Creation Celebration

In my last post on April 22(forever ago, I know. I know... I am slacking) I mentioned at the bottom of the post that The Beautiful Mess was having the first official service project in the Whiteaker neighborhood that night. Well, since it was Earth Day, we kind of unofficially named the project "The Beautiful Mess Earth Day Creation Celebration."
These are the posters(designed by Mr. Zach(Herb)Gideon) that were posted throughout the neighborhood to get the community talking and wondering who The Beautiful Mess is and to let them know what we were planning;

We met at 5:00 at the Eugene First Evangelical Church on Monroe and 8th on Sunday evening and broke up into teams to go into the community and clean up garbage, debris from the recent snow storm we had, old furniture, or anything else anyone in the area needed and wanted us to do. We then went on to invite them to dinner with one of these:

This was given to people we helped or just random people we met on the streets. We went back to the church to eat tacos/taco salads provided to us by a community group from The Shift Church in Albany, Oregon. 

There were a lot of good conversations and fellowship and all in all we had about 60+ people sign in at the registration table to join a clean up team. 

It was pretty awesome to see a community come together to serve and show the love of Jesus. Here are a couple of pictures... some taken by me and some not... of the evening.

And here is the sign up table crew(some of them):

Woo hoo! These guys did an awesome job setting this whole event up, and we were truly blessed at how the whole evening went and we look forward to doing the next project soon!
This coming Sunday... and every first Sunday of the month from here on(assuming it does well) we will be hosting an open mic night/coffee shop type deal and we hope to draw in people from the community to perform things like poems, art work, singing, telling a story or testimony... just whatever happens. We will serve coffee and desserts and hopefully get to have some really great conversations with people. Can't wait to see where God takes this crazy, Beautiful Mess.

Finally!

Oh my gosh.... I can't believe it has been so long since I have posted a blog post. To my faithful readers: thanks so much for emailing and commenting and checking on me, but I am still alive and well! Life just gets so hectic and I am the worst time manager EVER! Not an excuse, I know. But, I have been busy with Bible studies and moving houses and starting work(and then getting fired from work), looking for new work, school, and The Beautiful Mess which is our missional outpost/eventual church in downtown Eugene has officially started up and it has been so AWESOME and uplifting and encouraging, and busy! I love it so much, though and I am so glad God gives me great opportunities to serve and that my life has been consumed by Him! Our first service project  is scheduled for April 22! We will be cleaning up the neighborhood and then inviting people back to have dinner with us! Check out the website here.

I hope you all had an amazing Easter! I got to spend mine serving homeless with some other churches/ministries. We had a worship service, short message and then served dinner afterwards to a crowd that I don't think any of us expected to show up. It was so awesome to be able to serve alongside my friends and be able to share the love of Jesus with a group desperate for some kind of love. Below is a video taken by one of our friends of the dinner.

If you look when it goes to the water coolers you can see me standing there! woop woop!

Here are some random pics that describe what has been happening in my life in the past month or so!

.I got a hair cut! Rocking the new bangs and hanging out at a park on a beautiful sunny day! Notice the capri pants, sandals, and sun glasses!

Brooke came to visit and we took her to the coast! It was far from warm and sunny, but it was a BLAST!

Maribel and I took Brooke up to Skinner's Butte one sunny day to enjoy the day and soak up the vitamin D that we are all lacking due to NO sunshine ever haha!

Went to a new restaurant called Off The Waffle and had this amazing waffle. It was the waffle on bottom, a fried egg, bacon, and maple syrup. It was called something like Prophecy or Prodigal something or another haha! Anyways, yummiest waffle EVER.

The very first Beautiful Mess meeting in the basement of Eugene Evangelical Church. This is also where Hosea Youth Services meets on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

We had a snow day! So pretty, but it stayed around for days and got really annoying after the first 24 hours haha! Apparently Eugene was on the news back in Alabama because it was a freak snow storm... totally abnormal for this time of year.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering: my birthday is in 9 days! And I will be 20! I definitely don't consider myself a child by any means... but I will officially be out of my teens. People keep telling me it is all downhill from here. We will see! I am excited and sad at the same time, because it will be my first birthday away from home EVER!

