By golly, she's done it again!

"Done what again?" You may ask yourself.

Well, to answer your question, nothing in particular, but I had you going for a second, didn't I?

I do have another "first" to tack onto my "first time doing (fill in the blank)" list, however! For the first time ever I planned a FOCUS regional gathering!
(Applause)
It's not really that big of a deal, but for me it took me back to the days of SPK4, a pretty intensive weekend retreat I co-lead my junior year of college. The beauty about this weekend was that rather than having every minute of each day planned (LITERALLY), there just had to be some basics (such as breakfast, lunch and dinner) and the group was free to explore Fargo to their heart's content. For any missionaries reading: If you ever plan a regional gathering and need places to stay, I highly recommend putting advertisements in church bulletins so that the local families can get involved with the mission in some way, even if they already support a missionary. I randomly assigned people to different houses and the families were so generous! It was a great way for the missionaries to hang out and see a little more of Fargo while sleeping in beds or on couches, rather than sleeping bags on the floor, and it merited a great response from many of them.

The wonderful Colorado Great North 2011-2012 region!

Overall, I think that all 38 missionaries that attended had a great weekend and I heard from multiple people that it was relaxing and a wonderful release! So two words can sum up my relatively sleepless weekend: mission accomplished. The stuffed french toast with warm apples and a side of bacon that Sarah, Carrie and I prepared turned out great and started Saturday off with a bang. The highlight of the weekend was praying a Holy Hour with all of the missionaries followed by Mass at noon with Fr. Cheney. He gave a rockstar homily and it was fun having everybody here on our turf, especially the missionaries in Madison.

In other news, the starting guard for the Lady Bison ballers, Katie Birkel, is one of the girls in my Wednesday night study and she recently tore her ACL! This is her senior year but since it's early enough in the season she's able to redshirt and now will come back for another season. Please keep her and the team in your prayers-she's a really great girl and is having surgery on Monday so pray for positive results.

All Saints Day Party... I was St. Juan Diego

When I stationed myself in Omaha last weekend to visit Molly and Ben, they hooked me on a game that I never thought I would find myself playing: Settlers of Catan. Oh my goodness. Have you ever played Settlers? I highly recommend this game over many others, especially Monopoly. For those of you who have never experienced, Settlers is kind of like Monopoly, minus the never-endingness (you definitely know what I mean) and rather than buying properties with fake money of every color of the rainbow and selfishly hoarding as many as you can, you trade sheep, wheat, wood, oar and bricks and never want to have too many in your hand at once lest you roll a seven and have to get rid of half of them. Luckily I already found a group who plays pretty frequently up here in Fargo!

Last Thursday our FOCUS team had lunch with the Cru interns (Campus Crusade for Christ) so we could get to know one another and share stories about our efforts so far this year at NDSU (which are essentially the same--transform university campuses for Jesus Christ through small group Bible studies and discipleships). I really clicked with one of the girls and she randomly busted out how much she loves playing Settlers and I actually freaked out and maybe choked a little on my slice of 'za. She invited me over that same night and I got to play with her and her hardcore Settlers-playing friends. They even made up their own rules to cover those "questionable moves" that are always left out by the official game rules. I'm already looking forward to the next time I can play!

If you can't tell I definitely go through phases. I'm still certainly in my LOTR phase, but since it's been already nearly a month since we watched the movies, the details are becoming less clear and I'm moving on to the here and now...a.k.a. Settlers of Catan. I guess this is my favorite thing of the month until the next thing comes along!

Please keep our team in your prayers as we continue fortifying the campus for Jesus Christ, especially in our efforts of sharing the Gospel.

You all remain in my prayers as well!

Love,
Kelsey Marie