'm really tired mow.. lol I guess now I know I was working though because first, I got kicked right below the kneecap by a bull, then another bull almost sprained my shoulder, and a big steer almost broke my knuckle! lol fun fun fun!!!!! I'll put some pictures up on here of today later, but right now I want to go to sleep, because I was working until 10:30 tonight, and then I had an hour drive home, so I'm exhausted.. Yay! I get to do it again only more so later this week! There's a big PRCA Family Rodeo there this Friday and Saturday that I will be on staff for, and those always go really late.. lol but it's awesome fun, even getting beat up by the bulls with long horns :) :P Someday maybe I'll be able to ride horses in the rodeo :) but for now, I just exercise them and do trail rides.. well, I'll finish this post later.. gnite

The arena before the event.

Time to start practicing....

Here are a few of the smaller bulls and steers...

This is a view most of you won't get at a roping event.. the view from behind the boxes :) That's Walker running the chute gate there.It was pretty neat, we got a decent sunset during the roping :) The clouds had been looking ominous all day long, and a few times it started to lightly rain on us.. but it never actually rained very hard, and by about 1:00 all the rain stopped completely.
I had a pretty good time yesterday, although by about 9:30 I was getting pretty tired.. after all, after 14 hours of pretty manually involved work it starts to get to you... but hey.. I made like almost a hundred bucks since I worked so long...
The only picture of him didn't' turn out, but I have met one of the ropers there before. His name is John McDonald (I think that's right..), and I've seen him at a church that I went to for a while, and sat up in the balcony with him and some other guys.
Well, hope you liked my pictures :)

My first day at my new job!

Well, Yesterday I officially started my horse job :) It wsa really fun. The first thing I did was work the kinks out of the roping horses, rode them around the arena for while etc.. The bad thing was that my feet are so wide that my boots didn't fit into the stirrups, and mostly I'm supposed to trot them around, which means I got pretty sore from all the bouncing since I couldn't really use my legs as shock absorbers ;)
After that I ran the roping calves through the chute for the rest of the morning. They do a lot of roping events there, and their horses have to be kept in practice :)
Then I did a lot of different stuff with saddling up and taking saddles off and stuff for a while. Also I went out on several of the trails there to clear brush and branches to get them ready for the trail riding season. I'll probably be doing some trail riding stuff today, yesterday we rounded all the trail horses up and got them ready for the trails, because probably today there will be some trail riders wanting to come.
Monday there is going to be a really big roping event there that I will be helping with too. I'm going to be going there in a little bit, I stayed in steelville overnight because of gas to drive home being so expensive.

Sorry these pictures are pretty bad, but I took them all with my cell phone, so...
This is the view looking into one side of one of the horse barns. The stalls are REALLY nice! The barn is insulated, has ceiling fans, lots of lights, concrete floors.. it's really nice ;)Here's the view out from the barn over a few of the paddocks, and part of the arena in the distant background, that white tower you can see back toward the trees is the broadcast tower for their roping events like they have at rodeos and stuff.
Here's one of the smaller pastures. The farm sits on 1,200 acres, plus another 1,200 acres on two different plots across the river and the road.
This is the paddock where all the mares with foals go. Most of them are up in the shade so you can't see any. :(
Another shot of the main horse barn. There are two rows of stalls like this in that barn, I didn't count, but I'd guess there are around 40 stalls just in that one barn.
Some of the trail horses. I got to brush several of these down really well, because if you leave them dirty they will get sores under their saddles and all around the straps and stuff.
I learned quite a bit yesterday, but I still have a long way to go!! it's kinda confusing sometimes with all the new stuff I'm trying to remember! I still need to do some work on my riding posture I think, although my boss said I looked pretty good... I'm just pretty sore after only riding for an hour or so.. and I shouldn't be.. oh well, I'll get the hang of it :)