I PROMISE to try and keep this updated more... there was no excuse other than not wanting to take the time away from my day to blog, and then logging on to post something today totally overwhelmed me because of how long it had been. Ugh! Definitely a motivator to never go that long without posting again! Thanks for sticking around, loyal friends!

Life on a Mission: Guest Post

My blog is titled:

A Day in the Life of a Crash Team Member

But what does that mean in my life? 

Today I am guest posting on 

So, click on over to read about things that are, in my opinion, the easy and hard things about "Living Life on a Mission."And while you are at it, go visit Kerrie's store: missionary kerrie's for some super cool clutch purses/iPad cases HAND SEWN by Kerrie to support her(and her husband's) trip to India! (Yes, in case you were wondering... the same India trip I will be taking!)

Exploring Oregon: Holleigh's Birthday Weekend

Holleigh Woodward, one of the people from our Crash team and one of my really great friends, had a birthday this weekend! Holleigh has a really fun time with her birthdays; she likes to celebrate the whole month! Okay, that is an exaggeration, but she does like to celebrate her "birthday week."

While Saturday wasn't technically a birthday celebration for Holleigh, we started the weekend at Spencer's Butte. We took a hike up Mt. Pisgah last weekend (blog post here.) and while that was beautiful, Spencer's Butte is a whole other kind of beautiful. Once you get to the top (okay, confession time... I did not go all the way to the top. I blame that on my grumpy troll mood that day) but even so, once you get above the tree line, you can look out and see the Three Sisters, Mt. Bachelor, and some other mountain that we were not sure the name of. It was the perfect sunny and clear day for a hiking trip like that, if you know anything about Oregon weather, you know how that goes. 

So Sunday was her actual birthDAY, yes... Super Bowl Sunday... but we pretty much left the day open to whatever she wanted to do and the day turned out to be one of my favorite days in Oregon so far, and with Nick and Brandi Longshore being in town this past week, the day was all the more fun! First we started the day at church. We have been attending University Fellowship in Eugene. It is definitely not Lifepoint, but it is a great church that we feel will have a vital role in the church plant we are planning for downtown. After church we went to eat at a place called the Beanery which is such a cool atmosphere. It's basically deli-style food with REALLY good coffee.

After lunch, we all met back up at our house and headed to a local vineyard/winery called Sweet Cheeks. The view from there was just gorgeous, and we were lucky to have another super sunny and warm day in FEBRUARY! 

Next stop, King Estate Vineyard/Winery. This place, I have to say, was probably more beautiful than Sweet Cheeks. The building looks just like a castle. 

Thanks to our friend Ethan Holub, we received the VIP treatment! Someone from the staff picked us up and took us to a semi-secluded part up on a hill where we could look out and see the whole vineyard. It was amazing! 

After this, we all came back to our house to play games and eat junk food! Of course the game Quelf had to be involved... and then a little late night 90's Trivia Pursuit. 

All in all, it was an awesome weekend. Birthday's away from home are hard (I imagine... I have yet to experience it.) This is Holleigh's second birthday since she has been in Oregon. Not being able to see your family on what you consider to be the best day of the year takes a toll on the spirit. I am so glad we were all here to celebrate her birthday and make it something special! 

Exploring Oregon: Mt. Pisgah

I realize I have not blogged in like 2 weeks, a huge shock seeing as how I blogged every single day for a week or so. So, be prepared for the next few days because I have A LOT to blog about now :)

First things first... last week we went to a place in Eugene called Mt. Pisgah. It was a beautiful day in Eugene and we all really wanted to go hiking, but needed some place semi-simple for the girls (Deci and Journey) to be able to enjoy as well as us. Audrey had heard from our neighbors that Mt. Pisgah was a great place for kids and was a beautiful view. It was also one of the things that Audrey has on her Oregon "Bucket List" of things to do here. So we packed up and headed that way!

We started kind of late in the afternoon so as we hiked the sun coming through the trees made for some awesome pictures.

I swear, it was like we were in a fairy tale or something. The trails were gorgeous and the walk was very simple and relaxing. The farther we went up, the more we could see the countryside and mountains.

