a.l.m.o.s.t. there...

I'm sitting here right now trying to finish our last day of homework and it's killing me. KILLING ME. I've already been doing this since 3:15pm. It's currently 9:35pm. We did take a dinner break from 6:15-7:00. LAST NIGHT. (until our final on Tuesday...)

This is our bed currently...


We have been working on two separate projects today. One paper for theology that took me a while. And now we are writing a Bible study on Ephesians 2:1-10. This is the part that is mostly killing me. :)

I will call this my break.
back to it.

-Kells

drum roll please....

We are officially headed to Texas Tech University!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) Our best friends (brett/kim)aren't, but we knew that was happening a long time ago, just didn't know where. I'm not going to say where they are going yet, because she hasn't even blogged about it yet. Just know that it's far. :( But we are SOO happy for them too! :) I've already done research on their new city because I don't have much to research on Lubbock...considering I've lived there since 1998. PLUS, I love researching the cities my friends are moving too. What a journey & blessing it has been leading up to this one day to learn our "new" locations. We are excited to be heading back to Lubbock, Texas to continue our ministry there.

We have been in Colorado for 2 weeks now. I haven't posted many pictures...so consider this our little journey from day one to now...

Enjoy!

We had just entered New Mexico...I missed the actual sign...whoops :)

Church with grandma in Denver


Our Bed & Breakfast adventure. It was a blast!








Red Rocks Amphitheater--we stopped here on the way back to Denver from our B&B




Our journey to Fort Collins

Lunch with Brett & Kim in Denver before heading up...


Our dorm

Excited!


Our first Saturday we hiked up Horsetooth Reservoir...

Beautiful view from the top. It took quite a bit of encouragement for me to make it there. Teddy was a trooper! :) This is a little over 7,000 ft up. AMAZING!


Our date night this past Saturday (talked about in previous blog post)


Here comes last week of classes...
Night!
-Kells

survived

we made it. we survived our first week of class.

I can't believe how much we studied in our first week of class. We had a project due Friday in our theology class. In our theology class we have readings every night, but no paper homework. Just 2 projects & our final. In Bible study methods we have a paper assignment every night. Each assignment has taken us around 2-4 hours to do. CRAZY!

Friday we did not study AT ALL. :) We spent the afternoon relaxing, napping, chatting with friends. At night we hung out with 6 different couples. 3 from California, 1 from Illinois, 2 from Texas (brett/kim). We have 3 more couples that we usually hang with too. 2 more from California and 1 from Tennessee. We are really enjoying getting to know other people! We laugh ALOT. :)

Saturday, Teddy and I woke and did 2 loads of laundry. Hung around our dorm majority of the day. In the afternoon we did our assignment that is due on Monday. We worked on that for 2 hours. Then Kim and I went to get pedicures & the boys went to get their hair cut. I toenails are GREEN & Kim got PURPLE! I've never put that kind of color on my toes before, but I like it. Saturday night Teddy and I went on a date. We went to Olive Garden (giftcard!), drove around the city for a bit (we have mostly just stayed on campus), got ice cream, and watched a movie (Hitch) in our dorm room on my computer. I'm looking forward to eating at some local places soon. We have every meal taken care of except for Saturday nights.

We are about to head to church. We went to an "Acts 29" church last weekend. The service was about 2 hours long. So today we are trying out another one. This is apparently one of the mega churches in the city. We'll see what it is like! We will eat lunch back on campus & relax the rest of the day. We have reading to take care of & one question on our worksheet.

Everyone in the Red River Region (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana) receive our placement for ministry tonight at 7pm. We have had a crazy week with this placement business. I will explain in a different blog. We believe we are going back to Texas Tech University...but will let you know officially sometime soon. Pray for all 19 of us. This can be a hard day for some, if you don't get what you thought/wanted.

-Kells

studying like wild!

Where have I been?

STUDYING.

I have never studied this much in my entire life. Literally.

First night-8 hours
Second night-5 hours
Third night-3 hours

Praise Jesus those times keep decreasing. I have heard from different staff that it just goes up and down. Some nights ton & other nights not alot.

My schedule is eat, class, eat, study, eat, study.
Wednesday nights we have Lifegroup (discussion group with other married women--our husbands are all in the same group too)

We started intermurals yesterday. Teddy is playing softball with the guys from our floor. He will play twice a week. Volleyball started today and we are on the same team. We will also play that twice a week. We won today! We are on a random team that happens to be pretty athletic..score!

