week 8

another week is past. our speaker for the week was jodi austin; our first female speaker ! we were all really excited!! it was a great week; she was teaching on the holy spirit and the gifts of the holy spirit. it was a great week of learning, and a lot of new things to take in. for speaker hang out we went to red rock to watch the sun set, but we couldnt really see it because the sun was behind the mountains. it was still fun though! and then after we went out and bought stuff to have an ice cream sunday party!

on friday night, the boys had a little surprise for us. they helped make, set up, and serve us supper. although they did start a hour late, it was really cute, and tasted good. they had us all get dressed up, and their way of dressing up was putting a tie on themselves. i havent uploaded my pictures from the week yet, but i will later.

on saturday it was kristen's 21st birthday, so on sunday night we all went to applebee's for 1/2 off appetizers !

in order to get the 1/2 off ap's, you had to be in the bar. but not all of us are 21, so we couldnt all sit in the bar. so we had to have the other table order all our stuff for us, and then pass it to us. it was kinda confusing for the waiter, but in the end we all got really cheap food, and had fun!

this is me and zianna after apple bees. we've lately been going through a phase of listening to and singing spice girls, and some s club 7 .. how i missed those bands.

on saturday morning, 7 of us went camping for the night. we went to valley of fire to go camping. we did some 'sight seeing' there, hiking and some rock climbing. it was a bit windy and chilly at night, and where we were sleeping was in sand so not a great combonation .. especially when you arent in a tent. but it ended up being fun, and it was great to get away from the base and hang out. i dont have any pictures uploaded from then yet, but i will later! :)

it ended up being a great week of learning, and relationship building with everyone here. this week woo and heather also decided that they are going to go ahead and book their tickets to come with us to turkey !! we are all really excited because they both we planing on not going because of lack of finances. i cant believe we leave in 4 weeks !!! we're starting to get really excited, and we cant wait to see all that God has planned for us while in Turkey.

thats about all thats new here in vegas. i ll try and upload some newer pictures soon. in the mean time SEND ME A LETTER. you dont know how excited i get when i hear i have mail (and its not very often). ive only gotten letters from 2 people in canada; my parents, and gabrielle (THANK YOU GABBB!!). i promise i will write you back if you send me a freakin letter!

beth konrath
p o box 36606
las vegas nv
81933-6606
USA

please :) pretty please

yay

another update. (im still wondering if people are reading my blog or not, im not getting any comments)

this past week our speaker was marty meyer. he spoke on the father heart of God. it was a great week. on tuesday we climbed to the top of red rock and had our lectures there for the day. once we got up there it was kinda windy and uncomfortable to sit on the rocks, but i loved it! it was great to get out of the base and have lectures in a new fun place! and i loved climbing up there!

the other night for local outreach we went to the street where most of the homeless people sleep. we went around 8 and everyone was already lined up on the side walks with their tents or their sleeping bags ready for the night. we took garbage bags and picked up all the garbage (the street was covered), and just made simple conversation with the people. i think that a lot of them are just waiting for someone to actually care about them, and have a sincere conversation with them. i always find it intersting when you ask the person how they ended up on the streets of las vegas. a lot of them are there because they gambled their way to the streets. but a lot of them are just out of jobs. many of them are great workers, with university degrees and everything. the economy just sucks for a lot of them, and many of them came to vegas thinking that they could find work. its also interesting to talk to the people; a lot of them are content with the position that they are in .. which is really great to hear; and that they try and see the more positive things of it. like these 2 guys me and kristen were talking to; they think that as homeless people they have it better as some of their other homeless people. they were thankful that they have clothes and other things in storage, unlike a lot of the others. they also just saw it as a temporary thing. it also breaks my heart when i try and talk to people that are so cracked out and so messed up. it boggles my mind as to how they got that far .. what could i possibly do to help them? im not even sure if they understand what i say to them when they talk, and if they even know what theyre saying to me.

we have the weekends off, today it was sooo nice out. i went back to red rock with peter, sam and rich. it was so great. we went all out. heres some pictures of us climbing. since being here in vegas, ive fallen in love with climbing !! ahh, so awesome. i love the adventurous aspect of it, and the danger thrill !!

me samuel, and peter
me climbing ! if only you could see how far to the ground it is ...

heres a pic that should have been with the last post (i hadnt uploaded them by them). this is peter, me and sam with all the toys that we won at the circus circus last weekend.

