A line from Juneau: Getting into the swing of things.

Last week was my first week of working for ATA and I know already that my job is probably going to wear me out a bit. I'm giving canoe tours across the Mendenhall lake to the Mendenhall Glacier and back. Each tour is about 3 miles of rowing. Even though it is called a "canoe tour" it is more like a large 12 passenger boat that is shaped like a canoe. All the tourists are so eager to know why I am in Alaska, which makes sharing about what I'm doing here very easy! I won't really be working directly with many of my coworkers, but I have gotten to meat quite a few of them and I see them in passing a lot. Last week, I was able to take Wednesday off work to go with a woman, Debbie Douglas, who has been a long time friend to the Juneau Summer Project. I went with her to a place called Echo Cove, where we put in kayaks and then kayaked to Echo Ranch (about 1 1/2 hours each way). We spent the day at Echo Ranch training camp counselors canoe safety and how to help someone who has flipped their canoe. So, I spent the entire day in the water (which was freezing) dumping canoes while the counselors practiced instructing me what to do and helping flip the canoe upright. After we were finished teaching them, Debbie taught me how to flip kayaks upright and get back in them and whatnot. Even though I was terribly cold, the day was really enjoyable and now I'll be able to do kayak checks for everyone when all of us on Project go kayaking.
We are getting into our semi-regular schedule for the summer now, with meetings of various sorts every night. This includes "training and briefing" on Mondays, "Women's development night" Tuesdays, "Juneau Project meeting" Wednesdays, and "action group night" Thursdays. On the weekends, we have various outreach events which include anything from ultimate frisbee, and bonfires to going downtown to talk to people on the streets and in shops. We also will camp and hike on the weekends as well. This past week we spilt up into ministry groups, all with different focuses and these are a mix of the men's and women's project. I am apart of the "Native American Outreach" team. Wednesday evening I will be going to a youth center where many Native American children will be. This is our first time going there, so we really don't know what to expect. This weekend we will also be doing some work with Native Americans and possibly going to a church of theirs.
On Friday night, we are hosting a youth lock-in, followed by a dodge ball tournament Saturday afternoon! Everyone is getting really excited about this and spreading news about it all over town and in our churches! It seems like it has been so easy to make friends with local Juneau people as well as numerous college-aged people who are living in Juneau for the summer just working and enjoying Alaska! I feel like God has really made a lot of things easy for all of us so far, which has really been encouraging and given everyone more motivation and excitement for all we are doing up here!
I really was unsure how I felt about the church that I am attending up here because it was not where I initially wanted to go, but I have quickly settled in there and am so thankful that this is where I ended up. I've been able to spend time with one of the youth girls from this church and I'm so excited for the many more relationships that will form within the church!
It has been amazing to see how all of us women who are up here are able to learn from one another. I've probably said this before, but we really are all incredibly different from one another but all of our differences balance each other out in some strange way. With some of our differences, God has made me slow down a bit. While we were hiking out to the Mendenhall Glacier the other day, I quickly took off with one of the local Juneau girls until I suddenly realized as we were crossing a huge creek (maybe river would be more appropriate) that what may be easy for me is not easy for everyone. Sure enough, when I got on top of some rocks and turned around, I saw that most of the group was still at the creek trying to get across and many were having trouble. This kind of happened again while we were hiking back and trying to get down a rock face. I climbed down an entirely different place than everyone else, but it ended up helping because I was able to see where an easier place to climb down was from the bottom better than from the view up top, where everyone else still was. I'm definitely learning how to work better in a group and be aware of everyone instead of simply having to know my own abilities and work independently.