San Diego, California

Hello Friend!

I'm already in San Diego before my Hope Youth Corps trip in Mexico, and I'm staying at my friend Rachel Reyes' house. It's really funny because we had never met in real life before when I asked if I could stay at her house! We met over a prayer phone call that my friend Gwen set up. Then I met her at Reach - the conference I was just at with 18,000 disciples, and now I'm staying at her house with her wonderful family! 

The first day that I arrived in SD (*note I survived my first plane ride by myself), Rachel and I started catching Pokemon and then made fresh squeezed lemonade.

 It tasted so good and refreshing on that hot day! After dinner, Hannah, Rachel's older sister, drove Rachel and I to the beach and we all painted the sunset.

AMAZING.

We climbed down between some brown crumbly rocks past the "Stay Back" sign and there was a fantastic view of the sunset when we reached the bottom. Then we drove home and their sweet dog Cali slept at the end of my bed. She is so cute.

On Friday, Rachel and I woke up and had a quiet time together and a fruit bowl for breakfast! I played guitar for a little bit. Rachel knows how to play the banjo! How cool is that?! We then got ready for a day at the beach which included more painting! 

We went hiking at the beach and walked at least two miles. Then we went into the water and splashed in the sea green waves. When Rachel and I came out of the water we decided to paint! Above are our paintings. Rachel's is the one with the beautiful sea foam color, mine is the one with the imaginary clouds(note* not often are there distinct clouds in California, only wispy things and overcast). We spent almost seven hours at the beach!

Hannah picked us up and then we came home and talked about surfing the next morning. For dinner we had this awesome meal that Rachel prepared, it was vegan pesto with spaghetti noodles and black beans. I added a little bit of Parmesan to it, but the pesto itself was really good. I had never had vegan pesto! 

Rachel suggested that after dinner we visit Mount Soledad, a high place in San Diego that has a giant cross up on it and lots of war memorial plaques to people who served. It was really beautiful to see, especially at sunset. There were a lot of pretty lights and Pokestops.

This morning, Rachel, Hannah, April and I woke up early and went surfing! Well Hannah and I went surfing, Rachel and April, a friend from Texas, painted on the beach. It was my first time surfing and I was able to stand up like four times! It was sort of like being on a never ending penny board until the wave stopped. Crossed that one off my bucket list. 

There's me on the surfboard! I'm farther back to the right. Great Photo Creds to Rachel! 

When we got back from surfing Rachel made vegan waffle mix and I put them into the waffle maker. They tasted delicious, they were light and fluffy and I added blueberries to some of them, which tasted really sweet. 

Then it was nap time after brunch! After Rachel and I woke up, Rachel's mom drove us to UCSD(University of California San Diego). They have amazing sculptures there and the library building is really pretty. There was even a Dr. Seuss room dedicated to him since he gave a lot of money to the library. Rachel and I walked past a giant rock bear and took some pictures in front of it! It was so cute. 

Later that evening we went to Old Town, which is this really cute touristy place with lots of good Mexican restaraunts! There was an extremely gifted guitar player/singer at the restaraunt we were eating at, and he played the song, "Piano Man" by Billy Joel on the guitar, but I think he changed a few words because he was playing on a guitar. It sounded so good on the guitar! 

It was a great way to end the night. I am so grateful that I got to visit San Diego before my HYC! 

See you in two weeks,

Joy :)

Believe Camp

Hello, reader!

I am currently sitting in Panera missing camp and wishing that I was still with all of the wonderful teens from the Midwest. I just came back from my very last church camp in Polo, Illinois. I have gone every year since I was in 5th grade, so this was my final and 8th year of camp!

Of course, when you do something over and over again like that for eight whole years, it can get boring and repetitive, but this camp has been amazing and different every single year. This year's theme was Believe, and I learned about believing in God's will for my life and how to deepen my faith and trust in Him.

There were fantastic lessons by great speakers who had amazing stories and testimonies to share with us. We had separate guy/girl classes that also made a huge impact on my experience at camp, and it was fun discussing what we learned with other people around the camp. For instance, in the picture below, Lexi, Abby and I were discussing what we had just learned from a girl's class and how we were going to put the lesson into practice in our lives. Then Bob Dignan gave us a selfie stick so of course we had to take a selfie!

Me, Abby, and Lexi after the Women's Lesson on friendships!