Our floor is awesome. Lots of random study breaks & many laughs. We hang out on the weekends & eat together mostly.

Life is good. Challenging, but good.
-Kells

exhausted much...

Our first week is over. We start class tomorrow...ekkk! I'm nervous!

This past week was jammed pack. The schedule was crazy, but still enjoyable. Tuesday we arrived & had a meeting at night time/welcoming deal. Wednesday the President of Campus Crusade (Steve Douglas) spoke about the significance of our call. We had other things too this day...meeting type things. Wednesday night we stayed up chatting with our floor friends. Thursday we made the trek to Denver (one hour) for our day of outreach. We had some time for training using the KGP (knowing God personally) ate lunch they provided for us and headed to do evangelism throughout the entire city. We were assigned to Washington Park.

The park was HUGE and beautiful. There were actually a lot of people in the park, but obviously most were active (running/biking/roller blading etc) so it's a little difficult to approach people. Teddy and I approached around 6 people total. We were not able to go through the KGP with any of them, but left the booklet with many of them. Teddy and I have done evangelism before back at Texas Tech--I really enjoy doing evangelism with him! After a while Brett and Teddy went to meet some guys playing football & Kim and I went to the park area with the hope to connect with some moms there. We sat down on some benches where people continue to come and go. Finally a young girl sat next to us and we struck up conversation. It was so fun getting to know her & for her to learn some about us. We learned ALOT about her (Kelly) in the span of 45 mins. It was a fun conversation & we ended up sharing the KGP (the gospel) with her. She indicated that she wanted to receive Christ & prayed with us to do just that. YAY!! I pray that it was genuine and that she would start to see life change. You have no way of knowing since it will be difficult to follow up with her---but what I do know is that she had some of her thoughts challenged by us, learned that there are young people out there who love Christ & desire for others to know Him that aren't "weird", she seems to want to grow & learn, and I'm convinced that she had to have talked to her boyfriend that night about it all.

After evangelism we went to debriefing to talk about our day. There we learned that there were a little over 700 conversations initiated, over 200 full gospel presentations, and 8 decisions for Christ!!! :) What's great is that the Denver CRU has all the contact information for these people that accepted Christ--so there will be follow up. We enjoyed a pizza party and I had the chance to sit and talk with a friend of mine that staff Branson summer project in 2009 with me (Lindsay). She isn't on staff, but lives in Denver. So she met up with everyone in City Park and hung out. It was fun catching up on life with her.

Friday we had more meetings. This time the focus was on our hearts. We went over something called the Growth Model. Something that I value within Crusade is their desire to see us grow spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. They really challenge our hearts and want to know where we REALLY are in life. Not to put up a "fake" face. That day was full of wonderful conversation about our hearts. For some people you might thing...ewww. But man, it was incredibly refreshing to connect with others who are in the same spot. In the afternoon we had a short orientation for class. That evening we had our first Lifegroups (small group discussion group). I am in a group of 6 total. All of our husbands are in the same group too. I really enjoyed out time together. Again, another refreshing moment during this week. Kim and I are in the same group--but didn't know any of the other ladies.

Saturday (day off)Teddy and I went with a big group (around 25 ppl) to hike Horsetooth Reservoir. I constantly called it horseshoe...whoops! It was much longer than expected and not that easy. We had to climb on rocks a few times & to get to the very top we had to climb up about 30 feet. It was scary at moments. I struggled ALOT on the way up. This altitude is the worst part. We hung with 4 others girls from our region (red river region) and made it. Coming back down was obviously a lot easier. We started the hike at 10:15am and were back at our car at 2:00pm. I hate my legs today :)...sore is an understatement. But, I am glad I pushed through and made it. At the end we were 7,000ft up. It was beautiful! Saturday afternoon we passed out because we were exhausted. Saturday night we went to a focus dinner on ministry & then met up with our floor for dessert (ice cream).

This morning we went to church (another day off). It was REALLY long...started at 10am and we walked out around noon. The pastor was great, but preached for over an hour. I struggled. :) We ate lunch back at the dorms and have been relaxing for the most part. Teddy is out playing basketball right now with Crusade guys, I'm working on laundry, hanging out with the girls on the floor who husbands went to play bball, and checking out my course notes for class that starts tomorrow.

