Viva NashVegas, etc.

Look out blogging world, I am blogging 2 days in a row now! Woah Woah!
So as I mentioned in my last blog... and as you can probably see if you have been reading my blog for a while, there have been a lot of big changes happening here since yesterday! I have a new blog name(header props to my awesomely tech-savy and blogging genius friend Kerrie), color scheme, and URL (www.breannarains.blogspot.com if you had it previously bookmarked.) I am super excited about the changes and new things happening in my life and I hope you are excited to be joining me on this journey! Please be patient with me as I get my blog stuff straightened out(hopefully I will be finished by my next blog post!)

Anyways, enough with formalities. As I mentioned in my last post, when I came back to the South, I flew into Nashville airport. My sister's dad was coming down from Kentucky(to Nashville) to pick her and her friend up the next day and starting on that Monday, my mom had a conference for work to attend, so we had a little mini vacation in Nashville before returning to Alabama that Wednesday. It was really a lot of fun.

On Sunday we were waiting for my sister's dad to come down to get them, so we decided to do a little exploring of downtown Nashville, which was really fun because I have been to Nashville many times before for cheer competitions and dropping my sister off other times, but we never had the chance to explore until this trip.
For lunch we went to Dick's Last Resort which was really good and a lot of fun. The wait staff is paid to be rude and sarcastic to the customers and it's quite funny. They did things like giving me sweet tea twice when I asked for unsweet, giving me 20 lemons in my tea when I asked for tea with lemon, tying y sister's friend's straw in a knot inside her cup, giving my sister a HUGE pitcher full of coke when she asked for a refill, and made us really tall and obnoxious looking hats with funny sayings on them to wear while we were eating. My sister's hat said, "I eat my boogers." Her friend's said, "I still wet the bed." My mom's said, "I tried to give them back to the doctor," and mine said, "I'm more annoying than a midget in a limbo contest." haha. Here are some pics from the restaurant:

They had this body shape taped onto the floor... of course we had to play dead inside of it.  

My hat, lemons, and Lexus's huge pitcher of coke.

After Dick's Last Resort we went walking around downtown and my sister and her friend decided it would be fun to get stared at by wearing their hats outside. Silly girls.

Eventually we stumbled into Wildhorse Saloon, which is world famous, or so I hear. Anyways, they had a lot of random horse statue things everywhere. 

The next day started my mom's work conference, so I was by myself all day for three days in the hotel and it was a lot of fun considering it was SO sunny and hot... and I have been in Oregon for the past 10 months where it has been far from 95 degrees! That being said, I totally underestimated the power of the Southern sun... I was burned so bad after laying by the pool for like 15 minutes! It was horrible. 

All in all, it was an awesome time hanging out in Nashville for a few days before returning to real life back in Bama considering it was probably the only vacation I will get all summer! 

ch ch ch changes

So I have been totally slacking here lately on the whole blogosphere, and I have a big excuse why: I have had a lot of big changes happening lately and have not had the chance (or desire, to be honest) to sit down and blog about everything. Have you ever gotten so far behind in something that just the thought of trying to catch up seems super overwhelming and intimidating? That's exactly  how I have been feeling.

So first off, let me tell you that I have officially moved back to Alabama from Oregon. The timing was right and a lot of things fell  into place at the right time for me to move on; so I did. I am so forever grateful for all the friends and experiences that I gained during that chapter of my life and I will never regret moving there, and so far I don't regret moving back. I officially moved June 2 to come home, but I've only been back in Bama since June 6 because we had a mini vacation in Nashville after I flew in on the 2nd. I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing family and friends again and I am looking forward to jumping head first into ministry at Lifepoint. Man, I have missed that place. I went back for the first time this past Sunday and it was like I never left. Like a breath of fresh air after feeling like I was sinking for so long.  With all of that being said, my blog will be going through some major changes in the next few days/weeks. For starters, I'm still technically considering myself a part of The Crash team, but I am not currently with them in Oregon. I hope to join back up with the officially again wherever they head to next. I am kind of tossing around the idea of a blog name change, and while I contemplate that decision, I will be making some layout changes and possibly making new buttons(if I end up changing my blog name, obviously.)

One thing I ask is that you all please just hang in there with me as I make this transition into a new beginning of a new chapter in my life.

What will I do now? Good question. I do know that I will be going to Mexico in July(thank You, Jesus! I sure do miss that place!) and then I plan on getting a job in my hometown for the summer, going back to school in the fall to finish my Religious Studies degree(only one more semester!), and going to India in December. After that, good question. One thing I do know, it's all in God's hands from here!

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.