This week we were also split up into teams, and coincidentally I just so happened to be on team China(thanks to whoever did that). I was on the media team and 6 of us made vines all week during team challenge time to get points for our country. Here's a link to our vines. We had an awesome team that finished first(or so we thought?) in the relay race on Friday, but then apparently something happened so we tied with Egypt for second! Oh well!

Anya holding our flag ya!! Go China!

The rest of camp was just filled with spending time with God and friends. I could tell that the camp leaders/staff put a lot of heart into the week; it was the best year I had ever had! Thank you to everyone who sent me mail, I really appreciated it :).  I'm so grateful to have been able to experience eight years of camp!

Annette, Lexi, Bella, and Me!

Sabrina and I having a uke session!

Ren, Kaylee and I recreating this photo-

WOW that transformation!!!

I've met so many of my best friends at camp, and it's so crazy to think that we are all going into college soon! Some of my friends were counseling this week, and I hope that I will be able to counsel next year too. I'm about to leave Thursday for San Diego to go on my mission trip that starts Sunday in Mexico! I will write a super long blog post about it when I get back!

Have a great week,

Joy :)

Reach 2016!

Hello fellow reader!

This past weekend I had the ability to go to my church's nationwide conference St. Louis. It was AMAZING. I could not have been more grateful to go and see 18,000 disciples worshipping God, learning, and fellowshipping with one another. I am apart of the Detroit Church of Christ,  which is apart of the International Churches of Christ. We have a region here in Ann Arbor and a region in Livonia that we drive out to every so often! If you want to find out more about my church, be sure to text me or email me at joynuel@gmail.com.

Here are some pictures from the conference:

The big screen! 

There was amazing worship and many inspirational lessons on that stage. It's very nostalgic just thinking about it right now. The first night my brother Luke and I saw this musical, Upside Down, and it was about the book of Acts. That was really fun to watch with my brother and it helped that I just so happened to be reading Acts in my quiet times!

For food, when there wasn't a line out the door I ended up going to this place called Porano's Pasta. It was a make your own pasta bowl, sort of like Chipotle burrito bowls. Very yummy!

Ren and I at Porano's Pasta

Tina Crawley, she's amazing.

On our down time when we didn't have too much to do after classes and such, I would walk around with friends from our ministry and we would hotel-hop, and of course, visit The Arch!

Classic

Dani and I enjoying the sun.
Check out her youtube channel: DefinitelyNotDani. 

Lauren behind the PIZZAAA! It was so good.

On Saturday, Lauren and I went with a bunch of Cincinnati teens to the City Museum in St. Louis! It was so cool, you could walk through all of these tunnels, go down really long slides, and run up ramps that were probably made for skateboards.

We are above some buildings at this point! 

Me, Olivia, Nadya, & Lauren

This is a panorama I took of the Saturday night worship, everyone had their phones out!

At the end of the conference, I definitely felt like my voice was becoming more hoarse because of all the singing and talking there was that weekend! I got to meet some of the people going on my Hope Youth Corps trip in a couple of weeks to San Diego/Baja, Mexico.

One of the biggest things that I took from the conference was that the world really needs us, and God needs us to be able to go anywhere to serve Him and to spread the good news everywhere. We need to view the world differently, as a chance to invite people to know God.

This is just the beginning of many church events, next week I have my church camp and then when I get back, I'll be here for three days and then it will be time to go to Mexico! I will definitely keep you updated on all of that and try to blog as much as I can.

When I did get home from Reach, I finally put together a video of my vacation trip that was two weeks ago, and uploaded it to Youtube!
If you want to check it out, here it is: (oh and if you change the settings to 760p that's a lot better quality)

I filmed it using my GoPro and my iPhone. I really enjoy making these videos and hope that I can continue to make more in the future of the places that I've been!

Thanks for reading, and I hope that you have a great week.

Joy :)

ps. gotta catch em' all

Vacation in the Smokies

Hello friend!

Happy 4th of July. I hope that your summer has been going well! I recently got back from Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and wanted to make a blog post about my family's vacation. This is a bit longer than the blog posts that I am used to writing, so take your time and enjoy.

On Friday, July 1st, my family and I drove back from Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We go there every other summer for vacation, and it’s always so refreshing and a great way to kick off the summer. This week we had fantastic weather, even though the weather app predicted rain. It was sunny every single day except for one which had a little bit of sprinkling rain. Even then, the weather was perfect because it was still warm out.

