The highnet Interspeed...

is not working here at Maranatha. It is very frustrating, and it is making me crazy. I can't check my email, I can't pay my bills, I can't veg out on my myspace. Life is sad for me.

So I am not connected, literally...to my boss's internet via a cord, and am getting ready to pay my slightly late bills. Thank goodness for grace periods. Seriously.

Anyway--we've got a million kids here this week, which makes for fun and excitement, and lots of energy, which is good.

Gotta go to the beach...the drink of the day is definitely ice water...to take with us to the beach! :) See ya'll soon!

This was a really low week in our teen department at Maranatha! After quite a few weeks of increasing numbers up to about sixty, we only had about 15 teens at our programs each day...Volleyball and Football camp took a lot of kids away from us...But we managed to rest a lot and have a lot of fun with the kids we did have!

This is a picture of Jason doing some heavy drinking...We got lucky enough to get a half a keg of rootbeer from a parent for our weekly Sunday Night Pizza Party...The kids really enjoyed it, but the staff definitely enjoyed taking funny pictures with it more! This one is a tame one...I'm sure you can all imagine!






On Tuesday when we got back we went on a kayak ride on Mona Lake, which is connected to Lake Michigan very close to us...We had a lot of fun and a great workout!










We also had some fun at the pool this week. This was Tuesday night Teen Swim and although we didn't have a lot of kids, we still had fun! To get an idea of Maranatha's beachfront and pool, you can see that I am looking out at Lake Michigan in this picture...and enjoying an amazing sunset! What a beautiful place this is! :)

So today's coffee of the day is...hmmmm...probably Bubble Gum flavored. We're doing a study next week from a book called Chew On This...it's about spiritual formation and "chewing on" scripture...but there's a big piece of Bubble Gum on the front, and it's sitting next to me, calling me to do some work!!

Hope you're all doing great!! Love you!

Dunes, water parks, and fun!!!

What a great week we had this week!

After our Tuesday excursion on the helicopter...we followed it up with a trip up north to Silver Lake Sand Dunes to ride the Mac Dunes Scooters...

This was quite an adventure! We went with about 20 other staff from Maranatha on a school bus about an hour away...
And obviously, we took some pretty silly pictures...

Silver Lake Dunes are one of the largest living dunes in the country...This means that they are still moving around every day...There are parts that don't move anymore, but it seriously looked like the desert...Jason asked if they filmed any good movies there, and they said yes...but couldn't name any movies they knew...
The Mac Dunes Scooter Rides were so fun! On top of a bit of fun information about the area, this "scooter" took us on a thrilling ride over the dunes, with beautiful views, splashing in Lake Michigan, and a view of the public area where many off-road vehicles were zooming around on their own...Afterwards, we went to the Whippy Dip, a local ice cream stand and got gigantic and wonderful specialty flurries to tide us over until dinner....

Friday night in Teens we did a "staff hunt" which means the kids are sent off to find staff members who are hiding (either literally hiding or disguised) on the the grounds of Maranatha. As you can see, some of us had some fun with this, and definitely got a little silly with the whole thing.

I'm the one with the purple hat. Jason told me I was going to be one hot old lady, which made me feel a little better about one day "going gray."
And then there was Saturday...What a fun day! There is a family who lives at Maranatha who just recently opened a water park in Illinois, about an hour west of Chicago. Their daughter works on our teen staff and they so graciously invited us to join them for a day at this awesome park! I was definitely in for more than what I expected...This place had 10 water slides! Some were free fall, others had tubes, one was like a toilet bowl (you went around and around and around) and one was called the boomerang...You went down this tube into a huge bowl-like thing, and then you went back and forth and back and forth until you finally spurted out into a pool.

This place was awesome! There was a lazy river (the 7th largest in the US), a huge wave pool...and a great mouse-trap-looking play area for kids...It was a great day to act like a kid and play like a kid...to get to know our staff and to be blessed by Maranatha...Getting into this park for the day, getting to drive the Maranatha van all the way to Illinois, having a place to "retreat" in a way with our staff was so fun and relaxing!

So this has been a great week! And we're looking forward to the next one!

no new pictures...

Hey guys!! No new pictures to add right now--but we're having a good week! Feeling way better this week, and we're getting more comfortable in the new digs...We organized the office yesterday and are just waiting patiently now for a desk...or maybe even a table would be nice!! :)

Hope all is well at home!! We love you all and drank coffee this morning...yesterday I didn't drink coffee and had a headache all day! Yuck!! I don't like to be addicted!

We went on a helicopter ride!!!

This week's mission organization is called JAARS and it is a part of Wycliffe Bible Translators...JAARS used to stand for Jungle Aviation And Radio Service...but it doesn't anymore...Now it's just JAARS and they have aviation, but also have a lot of other services in Papau New Guinea and maybe Indonesia, I can't remember...

Anyway--they are giving short helicopter rides this week for a fee, and Jason and I figured that could be a once in a lifetime sort of thing, so we signed up!! Quite terrifying, but really exciting too!!
Here's the pictures!
We got to sit next to the pilot and wear headsets to hear ourselves...

