Jackson Hole: Week Three

Yet another week has flown by and we are now entering our last week out in Jackson Hole. This past week has been filled with a LOT of activities plus a LOT training- making it an all-around balanced & busy week! Starting out Monday morning, we met all together in our normal meeting room (the "Buffalo" room) and began our week studying the Biblical view of discipleship and evangelism and how to adequately disciple someone else. After a quick lunch, everyone headed out for an awesome afternoon of rafting down the rapids of the Snake River (no worries- Levi and I stayed home!) The students (and Mitch) had a GREAT time and the weather was perfect for the occasion. Like all Monday nights, we closed out the day studying the second chapter of our Gospel Growth books in our small groups. This week we studied the significance of Christ's sacrifice on the cross and what that means for our salvation and for our lives.

On Tuesday morning, we heard from Kari about how to follow up with a new believer and the importance of diving into the scriptures with them. After lunch, despite the overcast/rainy weather, we headed out for a more low-key hike around String Lake. Like most Tuesday nights, we headed into town for dinner and some late night visits to the candy shop and Moo's Ice cream. Although the hike and dinner were fun, the highlight of the day was definitely all the wildlife we saw on our wake back from our hike! While exiting the trail and park, we saw a bear, a moose and some beavers! 

String Lake

 On Wednesday, we spent time in the morning learning different methods of evangelism and certain evangelism tools that can help you clearly share your faith with a non-believer. A few of these tools include Knowing God Personally, Soularium, & Back Story. After lunch, we travelled out to Mormon Row where an old barn resides on a beautiful field. Rumor has it that the Mormon barn is the most photographed barn in the world! We spent the afternoon taking pictures and admiring the beautiful backdrop of the Tetons. That night, the staff enjoyed a night out to dinner at The Bird. The restaurant is known for having the best burgers and they did not disappoint! Although we love our students, it was so much fun just getting a night to hang out with our amazing staff team!

Staff night out!

On Thursday, Mitch spoke in the morning about the importance of discipleship and how discipleship always begins with You and God- you cannot adequately disciple someone else if your relationship with God is not where it should be. After lunch, I headed into town for the afternoon with the 4 girls that I disciple and we enjoyed an afternoon of coffee, shopping and discipleship. While we were enjoying the afternoon downtown, Mitch and all of the men on project spent the afternoon paddle boarding at String Lake. The goal was to stay on the board because the water was EXTREMELY cold (it is a lake in the mountains after all). We finished the day having our weekly men's and women's time.

On Friday, we spent the morning hearing from Pastor Don (head of the Bible College). After a quick lunch, the group headed out for an afternoon of paintball (again, no worries, Levi and I were convinced to stay home). Although many students were a little worried about the idea, they all ended up having a blast and stayed out on the course all afternoon. After a quick dinner, we had a bowling social that night at the bowling alley downtown. I say bowling "alley", but it was actually only four lanes total so we rented out the whole place! 

We decided to end a busy week with a very busy Saturday! After a later breakfast, we heading into the Park and began our longest hike yet- Death Canyon. Since the hike was 8 miles round trip, we allotted most of the afternoon for the excursion and I'm glad we did. The hike was definitely harder but the views made it completely worth it and I look forward to bragging to Levi one day that I made it to the top carrying both of us! After a quick run home to shower, we packed into the cars once again and drove across the Idaho state border to see "Monsters U" at the Spud Drive-In Theater! Although it was close to freezing outside, we enjoyed laying in the back of the cars and in the field in front of the screen and enjoying a night out at the movies! 

Liz and I outside the drive-in!

I cannot believe we only have a couple more days here before we head back to Mississippi and the sweltering hot weather I hear is awaiting us. Please continue to pray for us and the students as we wind down the project this week and start traveling home on Friday!

Jackson Hole: Week Two

This week has been one of the most fun and jam-packed weeks on a project yet! Mitch kicked off our week Monday morning by teaching on "How to study your Bible". He shared the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning, the importance of context when studying verses, and the importance of finding Christ in every passage we study. Monday night we discussed our first chapter in "Gospel Growth" in our small groups.

Tuesday we packed up early and headed to Yellowstone for the day! We spent the whole day touring around Yellowstone and seeing Old Faithful, geysers, hot springs, waterfalls, and a good amount of wildlife. It was a very long day but we had such a great time seeing one of the most visited national parks in the world!