Tomorrow starts classes like I said. We are taking two classes: Bible Study Methods and Intro to Christian Theology. While we raise support we will also take New Testament Survey. Our two classes are like "mini-mesters"...2 weeks long. We will go to class from 8am-12:30pm for 2 weeks. We will have loads of homework/reading to do. Should be interesting considering I haven't done school in almost 4 years. :) I will keep you posted on how that is going.

Here is the view from one of our windows in our dorm.

is this real?

The title of my blog expresses a saying that has come out of our mouths multiple times already. Are we really joining staff? What on earth are WE doing here? We are excited! I'm still at a point of shock and awe that God would bring us to this point in our marriage.

For those of you who are just starting to read this lovely blog of ours you can check out this POST to find out more details of how we even got here.

There are around 200 people joining staff this summer. We have met some people! Mostly couples at this point. We live on a floor of all married couples. I'm excited to get to know them more & to hear about their lives.

We are next door to our besties (Kim and Brett). SWEET! And some how we ended up with a corner room. This means we have a "common area" with a door on the right with bunk, desk, huge closet deal and a door on the left with the same. Of course we aren't going to bunk all summer so we moved the two bottom bunks into the common area. We use the right room for all our clothes/ironing/getting ready and we use the left room for our two desk and a place for everything else we brought. Storage is crazy because of this step up. Tons of space. Another bonus is the fact that we got a room on the Northeast corner. So no we can't look at our window and see mountains, but this also means we don't have to deal with the sun from 1:00pm-8:00pm. The rooms on the west side are hot. We caught sun this morning while we were getting ready, but we will be gone from our room by 7:15am each morning--so not much to worry about there with the heat. Living without AC isn't too bad with a nice breeze, open windows and 85 degree temps. We deal!

So far I'm a tad overwhelmed. I already had the want to spend time by myself. Not that its a bad thing, but its interesting how my personality has changed throughout the years.

Y'all can pray for our walks with Jesus. I'm currently at a spot where I feel disconnected from the Lord. I'm looking forward to thriving in my walk with Christ this summer. I want rich time in the word. I just need to be diligent in making time for that in the midst of this schedule.

I will post pictures at a late date. :) just know that we have an awesome room & feel blessed!

-Kells

we are HERE!

this is a long post that is all over the place :)

We officially made it to Denver, Colorado last night 5:30 (CO time & 6:30pm TX time). Our drive was pretty dang easy. It went by really fast and we had nothing bad occur. :) When we got here we hung out with my aunt & uncle out on their back deck & chatted for a while. They ordered in pizza from a fun pizza place (not our $5 little Caesars we always get...) it was a pleasant treat. After dinner headed over to my grandma news living quarters. She is living in independent living place. It's super nice! We hung out there for a while chatting & playing with her little poodle Penny! SO thrilled to be here and get to be with family for a few days before we head to Ft. Collins on Tuesday.

Now, let me tell you about the week leading up to our adventure yesterday....It was NUTS! I don't think I would recommend packing and moving in about 8 days. We got it done with the help of our AMAZING friends. I surprisingly remained pretty stress free--just focused. So, people might have thought I was stressed, when really I wasn't. I can't tell you how many times the statement, I'm not worried about came out of my mouth in the past week. I have only Jesus to thank for that--that is not normal. :)

If you look back a few post (title:moving) you saw that we were in fact moving. And maybe in that post or in a different post I talked about how we needed someone to take over our lease by August--well the Lord had different plans. We posted it on craigslist and people responded. We figured out pretty quickly that we could definitely get out of our apartment for the summer & started making arrangements. Also, we asked for prayer for storage connection. We actually didn't hear from any one, but the Lord still totally pulled through. We got our first 3 months 50% off...which made it about $71/m for 6 months in an 8x10 climate control. We were planning on spending more than that. We felt very taken care of by the Lord! And we got to use a free trailer to move all our big stuff!

I can't even begin to tell you how many "errands" we had to run in the span of a week. Let's just say our to do list was VERY long. But we accomplished everything by 8:30pm on Thursday evening. We were even able to watch So you think you can Dance wednesday night and thursday night! :)

Wednesday we went to our last lifehouse. It was good! They were kind to pray over us! We had to leave a little bit early because Teddy's haircut lady had a care package for us from her parent's church and herself. We had lots of goodies--hair products (expensive stuff that I would NEVER purchase myself!), snacks/food, shaving cream & razors (girls & guys stuff), toothbrushes & toothpaste. We were excited!!