The last day with a beautiful sunset!

On Saturday my family and I went on a lil’ hike past this place called, “The Sinks,” which was a place where you could jump off of these big rocks into water and swim! We didn’t end up swimming there, and instead we went back to our hotel and swam there after lunch. However it was so cool to see the water flowing down and forming a little stream throughout our hike.

Then it was time to go downtown, shop, and MOST IMPORTANTLY--treat ourselves to some ice cream!

Downtown!

On Sunday morning my dad and I did a big hike together; it’s become a tradition that we do one super long hike up Mt. Leconte. We hiked 15 miles in 8 hours with 4,000 feet of elevation that day. It was well worth it for the view, but let’s just say that we were extremely tired after! My dad’s feet didn’t do too well after that, he had some really painful looking blisters. My feet were okay, I had bought new hiking boots, but I was really sore! That was a once-in-a-lifetime hike. 

On the way down the mountain, it was so freaky because we kept on seeing bear scat! It literally felt like we were following a bear down the mountain, or a bear was following US, and it kept us moving quickly. Meanwhile, my mom and brother went to "Ripley's Believe it or Not!" museum. This giant marble ball rolling on water is sitting on the corner of a street, and it is so cool because you can change the direction that it's rolling in because the ball is floating on a little layer of water.

Monday morning we woke up early and went to the Log Cabin Pancake House which is right down the street from our hotel. Luke and I got  classic chocolate chip pancakes! After breakfast, we drove out to a Quiet Walkway which was along next to a little stream of water. The water was so cold! We sat on rocks and relaxed under the green leafy trees.

Log Cabin Pancake House. Classic!

The next day was our jet ski/wave runner day! We had initially planned on riding wave runners in the Bahamas, see this blog post, but it turned out that the weather was bad so we couldn’t go, and then we planned on riding them in Tennessee. My dad found this really neat place on a lake that was surrounded by mountains. It was such a beautiful day out, and the water in the lake was warm! I managed to go as fast as 59 miles per hour, and my brother and dad and I spent two hours racing across the lake and jumping into the water off of our jet skis! That and snorkeling had to be some of the coolest things that I’ve ever experienced in my life. The tears in my eyes were going to the sides of my face when I blinked at top speed! 

Dad and Luke on Jet Skis!

My brother and dad then participated in a basketball free-throw competition and this one guy got 10/10 shots in the basket! We decided that we were going to go to the bean bag competition as a family on Wednesday after that... Mom, Dad, and I went driving around to the craft stores afterwards and found some very cute shops! I found a 1965 Sound of Music record! They also had cute signs like this one:

On Wednesday, my mom and I rode horses at Sugarland Stables in the Smoky Mountains. The horses were so majestic and beautiful. I rode a horse named Lil’ Red. He went at his own pace and I had a fun time trotting when he realized he needed to catch up to my mom's horse in front of us! My mom rode a horse named Grey Ghost. He was white and speckled with little grey dots. 

Us in with Champ

After horseback riding my family went to the bean bag competition. We won the little competition and won two free tickets to Wonderworks, which is this place with a ton of family activities to do inside! It was so God that we won those because that was the one thing that we had wanted to do in Gatlinburg that we felt like we had never done as a family. 

The next day before we went to Wonderworks, we drove to this place called Clingman’s Dome and walked up to the highest point in the Smoky Mountains. Walking down it was a lot easier! 

Then we went to Wonderworks and went rock climbing, experienced a 4D Movie, walked through some mind-boggling exhibits and Luke and I climbed a ropes course. It was really cool in the upside-down house. 

After Wonderworks, my family and I went to Dolly Parton’s Lumberjack Adventure dinner show! The show was really exciting to watch, there were people there with many talents! They were on ropes and climbing up trees and also doing trampoline stunts. Some dogs even came out and participated in the show which was really cute. 

I had a great family vacation, and it was so nice because when we weren’t doing activities outside of the hotel, we were just lounging around and enjoying not doing anything. Our family really enjoyed watching The Middle together, there were some really funny scenes in it. Now, we are getting ready to go to Reach 2016, our church's national conference in St. Louis this weekend! Time to get packing again! It may be a while till I blog again, possibly next Sunday or Monday because of the business with the conference.

I hope that you have a great rest of your week!

Joy :)