We did not go all the way to the top since it was late afternoon and the sun sets at like.... 4:30 here. But we did get to see the sun starting to set and go behind the mountains.

I loved hiking down this mountain and listening to the song "Great I Am" by New Life Worship. There is a lyric that says "The mountains shake before Him, the demons run and flee at the mention of the name King of Majesty." I just thought that song and lyric was so appropriate for the chance to really put in perspective how small we are compared to how big our God is. Amazing. 

Girl's Night Out

Every Monday night our team comes together for Bible study at our house. This past week (yesterday) we decided to do something different for a change since Audrey's mom is in town and can babysit the girls. We decided it would be fun to split up guys and girls and do our own thing, not necessarily a separate Bible study or anything, just a fun night doing whatever we want. So we met at our friends Richie and Sharee's house where we then split off and left the guys to cook bear meat (lol) and play video games while us girls went out for a night on the town. We had absolutely had no idea what the plan was for the night, but we started our night out at Sweet Life for dessert.

This is a picture of the building that I did not take. I found this on Google, haha, but this is what it looks like :)

It was so good! Audrey and I split a piece of Tiramisu which is like a coffee rum soaked cake with chocolate and whipped cream. Anyways, it was really good. I also had a Chai Latte. We enjoyed our dessert while we discussed what to do next. 

Once we finished our yummy desserts we decided to take a drive up to Skinner's Butte where you can look out over and see all of Eugene basically. We thought it would be really pretty at night when you were able to see all of the city lights. Well, we were correct! 

This pic was taken on a cell phone so it is dark, but you can totally see all of the city lights and just imagine being on top of there looking over. 

This is me and our friend Sharee on top of Skinner's Butte. If you look behind us, you can see the city lights! It was so beautiful, but cold, so we didn't stay too long. 

Our next stop along the way for the evening was to Sundance Natural Foods. At this stop we were totally being tourists even though Sharee has lived in Eugene her whole life, Audrey has been here a year, and I have been here like six months. Sundance is the place to go to get a really good taste of the culture in Eugene (besides Saturday Market, but it is not open during the winter season.) The store is just like it sounds and packed with hippies, no lie. 

This is what we pulled up to. It is a mural painted on the side of the Sundance building. There are these type of things all over Eugene. I love it! 

Inside Sundance towards the back we see this bar type thing where they have all this locally made organic stuff that you can bottle/jar yourself to take home. There was so much to choose from like crunchy or creamy peanut butter, two or three choices of almond butter(which Audrey is jarring in the picture above) and lots of different types of honey and vanilla extracts. Audrey decided to get some almond butter for her mom, so here she is (above) trying to jar some. It was super thick and hard to get in the jar, and it made a mess. 

I just had to take pictures because it was a funny process. You could tell that we were first timers! We got up to the counter to pay for this and the cashier asked us what the number for this was..... and we were super confused! Shopping at a natural food store was a learning experience for sure. 

Our next stop was to a local Thai restaurant for some bubble tea because Sharee and I had never tried it before. Audrey had tried it in Seattle a while back, but wasn't a fan. 

If you've never had bubble tea before it is the weirdest thing ever. We got strawberry flavored, but there were like 10 different flavors to choose from. Those black things at the bottom of the cup are tapioca balls and they were definitely not my favorite thing about the drink. They are like a flavorless gummy bear, and when I say flavorless I mean TOTALLY flavorless... and gross. I ended up drinking the tea and leaving the tapioca balls at the bottom of the cup and throwing them away! The strawberry flavor was great, though! 

Our next and final stop for the evening before returning home was the New Hope Christian College campus. Sharee graduated from the school when it was called Eugene Bible College. Since then, it has undergone a lot of changes including a new campus, new president, and mostly new staff/faculty. The campus itself sits up on a mountain where you can overlook the city. My favorite part of the campus is the huge LED cross that sits at the highest point in the middle of an amphitheater type thing. It is so quiet and peaceful up there and so beautiful at night with the city  lights glowing. 

You can't see much around the cross because of the glow of it, but trust me, it was an awesome sight! 