and lastly; a picture of noemie (shes a volunteer here for 3 months; shes leaving at the end of march) jackie, me, zianna & kristen (dts mates). this is at the graduation that we had on friday for the dts that just got back from outreach in afghanistan. theyre all leaving this weekend (the 4 of them) and jackies one of them. we're all sad to see them done there dts, and for them to be leaving !

check again soon for another update!! :)

1/2 way

The end of last week marked the half way point of the lecture phase here in Vegas.
We had a group of 35 freshmen come last week, and we led them out in Mission Adventures. It was a great week, and super tiring. It was weird to go from about 15 of us YWAMers here at the base, to about 50 people. I haven't uploaded any pictures yet, but im sure theres tons of them on facebook that the kids already tagged me in. I was sad to see them go, but glad at the same time to have a long nap. I think we're going to go to Scottsdale AZ in a couple of weeks to check up on them, and hang out with them; which is super exciting!
After the kids left, it was nice to go out and not have any worries. Me and a couple of the guys went to the Circus Circus on the strip and just played games and won tons of stuffed animals !! it was great to get away from the base, and get away from huge groups of people. i needed that !
this week our speaker is marty meyer from the ywam base in idaho. yesterday we hiked to the top of red rock for lecture. it took us about a hour to get to the top. it was super nice out, but breezy. a lot of people got sun burns (dont worry mom, i wore sunscreen!!). it was a great work out, but now we're all sore! it was fun to not be in the classroom for lectures and just get to sit outside in God's creation! we also did quiet time and intercession while we were there.
right now im just sitting in the admin office waiting to let guests in for our wednesday community dinner. for the past couple of weeks we've had it at the park, but we're having it at the base tonight. its basically a dinner where anyone can show up, and we'll feed them !
last week we had a bbq at the park accross the street from us, and all the MA kids went out and invited tons of people. Once we unpacked all the stuff, we saw a swat crew with about 10 officers hanging off the side of the van, and some k9 units drive by. it pulled up to a house by the park and then all of a sudden there was 4 louuddd bangs with big puffs of smokes. so we told the kids to all go back to the base, while we all packed up. heather, kevin and i were the last people to leave the park in the van so we decided to drive by the house! we got to the street beside us and a cop stopped us and told us we had to turn around and go the other way because they have a search warrent and just blew up a house ..
Other than that, not a whole lot of exciting things are going on. We just booked our tickets to Turkey as well; leaving the middle of April and coming back to Vegas in the middle of June. We then stay here in Vegas for another week of debriefing, and then i think i ll be staying here to staff/volunteer with Mission Adventures for the summer. and then we'll see what else God has in store for the year.
im still waiting on getting mail !! i get sad every time when my dts mates get mail, and i dont :( :( (do you feel bad now?! :) )
hopefully i ll post some more pictures soon, and maybe a more indepth write up of the past week with the MA kids.
beth

two updates in 1 week?!?

i just uploaded some pictures from my camera to the computer, so i'll have to post some pictures for you. its easier for me to write updates when i have visuals. theyre all on facebook too, so check them out there aswell :)

a couple of weeks ago, me sam and rich made another hike up red rock! we went on the mountain beside red rock this time, and it was a faster hike than what we usually do. it was really nice, and great to get out

last weekend we also had a poker night, we went thrifting last saturday too. we all dressed up for poker night. the stakes were high! whoever won got 2 days off dishduty, and 2nd place was a morning off work duties !! unforunately, i didnt win. but i had fun! after a couple of us went to a 24 hour coffee shop and just hung out, and i worked on some journaling.

thrifting !!

i cant figure out how to rotate this picture, but kevin dressed up as .. i dont even know what for poker night, while the rest of us were all dressed up. we did a 7/11 run half way through, it was funnn !!

last night, some of us went back to the 24 hour coffee shop just to hang out and we didnt get home until like 2. and i forgot that in the morning a youth group was coming to paint out hallways, and i woke up at like 8 or 9 ish. im also starting to get sick with a cold/ bad cough, which isnt fun. but i had a 4 hour nap in the after noon today which was AWESOME ! haha

tomorrow mission adventures start !! im excited to be staffing it, but its going to be crazy busy with 40 extra people around the base. theres so many things left to do to get ready before they come !!

heres one last picture from wednesday; be sure to read the post before this if you havent already!

so long

sorry! long time no update. i havent had a lot of time to update because of lack of time, and the internet doesnt really work here.

