Lincoln Half-Marathon

Two weeks ago Nate and I ran the Lincoln Half-Marathon. We started training for it pretty late in the game (7-8 weeks before) and ran into a few busy spots where we didn't get to run much during the week (the week of the musical and the week of the race I had the flu!)...nonetheless, we finished the race in 2 hours and 19 minutes! It actually was pretty fun---there were 8,000 runners and a great crowd cheering us on. Thanks Amy for taking these photos!

This was about mile 2...

Mile 6 or 7...starting to feel the burn---notice our smiles aren't as big as in mile 2!

At about mile 12 I started crying a bit partly because I realized I was so close to finishing a goal I never thought I'd achieve...but mostly I was crying because of the sheer pain I was feeling in my legs! We finished on the 50 yard line at Memorial Stadium...

These are the signs our nieces, Denelle and Alexis, and my sister in-law and mother in-law made for us...they cheered us on during the race.

Poland

This July Nate and I will be traveling to Chojnice, Poland with International Messengers/our church (New Hope) to help run a family camp where we will teach English using the Bible as our primary text.

We have never experienced an overseas missions trip before, so we see this as a great opportunity to share the love of Jesus with the people of Poland. In our training packets that IM sent us, they wrote that Poland has a population of 40,000,000 people but probably less than one-tenth of 1% have a personal relationship with Christ (Matthew 15:8-9). There are only about 80 missionaries in Poland (about 1 for every 500,000 people). Most people have never owned a Bible or read it.

Since we started dating Nate and I have always wanted to go on an overseas missions trip to serve God (Mark 16:15) but have not seriously considered it until this year. After some reading, praying and lots of late night conversations, we finally committed. It's exciting and scary all at the same time! Be watching for more posts about this exciting opportunity!

The end of a year...

I've been a terrible blogger this year! It's been a whirlwind of a year with me taking classes, teaching, coaching, directing the musical, etc. But....the end of the school year is 7 days away! Though I love my job, I am looking forward to summer.

I started thinking today about all the fun experiences I've had with students this year...this picture is of one of my 9th grade students holding Nate's stapler...covered in Jello! She is a fan of "The Office" just like us--and one day she came up to me and said, "So...do you think Mr. Helzer will be made if I put his stapler in Jello?" I of course told her to go ahead with her plan :)