Shred the Gnar!

As we woke up Monday morning this is what we saw....
If you can't see what it is, that's because what we saw was nothing, literally. The power was out. This led to a lot of fun for room 212 (my room), we just happened to have a 50 million candle power flashlight and a generator powered stereo. So not only did we have light, we had some sick tunes. It was pretty good until we had to load into the vans in the dark, rainy, windy weather that dampened our spirits, it was already early enough as it was (5AM). It didn't take long for all of us to fall asleep once again and this time we were greeted a lot nicer.....
It was kind of like that feeling when you wake up Christmas morning to find that it snowed the night before, except this time we knew that playing in this snow was going to involve some serious shredding of the gnar.
I must say I was not fully excited to be going out in the snow to snowboard. Josh if you read this you may remember our last adventure at Poley Mountain, it did not end well to say the least. So this time around I was definitely not stoked to bump and bruise my body all over again this week but I sucked in a gust of fresh air, grabbed my helmet and wrist guards and set out to try my best at this sport.
Boy was I glad that our God is a God who conquers fear. My experience snowboarding was by far one of the most amazing experiences I have had all year. I was not only able to stand on my snowboard, I have learned the art of shredding the gnar! And what an experience it is to fly down a hill with the cool air blowing in your face as you watch this.....

















While snowboarding was an experience in itself to see the scenery that surrounded us was another experience in itself. You almost forgot that you came to the top of the mountain to snowboard down because you were so enraptured by the views there.
Though all of our fun this week wasn't just snowboarding. We also had the opportunity to go snowshoeing.....














.....We also got to build snow caves while on our snowshoe excursion. It was a really sweet time and if you are able to tell, we built ours 6 feet deep before we started the actual tunnel portion.
Yeah, this trip had some pretty rad times but also some really good serious times. Each evening we had chapel and some of the special chapels we did were naming chapels. However the naming we did was special, we prayed and identified names for each other that characterized a little of who we are and also fit something into who we could grow into. It was a really good bonding experience for us as a Kaleo team and if you're interested in knowing all the names check out the main blog at http://kaleoseven.blogspot.com but for just a taste, mine is Pilgrim, one who journeys.

I'm feeling a little blank right now, with all the assignments that are coming up and being due along with everything else that has been going on I haven't had a whole lot of time to think so I hope this is enough for you to see into my world for this week. Please continue to pray for us as we prepare to go to the Olympics (2 weeks I think). For now I wish you all well and hope that each of you has your own opportunity to shred the gnar of your life.

Love ya,
Nick