Christmas parties and the Birds of Prey Center.

This past week was an unusual week because we didn't have a school group the second half of the week, so we had more time to do special projects, like building alligator enclosures, taking our invasive tree species and planning the adventure program. On Thursday, we met with the marketing man at St. Christopher to talk about the Adventure Program. It was a very encouraging meeting. We talked about potential directions the program could take and he seemed very interested and excited to get it started and off the ground. We are trying to figure out group costs and equiment at this point. We found out a few weeks ago that we have enough money to build a Climbing wall for the camp, so that should be built this spring!

On Friday, we had 2 hours of intercessory prayer as a St. Christopher staff. It was a really cool time to come before the Lord coroporately and thank Him for the blessings He has bestowed upon us and confess and ask for more of His glory and presence to come. It's such a blessing to work for an organization that believes in that! After prayer, we had a Christmas party complete with catered food and the White Elephant gift exchange. After the party, our director, David treated the Barrier Island staff to the Birds of Prey Center. We were able to see some really sweet birds, including hawks, eagles, vultures, owls, and osprey. You can check out the pictures to get a good idea of what we saw. The center takes in injured birds and nurses them back to health. They had birds from all over the world. We also saw a flight demonstration where they flew the birds right in front of us and fed them on posts all around us. Wow, those birds were amazing and so big!

Saturday we started off the day with a program at Seacoast called "Adopt A Block." We are going to be going to a nearby neighborhood once a month to help people out in the community. We are partnering with a community house in the neighborhood. Right now, our goal is to go in and start to build relationships with people. We split up into teams and raked a few yards this week. We hope to keep going in the future as God allows us.

Thanks for your prayers!

Christmas time is here.

I went home for Thanksgiving and suprised my family! It was lots of fun seeing friends and spending good, quality time with family again. Even the weather in Michigan cooperated for the most part and I only caught a glimpse of snow on Thursday morning.

We've been doing a little Christmas decorating in our Staff House. The big Christmas tree is in our living room and all the purple lights are in my room with my little purple tree:) It's a little weird trying to get in the Christmas spirit when it's still in the 70's and you have Palm Trees surrounding you, but I'm not complaining.

This weekend was quite eventful. We had a LIFE (Living In Freedom Every day) Retreat at church on Friday and Saturday. There were 7 sessions that included teaching, praying, and response time. Session topics included things like Purity, Pride, Rejection, Guilt, etc. There were 6 preceeding sessions and sermons that we had been going through as a small group on Wednesday nights, so this was the end to the series. It was a good time to connect with the Lord and work through issues and also get to know the other small group members a little more. After the retreat on Saturday, Derek (another staff member) and I headed downtown Charleston and walked around for a while. The sun came out after raining all day. We went to the Marion Square to see Santa and watch the lighting of the big Christmas tree and the park. Later on, we met up with a few other staff members for dinner.

During the retreat I received a phone call from another staff member that he had found 7 baby squirrels in the filter of his car and that he was going to bring them back to the staff house. So now we have little baby squirrels we are trying to feed and nurse back to health...just another day in the life of a Naturalist.

Thank you for all your continued prayers and support, they are much appreciated.