Gathering with Friends in Estes Park

Eleven couples. Two leaders passionate about seeing marriages thrive. One crisp, but sunny, overnight in Estes Park, CO.

Steve and Linda Nuss gathered us together like a rooster and mother hen guarding their chicks last weekend. Some of us were from their current marriage home group (format includes Jimmy and Karen Evans’ DVD, “Building Emotional Intimacy”), which will end in a couple of weeks. (Chet and I participate in that one.) Some of us were from the group they hosted last fall. Others were from GriefShare: Recovering from the Losses in Life that Steve and Linda started  in our church. At one point they oversaw about eight small GriefShare groups within the larger circle. Who knows where the other couples came from???

Between 3 pm and 5 pm Friday afternoon, we gathered on site at the Estes Park YMCA, which has a lot of construction popping up all over the 800-plus acres with new buildings, lodges and cabins mushrooming. We stayed in one of the nicer lodges, Wind River Lodge,  and the atmosphere around the weekend was casual and loose. It included lots of fellowship with family-style dinner together at three tables in the Dining Hall (buffet) Friday night and breakfast on Saturday morning. 

In the dark on Friday night, about eight vehicles caravaned around the property trying to find our fire ring  – backtracking a few times. We finally found the spot and settled on benches and our lawn chairs in front of a roaring fire stoked by three of the guys. Chuck Greenfield plunked beautiful worship songs on his guitar as some cuddled up in blankets. I led the charge on roasting marshmallows for our S’mores. Interestingly, it was the guys who did most of the talking, or led out on songs. I guess the women folk had used up their 50,000 words already with the excitement of meetin’, greetin’ and eatin’!

After breakfast the next morning, we packed up our stuff, checked out and headed for Meeting Room C, around several tables pushed together like a board meeting, where Steve and Linda passed out a handout and Ed Smith delivered a teaching via tape  relevant to developing intimacy in marriage.

The sun beat down on a gorgeous spring day and I did not want to leave Estes Park right away. Chet and I serendipidously met up with some of the gang and met at “Kind” coffee – found the perfect table with a full picture window view of the creek and path out the back. We casually sipped our lattes and smoothies and attempted a few games of Mexican Train Dominoes (though without the Mexican nor the train, because we couldn’t figure that part out).

Our little group (the Greenfields, Ketters, Chet and I) enjoyed a wonderfully relaxing afternoon before heading back down to Denver again.

It was a great way for me to spend my birthday.

Thank you, Steve and Linda, for all your hard work and for organizing an awesome marriage building get-away!!!

Rest & Relaxation in a Gorgeous Refuge!

What a blessing! I have been struggling with side effects of some medication and feeling really lousy for a couple of weeks. My dear friend Gail asked me if I would join her while dog sitting for a dear family in south Denver while they travelled. I stayed from Friday, Jan 16 – Monday morning, Jan 18.

What a refreshing time! My head was still reeling with headaches and my neck in pain, along with other side effects that kept popping up. But the quiet of this beautiful home and the loving nudges of their darling cocker spaniel Maddie - and Gail’s delicious meals – relaxed and revived me. The prayer times didn’t hurt any, either!

Gail told me about how ministry-minded this family is. They open their home to gift-wrapping hundreds of presents for the poor during the holidays. Many times, guests will visit and find the same peace Gail and I experienced together that weekend.

We enjoyed playing with Maddie and walking her on the trail around the golf course behind the house. I had to laugh at her when she bought to us her toys one by one throughout the weekend, begging with those pretty brown eyes, “Wanna play? Wanna play?”

I had the awesome opportunity of attending Gail’s church Sunday night. It was the upbeat “teen” service, that included the Catholic Eucharist. I am very grateful for my Catholic friends. The service radiated with the awe and majesty of our Lord. And it warmed my heart to see the tweens and teens so attentively attending to and serving the priest with their crisp white and red robes on. As the teens came up and kneeled before the communion table, their eyes sparkled with joy, reverence and awe. It was a beautiful sight to see!

I enjoyed the peaceful message about doing what’s right when it’s easy to follow your own selfish desires.

Grab a Bike Downtown and Go!

What a gorgeous Colorado fall day today has been! 71 degrees, sunny, fall leaves swirling around. I was dying to get outside! But had a lot of work to do for Good Catch Publishing, so I settled for grabbing my laptop, parking my car far away, and lingering in the sunshine before going into the local coffee shop/bakery to work. I was hoping to get some bike riding in today. Maybe tomorrow! This is the PERFECT TIME of year for riding on the hundreds of miles of Denver area bike paths!

I got this e-mail from TEAM FREEWHEELIN’ today. They are the group that brought a ton of bikes to the Democratic National Convention for those who wanted to “ride green!” If you recall, in between my volunteering with One Church Metro Denver handing out cups of cold water and picking up trash, I rode one of their bikes down the Cherry Creek Bike Path.

“Pedaling” these bikes to us for free  is a SUPER idea! All you need is to leave your drivers’ license number and credit card number for collateral and you can grab a bike and go!

 Here’s what Team Freewheelin’ had to say:

What a wild ride!

The results are in, and we’ve made history! Your support for Freewheelin helped us surpass our goal of 25,000 cycling miles ridden.

During the Democratic national convention, you rode Freewheelin bike 1 time, pedaled 2 miles, burned 62 calories and reduced your carbon footprint by the equivalent of roughly 1 2-mile car rides . Way to go!