not a whole lot is new. this week we had aaron (he lives here in vegas) come speak to us about making disciples, and simple church gatherings and stuff like that. it was reallly awesome. probably my favorite week so far.

we learned about baptism, and part of the great commission (matthew 28:19) is to preach the good news AND baptize people. i hadnt been baptized before because i never realy made it an important thing in my life. so when we were talking about it in lectures on wednesday i told aaron that i hadnt been baptized before, and that i wanted to! so right then and there we picked up, and packed into 2 cars (the vans were both out) and went to the public pool ! we learned that we dont need to have a pastor or a 'church person' in order to baptize someone, and that Jesus commanded us to baptize people ! i wanted my dts mates to be a part of it, so when aaron asked me who i wanted to baptize me, i said that i wanted everyone to!

so at the pool 7 of us got into the pool (aaron, 2 of my dts leaders (kevin and richard), 2 of my dts mates (zianna and kristen) and my friend/staff here at the base sam). we pretty much got kicked out of the pool for breaking every rule possible (video camera, camera, clothes in the pool just to name a few). but it was great ! it ment a lot to me to have my friends do it for me, and it was a great learning experience for them !!

not a whole lot else is new. we're busy this weekend gettting ready for mission adventures !! we're staffing it for the week, with sam who leads it out. mission adventures is what i did herealmost a year ago when i came with rock church. its going to be fun to be on the staffing end of it. also, im thinking about staying here after turkey to help staff it for the summer, but im going to see how this week goes before i make any big decisions!

i dont know what else to update you on. theres been tons of things going on here lately, and not enough time to update you on everything !! its crazy. im loving every minute of it, and wouldnt change anything for the world ! i cant believe ive only been here for a month .. 4 crazy months ahead of us !!

send me emails and i ll be sure to reply ! (konrathbeth@gmail.com). AND if you mail me i WILL reply. (i got a letter from gabrielle the other day, and i sent off a reply today!!! ) im still waiting for letters from the rest of you !! :D

hoping i ll be able to give you a better update soon. im going to be crazy busy this coming week so replys for emails might be slow.

loveeee beth

yay

update time !! :)

im going to try and update every week or so. its going to be hard though with everything going on.

since my last update ive done tons of fun stuff ! last last saturday i was supposed to go out and do some stuff with foster connect and my dts mates, but i forgot that i told my room mates that i would kill anyone that woke me up. so i woke up at around 1 and they were leaving in 2 minutes. i couldnt shower that fast, so i ended up staying here at the base. later that night we went out and did some shopping, and just walking around. and then we went bowling ! it was my first time playing with the big massive balls. it was a lot of fun!

that sunday after church me and 2 guys went out to go hiking again at red rock. i cant remember if i posted that in my last blog. for a weekend activity we went to red rock to do some intense hiking. so we went back to do it all again. i love it, hikings fun!! :) its a really great work out too.

this past week our speaker was egbert, from holland! its fun to have speakers that are from all over the world. this week we also prayed about where to go to outreach, and if we should go to turkey or not. soo we decided, that our outreach is to turkey !! its cool because egbert is living in turkey now so we were able to ask him some questions and stuff. im really excited to be going to turkey. he told us that theres about 70 million people living there, and only about 4000 people are Christians. so its a country in great need, and i cant wait to minister to the people there !!

we did another strip tour of a couple more hotels with our speaker. we just walked around the stores and stuff. we went mainly to the luxor, which is like a pyramid and has a bright light that shines on top to the sky. its insanely bright. in order to go onto any of the floors in that hotel where the people stay, you have to have a key card thing for the elevator. some of us really wanted to go on, so we got in and waited until some cleaning ladies came on, and we just rode up with them. it was fun !! lol.

this picture is us near the top looking down at the stores at the bottom of the luxor. pretty cool.

you can see the light in the back ground !

on thursday night, we had small groups. so while the guys were out, we baked some brownies and decorated for our surprise valentines day thing for the guys! we each picked a guy to be our valentine (we all pretend to have crushes on them, its quite hilarious). so when they got back we blind folded them all and took them into the dinning room where we had gifts set out for them all. they were all mainly gifts that we took from the storage room, or cheap things that we bought. it was a lot of fun !! we all couldnt stop laughing. i had woo (the 32 year old korean on my dts, SOO hilarious). we always joke about his age, and make fun of him so i got him a package of adult diapers. (i didnt buy them, i got them when we were doing stuff with foster connect). we got them lots of other fun stuff and wrote them cute notes. us girls dressed up all in valentine-y colors.