Artist Point

 On Wednesday, we spent the morning in the Word as we experienced our first day of rainy weather since we arrived. Because of the rain, we had to postpone our daily hike and we spent the day relaxing, watching a movie (Disney's "Heavy Weights"), and catching up on some sleep (or at least I did!) We closed out the day by having a "night of reflection" where we spend time processing all God is teaching us and all He has been doing on our project so far.

Jackson Hole Staff Team

Thursday morning, Kari lead us in a study on holiness, followed by Katie sharing about prayer. After lunch, we headed to Teton Village and headed to the top of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort via the Aerial Tram. In fifteen minutes, we travelled 4,000 feet up to the top of the mountain (about 10,450 feet in elevation). We spent our afternoon admiring the views of Jackson Hole, eating famous "Nutella Waffles", drinking hot chocolate, and having a big snow ball fight. We closed out the day by gathering together for dinner and then hearing from Pastor Don, the owner of the Bible college that we are staying at this summer.

Birthday Boy!

Thursday was also Mitch's birthday!! We had a surprise birthday celebration at dinner on Thursday night and the camp made him a carrot cake (one of his favorites). After dinner, Mitch and I were given the night off to go hang out in town for his birthday. Once students started trying to guess his/our ages, we realized how old most of them really think they are- it wasn't pretty!

Olympics Bible Trivia

Friday morning, Whitney shared about loving others well and following Christ's example. AFter lunch, we spent the afternoon competing in the second annual Summer Project Olympics. Consisting of three events (volleyball, Bible trivia, and frisbee golf) and an "Ultimate Challenge" obstacle course (water balloon toss, egg race, wheelbarrow race, and dizzy bat), we had 6 teams battle it out all afternoon. Each team was allowed to come up with a team name and theme and they went ALL out! At the end of the day, the "Man on a Buffalo" team won and "Skittles" & "America" tied for 2nd. Friday night came to a close with another birthday celebration (Mary Larkin's) men's and women's time, and Paula coming to visit!

The winning team! 

The winners from each round "pie-d" the losers from each round!

Saturday morning we shared brunch together and then heard from Elizabeth about the power of our words and how to use our words to glorify God. After her talk, we headed out for a hike up to Ski Lake. It was a beautiful hike that was mostly uphill, but the views at the end were completely worth it! On the far side of the lake, we were able to find fossils amongst the hundreds of rocks that lined the side of the mountain. The weather and the scenery made for a perfect afternoon hike!

Ski Lake

We closed out our week by attended the Jackson Hole Rodeo Saturday night! We had 4 teams of staff and students who participated in the calf wrangling event in the middle of the rodeo, while the rest of us were thoroughly entertained by the mass chaos of students running around trying to take a flag off a calf's tail. The rodeo was a blast and we all left (in our flannel, of course) feeling a little bit more like locals.

Monthly update picture at 10,500 feet!

And last, but certainly not least, we crossed into the third trimester of my pregnancy this week! We are so incredibly thankful for an easy and healthy pregnancy so far and we are so grateful for all of your prayers for us and our sweet baby boy!

Jackson Hole: Week One

Week one has officially ended here in Wyoming and I am already realizing it is going to be so hard to leave at the end of the project! Jackson Hole is absolutely beautiful and waking up every morning surrounded by the Grand Tetons has been such a sweet blessing. Our staff team of 13 arrived sporadically on Saturday and the group of 28 students arrived on Tuesday afternoon. How do you help a group of 41 people get to know each other really fast? Send them on a 6 mile hike up a mountain to "Inspiration Point" which sits at an elevation of about 7200 ft. Although we were a little mistaken and had thought the hike would be easier, it was a great day of hiking, sweating, & fellowship- not to mention the view was completely worth it!

Inspiration Point & Jenny Lake

Following our hike on Wednesday, we broke off into our small groups of the summer to share with each other our "life maps". Life maps are our stories- where we are coming from, struggles & growths from our life, how we have come to know Christ, and what we are seeing Him do in our lives today. If we didn't grow close to others during the hike, sharing our life maps and our vulnerabilities with others definitely did it! Elizabeth and I are co-leading our small group of 6 girls while Mitch is co-leading a small group of 4 guys with Harrision. I know I'm a little biased, but I LOVE my small group and I'm so thankful for the relationships that have already come out of it!

Small Group

We spend our mornings here in group meetings where we spend time in the Word, followed by a time for personal time with God, and ending with a "teaching" talk. Thursday morning, Kari shared with the students how to share their stories (testimonies) with others and how to share the Gospel through our stories. Following lunch, we spent time in discipleship groups working through our goals for the summer as well as working on sharing our stories. We finished up the day by meeting in our small groups again and finishing sharing our life maps.