This was pretty cool!

The wind was pretty strong today, so the take-off was a pretty scary thing, but as we got moving, it was so cool to see the people around, the houses and streets and cars...

And soooo many pools in backyards right by the Lake! Strange!


Here's the sky-view of the lakefront at Maranatha...The pool and condos in the middle are right behind the main beachfront of the camp, and if you look way up near the top of the picture, I'm pretty sure you can see a part of our house where we live in India...Fun!
Here we are after the flight...What fun!





















This is another plane that's here this week, it's a bigger, more expensive plane made especially for mission flights...It takes off real quick and can land with just a little landing strip...It also has a huge engine and takes jet fuel which I guess is a cool and different thing from most planes...We didn't get to ride in this, but Jason got to sit in the cockpit and this guy told us all the cool things about flight school and planes and missionary flights and stuff...

That was cool!!!

Settlers of Catan

Jason and I have found a new game we love...

It's Catan the Card Game...for two people!

And here is a picture I promised would go up on our blog if it was taken...Charlie Sommers having some fun with our camera.

Stitches!!!

So this week has been really tough. Everybody's exhausted and/or sick on our staff and it just seems like a lot of things are going wrong and/or not right this week. I'm glad it's over and we can look forward to another week....

As you can see, I had to get stitches this week as well. I was playing assassins, a game of squirt gun fun, where you have a person to shoot and a person chasing you, and if you shoot your "contract" then you get their person and it goes until there's just one person left. Needless to say, I didn't win, but I did get injured in the process of stealthily going after my contract.

Seven stitches later, I'm pretty much a beast.

Anyway--the Brooklyn Tabernacle was here this week and we watched this movie about them last night at the service, and it was pretty cool to see the stories of the people who's lives have changed...

We get to ride a helicopter this week too. Um, that rocks.

So the coffee of the day is hopefully some sugar-free fat-free carmel latte at a place where we can get free wi-fi since the internet here at Maranatha is on the brink. Haven't been able to get on all week until today!

So yay! Have a great day!

Date Night in Grand Haven

Saturday night was "date night" for the Kotarski's since it's our only evening we have off during the week. We took the night to walk the boardwalk at Grand Haven, eat a pronto pup (a hot dog dipped in pancake batter on a stick), and go to the movies--we saw Wall-e, which was great!

It's kind of funny how little we've been watching TV or movies since being at Maranatha...we have literally only watched Wall-e last night, Be Kind Rewind with my family the night of the funeral a few weekends ago, and one time we put on an episode of The Office, only to turn it off after 7 minutes and go to sleep instead....

So anyway--here's a picture of Date Night in Grand Haven!

Happy Fourth of July!!

Happy Fourth of July everybody (a few days late!)!! Hope you're all had a great long weekend wherever you were! We sure did! We had to work in the morning and at night, but Carolyn was here for the weekend, so we went to lunch with her (yummy Brooklyn Bagels) and then to the beach for the afternoon...what a beautiful day we had here at Maranatha!

In the evening we had to sing in the service, and then we had to "work" the beach at night during the fireworks, but it was a blast and we got to hang out with Carolyn and the Sommers Family....Here's some pictures from the day!
Some kids playing beach volleyball at night...Actually it's this strange Maranatha game called "nuke 'em" which involves catching the ball instead of hitting it back and forth.
One family was handing out glow jewelry, so we stocked up!
Carolyn and I goofing around with the camera...
This is Rose, Carolyn's "baby" from last year in the baby nursery...Rose is two now, and is a lot bigger than Carolyn remembered! :)
The fireworks went off right from our beach...They were pretty good...and it was fun to be right there!

The Sommers Kids...

So here's some pictures of our new friends the Sommers and their cute kids. Love 'em! (really it's just the kids, but if you look in the background of the first picture, they're over there on the left!)

Pictures from Week Two!

So here we are in Week Two already!! I'm going to post some pictures from our week and then I'm going to post a video of OUR NEW BUILDING! We weren't expecting to be in it so quick but our first program meeting was this morning and we ARE PUMPED! So hope you enjoy!

Sunday nights we have a pizza party to welcome the kids to another week!!

These are two resident kids who we've gotten to know pretty well!

Tuesday nights is "Teen Swim" at the pool...This is one of our leaders, Tyler, showing off his mad swimming skills!

Freezing cold after Teen Swim--trying to stay warm!

So here's a video from earlier today of our new building!

We're really excited to finally be in the NEW AND IMPROVED Lebanon (all the building at maranatha are named after countries) and not to have to walk all over the grounds and carry big sound equipment up a million stairs...This morning was really fun, the loud music rocks, the powerpoint games are fun and the kids especially LOVE the big cushy bean bags...Everybody was running and jumping on them all night...we finally had to nix it when they were smushing a kid b/w two big bags, and then standing on top of it all.

Oh, I pray to have little girls someday! :)

On the Porch

just chillin' on the porch....right before a game of Dutch Blitz, our new favorite game!