this is me and my dts mates/room mates. zianna, me, kristen, and sarah !

on saturday we all took a road trip to the grand canyon !! it was about a 4 or 5 hour drive there. in order to get to the part that we thought was cheap to get it, it was a lot further than just going to grand canyon west where i had gone last time. it was a really fun time, and there was SNOW!! it was kinda exciting ! we thought it would just be 25$ for a car load, but since we were in a 15 passenger van, the lady made us pay 120$ (12$ each) even though we only had 10 people !! not fair. but whatever. i havent uploaded my pictures from the grand canyon yet, i didnt really take that many anyways.

today kevin and ted are teaching us for a couple of days (kevins one my dts leaders, and ted is here for a couple of days from ywam denver). so tonight for speaker hang out we're going to the hot springs by hoover dam. its about a 2 mile hike in, but then we get to swim in the hot springs !! im really excited, it should be fun !

well thats all i want to tell you for now. no just kidding. this is getting too long. hope you enjoyed the pictures and the update! make sure to comment please !!
love beth !! :)

the latest

right now, im sitting in the dinning room, on a pool table. the internet doesnt work great all the time, but i seam to get good reception here. we had two lectures today. so i think in total it was 4 hours of lectures! woo. it was good though! i wore my pj's to all the lectures this week i think, and today i ate rice cakes and colored in a coloring book while he spoke! (i still payed attention!). tonight we're going out to do some evangelism (free prayer). this is my favorite !! i cant wait :D

last night we went to the top of vegas on one of the mountains that over looks vegas. you can see 2.4 million people i think. we went up there and played some music, and just worshiped and prayed over the city. it was great! 4 different cop cars came up to see what we were doing. apparently they check there like every hour to see if theres kids up there doing whatever.

(most of the dts) and some extras.

(if you dont like sad/gross stories, read no further!) some of you might have heard about our dog situation. on wednesday after we went to denny's, there was a shopping cart by one of the base doors, with a bag in it. we were too scared to open it, but it looked like there was a animal or something in it. we just left it there, and then we went back later and the cart was on the side of the road with the dog in it, by the boat (theres a random old junky boat outside our bedroom window, that someone put there like a week ago). i took zianna and woo outside to look in the bag and find out what it was, because we all really wanted to know. so they opened the bag a bit, and saw fur. we all screamed and ran back inside. the next day the cart was gone, and the bag was just on the ground. and then the other night i looked out the window and the bag was gone (we had called animal control and asked them to pick it up). but then i noticed the dog at the end of our drive way/ ally way. the other night the cops were at the base because someone was cutting our gate or something, and they picked the dog. so now i have nothing but a boat to look out at every morning when we wake up. maybe that was a bit too much info?? we named him lucky.

some of the girls. (kristen, heather, noemie, zianna, beth)

2 nights ago we did another strip tour of some different hotels with our speaker for the week. it was fun, it was all stores that you like cant touch anything in and have to pay like 150$ for a shirt or something crazy like that.

for small groups (guys group, and girls group) , we (the girls) went to starbucks, and then we went shopping at 'family dollar'. we're doing something cute for valentines day for the guys at the base. we got them some presents. we're supppper excited! its going to be fun!

tomorrow some of us are going to help out with a meeting with foster connect. im not really sure what we're doing, but i think just watching some kids during a meeting. it should be fun; im excited!! me and kristen got to go and help out on wednesday during work duties. we helped ray and clare with unloading things like diapers and shampoo that companies like wal mart give to organizations (things that are like broken, or have a cracked lid. things that they cant sell). and so we unloaded about 3 pallets of stuff into their garage that they have for the stuff. ive never seen sooo much diapers in my life !! i seriously think there was like 500 packages of them and stuff. we got to take some stuff like shampoo and things like that which was nice.

next saturday i think we're planning on going to the grand canyon. its about a 6 hour drive there, which is brutallll!! but i think i'll go just for the fun; ive already been there.

thats about all thats new for now. check back again soon. i have tons of pictures on facebook now of vegas so far, and my dts mates pictures are there too!! check back soon !! :)

also!! if you want to send me a letter in the mail, here's my info! i ll be sure to mail you back if you mail me!!!

YWAM Las Vegas

c/o Beth Konrath

P.O. Box 36606

Las Vegas, NV

89133-6606

USA