I am currently in the process of applying for transfer to that school for the upcoming fall semester, so I really like spending time on the campus, especially with an alumni. We thought it would be cool to take our picture under the New Hope sign on one of the buildings. Its like a look into the past and future because Sharee is an alumni and I am a future student!

I am super excited to see what the Lord has in store for me at New Hope next fall! 

So, that was our last stop of the evening, but we did take a scenic route home to see downtown Eugene and the house where Sharee grew up with her family, which was really neat to see. I love the city of Eugene so much. There is so much culture here, it really is like another world almost. It was a really fun night of being tourists in the city in which we live and serve. I have a great appreciation for this place and am so glad and honored to be a part of God's vision and plan for the area. We hope you will come visit and get a taste of the city for yourself! We know you will love it!

Hello, my name is...

Breanna! I am totally new at this blogging thing, but I have to admit, I was getting a little jealous of all of my friends(Audrey and Kerrie) that have blogs, so I am going to give this a try! Their blogs are pretty great, and this one is blah in comparison, but I have to start somewhere...just bear with me! So, back on topic. There is so much that I want to blog about first and I am not totally sure where I should start. Maybe with some pictures?

This is my mom(Tammy), my sister(Lexus), and me. This is from right before Christmas. I ventured home on a  long 6 week trip to Mexico (I will get to that in a minute) for 2 weeks, and then to Alabama for 4 long, but wonderful weeks. We went to a local park type thing called Nocollula Falls where they have a huge display of Christmas lights and such during the holidays. In case you can't tell, we were extremely cold!

I currently live in Eugene, Oregon, with a team called The Crash.We are here to change the way Christianity is viewed in a place that is the least churched area in the United States. We hope to build relationships, love on people, and show them the love of Christ ultimately so that they will want what we have, and that is joy in our salvation through Jesus. We will be here a minimum of 5 years, probably, and in that time period we hope to have a church up and going and be able to replace ourselves so that while some of us may stay, the rest can in turn move on to the next place so we can plant churches and change the reputation of Christians throughout the United States and the world eventually. This is a picture of some of our team this year:

Pictured: Luis Corona, Quinton Williams(holding Journey Williams), Derrick May, Audrey Williams, Breanna Rains (me!), Holleigh and Alec Woodward, Deci Williams.
Not Pictured: Jeff Tennant, Richie and Sharee Powell, Zach Gideon

Now! About Mexico... I LOVE IT! Should I leave it at that? Ha! I won't, but I definitely could! I have been going to Mexico with my church in Alabama since 2008, I think? Anyways, I have loved it since the first step I took off of the van onto the dirt roads! I sometimes wish that God would call me to move there so that I would have an excuse, but I know it is His timing and definitely not about my selfish desires.

This is Natasha with Rosa on her back and me with Dulce on my back. All of these people in this picture mean so much to me! Rosa and Dulce are just 2 of the 6 children in the family from the Canal, which is what the area we minister to is known as, that I consider to be my second family. They also have 3 brothers and a sister, and a mom and dad that love them and the Lord very much.

We do a lot of things in Mexico like:

Build houses. In this picture, I am looking up Spanish Bible verses to write on the inside walls of the newly built house. It is so important for these families to be saturated with God's Word, and we strive to help them with that. :)

Here I am painting trim boards for the house. This is obviously an important thing, because we want the houses to look nice, but to be honest this is the WORST thing in my opinion haha, I hate painting trim boards! But, all in the name of the Lord, right?! :)

This past trip, we had the opportunity to go to a wedding for a couple that means a great deal to some members of our team. They planned the date around the time our team would be down so that we were able to attend. It was truly an amazing time! We also got to play games at the wedding.

Like musical chairs! We played some crazy games too, like one where you had to grab hands with a bunch of girls and we all took off running as fast as we could through the room. It was insane and people were falling everywhere. It was definitely an experience I will never forget and I am so glad that we were blessed with that opportunity. 

I could go on and on about Mexico and Oregon, but I will spare you for now! I hope this blog doesn't fail epically, and if it does, oh well! Because I love to write and this will be a good place for me to keep everyone who is interested up to date on our journey here in Oregon, as well as my mission trips and just life as a church planter in general! Talk again soon!

To find out more about me and my family visit my About Me page!