A Couple of Trips to the River With a Cool Kid...

The middle school kids from church are going through their confirmation class right now and I get the honor of being a mentor to sweet Jacey (pronounced JAY cee, like Lacey or Casey). She is aslo a student of mine, so we've been close for over a year, now. But we've decided to be friends, I think, and there is NO WAY that we're NOT gonna go hiking after this class is over. One of the jobs of being Jacey's mentor is for us to hang out together once a month. I missed February so we did two weeks in a row at the local park (Henry Horton) and walked by the river talking, snapping pictures, and just enjoying each other and the day.

She's learning not to take a picture of the river with a big tree right in front of her and I'm learning that getting an eleven year old to talk about God is a lot harder than I started out thinking it would be. But we finally did because I learned that...

... sometimes Jacey just likes to sit and talk. The important talks were always sitting. Staring at the river while resting on the big rocks that line the riverbank.

We were great buddies before, but now our relationship is different and I got an "I love you, Ms. Malinda" somewhere between .7 and .9 miles on the river loop trail. It just doesn't get better than that, folks.

I love this kid...