(You) got to have faith!

RUF retreat time...

This is where I was all weekend. It was so much fun and so good for me. We played basketball until three in the morning, played foosball and pictionary, took hikes through the woods, invented a new game (a cross between ultimate Frisbee and soccer), and we did a ropes course. And that was in our free time. We had four sermons, five small groups sessions, one breakout session (where we learned about different aspects of the RUF philosophy), and sang countless songs (there were at least 30 of them). Anyhow, the weekend was awesome. I can't really sum it all up really well because so much happened. But I really loved just hanging out with my friends and playing games. I miss that at home. I love doing things outdoors and no one being distracted by other things. So here are a few pictures from the weekend. There are over 90 that I have received so far, so I'll spare you.

Julia and Faith - Curly Hair unite pose!

My RUFers!!! Love them. This is after church on Sunday. If you look on the right you will see Andrew and Chris Ahn (you might see why we call him little Chris).
Starting from the right (a sentence or two will not capture how awesome these people are... but it will give you an idea to start with):
* Julia (my favorite curly haired RUFer! We have dinner at the diner every three weeks before small group so I can spend her meal points. She is one of the most energetic and real people you will ever meet. I love her!)
* Rebekah - frosh
* Sarah Bell (I love saying her name together. Her parents live in Indonesia. She is a transfer. She is also a speech therapist major. woot woot.)
*Ndang - he sings in the choir and is a chem and bio major who is going to pharmacy school in two years).
*Rebecca - my favorite freshman from last year! She is so sweet. I try to make her smile whenever I see her because she is rarely smiling. She is definitely one of my favorite people in RUF.
*Michelle - small group leader - christian bale appreciator - the person I hang out with the most this semester - we text message each other or post on each others facebooks or send emails constantly about just random stuff.
* some girl that was a friend of someone else
* Greg - my nerd computer science major. We make fun of each other for being nerds and rule at pictionary together when the words are computer related.
* me
* Tara - sweetest person ever. linguistics major. So interesting.
* Brian - one of three seniors - bio major - plays bass - is pretty awesome. Most of the guys in RUF are. they all just make me laugh so ofter.
* Sarah (gouch) - sophomore - English major - crazy fun - she is very full of life.
* Josh - Josh needs a lot more than a sentence to explain him. The pictures don't even start to describe how much fun he is to have around. Josh is the strangest person I have ever met.
* Chris - RUF leader
* Andrew - reminds me of Greg Taylor. That is probably why I love him so much. He reminds me of a little brother. We tease each other all the time and he makes me play sports with him.
* Chris Ahn - little Andrew, seriously (they both refuse to do anything that is stereotypically Asian, like ping pong, or stuff like that).

Our speaker.
Ndang! You gotta have Faith. (His name is Ndang, the N is silent).

Ropes course. That was the only rope we touched the entire time. We had to swing everyone over to a three foot by three foot platform. We had 14 people on that thing by the time we were finished!! I'm pretty proud of us. :D
Ndang swinging over the "poisen peanut butter". That is what they called it. They never told us why were were all swing out to the middle of a lake of poisen peanut butter, just that we had to do it.
This was evacuating the Titanic. We had to get everyone through the tire under a minute and a half. We made it because we were awesome.
Chris Ahn.

Me and Gouch (Sarah).
Brian Crawford and me beasting at foosball. After this we didn't play together again because it was impossible for other people to win. So we'd take on one other person on our team and challenge each other.
ME!
Other people really got into foosball. I think this picture is amazing.
These are the only pictures of us playing the game we invented. This was taken through a high powered scope on the opposite hill. The game was basically ultimate frisbee, but with a twist. At the end of the field, instead of scoring like in ultimate, you had to throw it into the goal and each end had a goalie who could swat it out of the air. We played for over an hour and a half after the historical fair we went to was boring. There was this school next door to the fair and so we walked over and started playing. It was the highlight of my trip! Seriously, I love this game. I was so sore the next day from diving on the ground so many time. But it was that good kind of sore when you are just reminded by the soreness how awesome the day before was.
Us walking off after "amish ultimate" or soccbee. We haven't quite determined the name yet.

We stopped at Turkey hill to get drinks after the game because we were all about to pass out. This is what Josh bought. Josh is crazy and makes every event fun. Normally I might be embarrassed to be around someone like this all the time, but Josh is hilarious. Everything he does is so strange. We just look at each other sometimes and say, "well that is Josh".The rest of us all bought half gallons of lemonade and tea because they were on sale. I guess that makes for 8 or so gallons of tea and lemonade. heh.
Andrew plays bass.
Brian and Andrew play bass. One of the best photos of the weekend. We were eating these really nasty chicken sandwiches and bugles for dinner. And so we look over and we see this. There aren't really any words to describe this.