Thursday we went to discount tire to get our tires rotated & balanced...but walked away buying two new tires. blah! We weren't expecting that! We left and ran a ton more errands. Eventually later into the evening I got on the loop and was driving around 65mph when I noticed the steering wheel was shaking like CRAZY. UNBALANCED TIRES...urgh! So we had to go AGAIN Friday morning before we hit the road to get them balanced. Talk about some spiritual breathing that was occurring. We weren't happy. But what matters is that we were safe on the road and it was just a mistake. We got over it, but it made us get on the road a good 45 mins later than planned...which made us hit rush hour traffic in Colorado Springs.

I spent quite a bit of quality time with Lori, Cotter, and Kim the past week. So lucky that even in the midst of packing & craziness we got to spend so much time together. We laid out many days in the past 2 weeks, had lunch over at my apartment last Saturday, spent many hours at the leisure pool Sunday afternoon, we spent time with the Kim/Brett on Monday night, we ate dinner with friends over at the Marcos home on Tuesday night, moving stuff on Wednesday, and then our last hoorah on Thursday--icecream!

Monday was Teddy's last day of work at the jail. There were definite ups and downs with the job. But I think more than anything it was a blessing. We had our benefits through them since we were married, he was hourly so he pretty much got off any time he wanted to & he also got paid more when he worked over time, overall he had a wonderful schedule, he was able to minister to people there & allowed us many opportunities to pray for the people he worked for. We didn't love the 12 hour shifts but did love the work 3 days one week and 4 the next. He left with good relationships built! They even threw him a lunch party with a money tree. :) So thoughtful of them! He has decided to stay "employed" with them so that when we are in Lubbock and he wanted to pick up a shift he can. This will be helpful while we raise support. After we are fully funded for Crusade he will be officially be finished!

Our storage unit is far from organzied. We had to play it like a puzzle for a good hour & half to get everything in. It was crazy.
We had to just throw the rest of our clothes into it. They will all just get washed once we get them out because they will definitely be wrinkled and probably stinky. Did I mention how wonderful our friends are? They stuck through the re-arranging and really helped us out. Not sure our two brains could've figured it all out on our own. :)

Teddy is currently out with my Uncle Ron (my dads brother) doing jobs for the Frigidaire company that is the family business. He went out with him this morning to work on two jobs. They came home for lunch & they went out for another job. That boy loves learning new things and how they work. It also helps that he is a quick learner. I've been relaxing around the house with Aunt Diana. This is exactly what I needed for the day. I think we might run to Old Navy later this afternoon for some shopping. Tonight we will be going to dinner with my Aunt Cindy (dad's sister)/boyfriend/Grandma.

Tomorrow we are going to church with my grandma and then going to eat lunch with her at her housing place. In the afternoon we will be leaving for our bed & breakfast adventure in the foothills of Denver! We are excited!

I'm hoping to be able to update a lot this summer! Can't wait to see how this summer unfolds! Keep checking back for updates! :)

-Kells

raising support update!

Last Sunday Teddy and I had one of our very first support presentation. We aren't necessarily supposed to be doing this before we get trained together in Colorado. But we had the opportunity to speak in front of a SMALL church and we went for it!

We got connected to this church by a guy that works with Teddy. He is the youth leader for the church and his father-in-law is the pastor. When I said small, I really do mean SMALL. There were probably 40 people in the audience. Great small start for us doing presentations. We walked away with $205 one time gifts...from 4 different people and one woman who joined our prayer team! We were thrilled! We built some new relationships and I thought we did GREAT with our actual presentation. It was right around 12 mins long, which included a 5 min ministry video. I was really proud of Teddy for his VERY VERY first support presentation. He did GREAT! For a person who doesn't like public speaking, you would have never known that! :)

Where we are at:

One time gifts-$4,105
new Monthly support- $235/m
Total: $4770 (which includes monthly for may-july)

We still need a lot of money clearly! :) Need around $10,500.

Please please pray with us. We have until August before the money is drafted from our staff account. So we have more time to follow up with people and ask newer people. Please pray that the Lord would give us wisdom on who to ask. We have been specifically praying for a $5,000 check from the get go & have a few friends who are also praying this. Pray for that.

Thanks for your prayers!
-Kells

P.S. If you are interested in praying every month with our ministry updates let me know. Also, if you are interested in giving you can go to give.ccci.org...& search for Teddy Lytle (my name is about to be added). Or you can type in our account #0646462.

quarter of a century

I turned 25 on Monday. WHAT?!? Where has time gone? From what I can recall (growing up), the only thing I wanted to have accomplished before 25 was to be married. SUCCESS! :) I'm sure at some point in time on that list was graduate from college etc...but really, I'm a girl and marriage is what I wanted.

