this precious life.

as part of our first week with the academy, the five of us were given a city wide scavenger hunt to get us more acclimated with memphis. the guidelines > we had from 9a-4p to complete it, we couldn't use our smartphones or a map & neither devin nor taylor who grew up in memphis were allowed to give us any hints. thankfully tara and i had both spent some time in memphis and were able to knock out a lot but  for the rest, we were blessed to run into to super friendly folks who gave us the low-down & sent us in the right direction! by the end of the day we were all absolutely pooped & tired of taking selfies but had a much better grasp on what memphis has to offer! i love this city already! lunchbox eats wasn't on our list of places to find but we enjoyed an amazing lunch & played a few games while we were there:) this crew is hilarious and it's so fun sharing life with them!

y'all, meet the academy team!! these are some of the people i'll be living life with the next year! l-r: me (intern at sos), taylor (intern at cornerstone prep), tara (intern at word relief), devin (intern at multinational), philip (sos executive director), jonathan (sos camp director) & andrew (intern at world relief) as part of our orientation week, philip & jonathan took us on an overnight retreat to horseshoe lake in arkansas. this was a great time of sharing our testimonies, getting to know one another better, discovering which of us was most competitive and laughing over ridiculous slang:) for the next year, we'll all be spending friday mornings together discussing books we'll be reading and learning what biblical discipleship looks like. i'm so looking forward to that time!

after nine months of anticipation, i woke up on friday morning 2 weeks ago and said goodbyes to my family. if you know me well at all, you'll know that i love people dearly but tend to look at goodbye's as "see-you-laters". i think sometimes this comes across as un-feeling- and so i am learning how to be more sympathetic:) but i digress. i picked up kendie and we headed south. we decided to take the day slowly so we made a pit stop in louisville at please & thank you and then another stop in nashville for lunch at red bicycle crepes . so much fun introducing her to some of my favorite spots! we rolled into memphis in the evening and i drove around town to give her an idea of what the city looks like. there's so much that i don't know or remember about memphis yet but after walking down to the riverfront, we got some dinner at south of beale and kendie had fried green tomatoes for the first time!  saturday morning we woke up and explored the civil ri...