Rocky Mountain Lodge- Home for the summer!

On Friday, we went horseback riding through the mountains (minus me and Levi!). The students and staff said it was such a fun day and beautiful views of Jackson Hole. After horseback riding, dinner, and a quick game of kickball, we met together in groups for our men's and women's time. In our women's time, we are reading through and studying a book called "Calm My Anxious Heart" by Linda Dillow (HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR WOMEN!). The theme of the book is about learning to be content no matter what the circumstances and thankful no matter where we are. In men's time, they are studying "Thoughts for Young Men" by J.C. Ryle. Each week we will read through a couple chapters and discuss them during our weekly men's and women's time.

Saturday we went on another group hike around Phelps Lake. The weather was a perfect 75 degrees (sorry friends and family in the south!) and the hike was a little easier and a lot more relaxing than our first hike. Saturday night we piled all 41 people into our rental cars and headed downtown for some touristy activities, souvenir shopping and dinner. Although downtown Jackson isn't very large, there are a lot of fun things to see and do- like the nightly "shoot out" reenactment at the town square.

Group at Phelps Lake

We finished our first week by joining together Sunday morning to listen to a podcast sermon by David Platt (pastor of the Church of Brook Hills in Birmingham, AL). In addition, we will come together as a group every Sunday night for a night of worship and sharing of the things God is teaching us while we are here on project.

Please continue to pray for the staff and students alike this summer. We are loving serving out here in Jackson Hole and we look forward to sharing with you all what next week brings!

Catching up with the Jaegers

Needless to say, this semester has been nothing short of crazy! Because of that (plus a little bit of laziness/neglect), the blog has been placed on an obscure upper shelf and forgotten about.... again. (I've never been much of a journaler and I'm coming to realize that my blogging dedication might suffer from the same lack of consistency.)

Since my last post was oh, 3 1/2 months ago, I decided to just compile one huge catch-up-with-the-Jaegers post! So here we go with 3 months worth of ministry and personal updates!

 Although I am assuming most know by now, the Jaeger party is upgrading to three this September! As I have shared in an earlier post, Mitch and I had been struggling for about 14 months with infertility and were really nearing the end of our path of fertility treatments last winter (we had chosen not to pursue In vitro fertilization). As most couples who go through this, we hadn't really spoken with many people about it and we had not really asked for the prayers of our church family. After being encouraged by a friend to be open about what we were struggling with, we decided to share our prayer request with our news letter and those that read this blog- a huge leap of faith and vulnerability for me. At the same time, we had decided that I would stop doing the fertility treatments I had been (they made me miserably sick) and look ahead towards adoption.

And then God moved.

The VERY NEXT MONTH after Mitch and I shared our struggle and asked for prayers, we found out we were pregnant at a doctor's appointment. Two and half months later, we entered into the 2nd trimester. Seven weeks after that, we found out it was a boy. And now, at a little over 6 months pregnant, we are still in awe of God's gracious, gracious blessing that will be arriving in early September. We are so thankful for God's grace and provisions of a gift that we definitely did not deserve and we are also extremely thankful for those of you came before Him on our behalf. Little Levi Jaeger is being born into a wonderful community of believers and we are so grateful.

Baby shower in Hattiesburg

Levi isn't the only prayer we have seen answered this semester. The ministry has been growing and flourishing so much this semester that I can't even begin to write it all down! We have seen so many students fall deeper in love with Christ and find a passion for sharing Him with wherever He has placed them. We have seen students discipling other students, sharing the gospel on campus, taking the gospel all over the world (East Asia, New York City, Haiti, & Honduras just to name a few!), starting community groups and bible studies in their dorms, work places, majors, & sorority/fraternity houses, and making Christ the number one priority in their lives. I am so excited to see what God has in store for each of them in the coming semesters and in their futures!

Cru Crawfish Boil & Tacky Prom

Rocky Mountain Lodge, Jackson Hole

Lastly, with the closing of the semester, Mitch and I packed up and headed out once again for our summer project assignment: Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Each summer, Cru hosts the Jackson Hole Summer Project for four weeks for students to come out and grow in their knowledge of the Bible, their love for Christ, and their community with other believers. Like last summer, I will be updating weekly (and maybe bi-weekly) about our time out here in JH. With students arriving this afternoon from all over the US, we request your prayers for them as they spend the next four weeks pursuing a more intimate relationship with Christ and enjoying His beautiful creation!