Enough of that, my day was GREAT. great great great! Teddy woke up early to cook me waffles :) He wanted to serve it to me in bed, but I woke up at 9am. Still, so nice of him to do that. Then we spent the day driving around Lubbock picking up all my free items because its my birthday.

As you know by now, I love blogs. I follow quite a few. One of them is a housewife blog. On that blog is how I discovered all the free things you can get for your birthday. So I went online and signed up. And free things bombarded my email the day of my birthday!

We went to World Market ($10 of a $10 purchase) and I got a pair of earrings and some bracelets. Then we went to schlotzky's for a free small sandwich. Later in the day we went to get my car washed for free at Xtreme car wash, got a cup of icecream with one mix-in from marble slab, and went to Sephora to pick up a gift. It ended up being a bottle of bodywash/shampoo/bubblebath in one that smells like birthday cake. YUM!

I even got to nap in the afternoon while Teddy ran a few errands. Teddy had dinner arranged with a group of friends at Chili's. It was yummy! I got a free molten cake there...my favorite dessert they have! After, we went over to one of our staff couple friends house. This was a surprise to me. Everyone from dinner went there for cake & cupcakes. MY FAVORITE! And we spent the evening playing Salad Bowl.







Overall, this has been the best birthday in a long while. Mostly because I got to celebrate with some of my very best friends. The past 3-4 years that hasn't been an option because of Summer Project's and travels. But this year, it was different! The only thing I would do different is to have my family here too. My parents at in Ft.worth and my sister/jason were in Florida celebrating my sisters birthday (May 26th).

Fun presents: Multiple cards with SUCH kind words (family, sweet girl friends, Teddy), TONS of happy birthdays on Facebook!, multiple text & phone calls, 3 electronic cards (email), gift cards to Walgreens (gma), Target (parents), and Old Navy (amy/jason), 1 hour facial & shirt from Banana--I'm wearing in these pictures! (from Teddy), 2 shirts from Oldnavy (Kim/Brett), Sugarland CD (Misty), and necklace/lunch (Katie).

It's weird that I'm 25...but I'm excited for the next 5 leading into my 30's. I can imagine big decisions happening during those 5 years...buying a home?, getting a doggie finally!, A baby (or two?) will be on the agenda, doing full time ministry with my husband (HOW EXCITING), growing deeper in my relationship with Jesus!, new friends, and so much more!

Thanks for making me feel special on my 25th birthday!! :)
-Kells

moving!

You may have read on facebook that we are moving. Where to you ask? Storage. :)No this wasn't in our plans. We definitely would not have signed a 15 month lease if we knew we would move out 7 months later.

That's right, after June 10th we will be "homeless". Basically, we are headed to Colorado for our training then coming back praying that we have a place to stay for a while for free/lower cost. My parents have offered their home as last resort. So, we have a back-up if nothing in Lubbock happens.

Getting someone to move into our apartment has been a mess. We posted it on craigslist and got hits immediately. Our apartment is a great layout and for the price in this side of town it's really a deal. We had people come look and love it, but never call again. We've had people not look at it and say they wanted to meet up in the front office to sign stuff and not show up. We've even had people come look at the apartment, call back the next day saying they wanted to meet us in the front to sign over and STOOD US UP! blah. We continually reminded each other that God is in control. If we are suppose to pay for rent throughout the summer, then He would provide the money to do so.

Finally a guy came to look at the apartment on Monday. He has a few questions that he wanted me to figure out from the front office and get back to him Tuesday. I did just that and he said he would take us up on our offer. So, he came over yesterday to do the application to see if he was approved for our apartment. HE WAS! So he is suppose to come tomorrow to sign his lease. I will feel much more comfortable after we get the lease signed over. After that happens we will officially pick our storage place, go get a POBOX (bc we don't have a place for mail), and continue packing/moving.

I've spent the past two days packing up. It's kind of difficult packing for 6 weeks in Colorado but also packing up things into boxes for storage. Also, knowing that most of the boxes are going to be sitting for 6months-1 year as we raise support. That's weird. So yes our apartment should be almost empty this time next week. CRAZY! We really enjoyed this apartment and sad to move out.

Pray for our attitudes and stress level for the Lytle home :) We'd appreciate it.