We measured our success over the course of eight days in number of rides, miles ridden, calories burned and amount of carbon eliminated from the air. We’re thrilled to report:
            7,523 bike rides
            41,724 miles ridden
            1,293,429 calories burned
            14.6 metric tons of carbon offset
            $151,414 raised at the RNC for hurricane relief based on your miles!

You were instrumental in making Freewheelin a success at the conventions, but that was just the start of the bike-sharing revolution. Let’s continue our ride together. Have something to say about Freewheelin, or suggestions on where we should go next? We want this to be your revolution. Our Freewheelin blog is a forum where you can post suggestions, questions and comments, photos and videos, as well as access the most current news about all things Freewheelin. You might even see yourself in one of the postings!

Thanks for your interest in Freewheelin; we hope you had as much fun as we did!

-Team Freewheelin’

Only one thing: they have their stats wrong about me! I rode at least 10 miles! So I reduced my carbon footprint by MUCH more than a two-mile car ride!

FIREPROOF: Great Movie! Go See it!

In theatres now! Chet and I went with another couple, and I cried through several scenes. It was a dramatic improvement over their 2nd movie Facing the Giants – which I loved for its clean heart-warming tale of triumph. (Sherwood Pictures astonished 2006 movie goers in that remarkably good story for a low budget movie.) For Fall 2008 release #3, Fireproof, they poured more money into production and cinematography, and added starring actor, Kirk Cameron this time.  It’s is worth seeing, and taking people you know with you.

CBN Review

NY Times Review

Plugged-in Online

EW – Entertainment Weekly

Excerpt from EW:
“Not every failing marriage results in a blowout quite as exciting as the ones in Shoot the Moon, The War of the Roses, or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, so there’s something slightly refreshing about the banality of the marital conflicts in Fireproof, a low-budget evangelical movie jam-packed with heartfelt tips for men about how to save your marriage. Steps like: Order flowers for your estranged wife — and good ones, not a bargain bouquet. Make her dinner and light some candles. Accept Christ as your personal savior. And do the dishes once in a while, will you? (In no particular order.)…

“Here, [Kirk] Cameron plays a tantrum-throwing firefighter who is, as he says, a hero to everyone but his wife (Erin Bethea), a neglected ice princess who’s tired of never knowing whether hubby will be home for dinner. When she pitches a breakup, he’s all too happy to oblige, until his ministerial-sounding dad proposes a 40-day program to regrow their love. This woo-back scheme takes longer to succeed than you’d expect in a Christian anti-divorce tract, and forestalling the couple’s inevitable reconciliation proves both surprisingly realistic and (over a two-hour running time) enervating. Some of the tenser domestic moments will hit home with battle-scarred marrieds of any religious stripe, and the couple’s problems are candid by evangelical feature standards, although they hardly rate high on the secular dramaturgy scale: He’s got an Internet porn habit, and she’s enjoying an unconsummated flirtation with a doctor at work….”

Excerpt From Hannah Goodwyn’s Review, CBN.com Producer:
“This is one movie critic who highly recommends everyone see Fireproof. Marrieds may learn valuable lessons from it, as all the singles out there will too. Also, kids will enjoy it and understand a little something about love and God’s part in our lives.”

The home page is http://www.fireproofmymarriage.com/.

SNEAK PREVIEW – Hoonah, Alaska book soon published!

Well, I got the proof for the cover of Surviving the Storms: Real-life Stories from Hoonah, Alaska this week! It is the third book I’ve project managed, published by Good Catch Publishing , where I serve on staff. (Click on the graphic to read the back cover copy.) It is an edgy dramatic narrative compilation of seven true stories. I do not write the stories – I work with a freelance base of 20 incredible writers from around the country, and with the storytellers and the clients who commission our books. Surviving the Storms should be out by mid-October and available on Amazon for $14.95. (We are always looking for good dramatic narrative writers who like to interview people and write their true stories. For more information, go to the Good Catch Publishing website, bottom righthand corner of Home page.)

Good Catch Publishing has published over 70 books and two were from churches in Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin’s hometown! They are: Though They Walk Through the Valley with a picture of the Mat-Su Valley on the cover (where Wasilla is located), published for Wasilla Assembly of God. And Velocity: Moving at the Speed of Life  was published for The Church on the Rock. Both were published just a few months ago, in Dec 2007, before hardly anyone knew Sarah.  One is the church Sarah supposedly attended for quite a while before she became governor so the people whose stories we tell may have been friends of hers from church!

We are currently working on another Wasilla book which should be published before the end of the year. You should be able to find many of our books on www.Amazon.com and our website.

Welcome to Marla’s Blog!

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Marla

Cycling Heaven, Part 2 – Tooling around Frisco, CO!

I remember only about three years ago when Dillon lake was a pitiful sight – half the water was drained leaving ugly brown scrub and mud. The Colorado drought dried up our tourist-loving waterways and lakes. It warmed my heart to see the clear blue water lapping up all the way to the edge of the Marina during my bike ride.

 

 

Of course I have to include this photo of the lighthouse at the Frisco Marina. Don’t laugh, those of you who know me! Since I collect lighthouse replicas, it is only proper that I collect one on my blog!

The women’s mentoring group that I have been participating in for over three years (seven of us on the leadership team at this time – you’ll learn more about this crazy group as time goes on) has acquired quite an affinity for tandem bikes; it is a wonderful metaphor for us. We ride Tandem with Jesus – let Him take the Captain, or front seat, in our lives. We also ride the tandem journey with some awesome younger women.

Sept 6 Open Book Ministries had our very first fall First Saturday gathering and I was given the role of sharing our “illustrated message.” Vicki Bustos and I called all over town trying to find a tandem bike to use as a demonstration. We could not find one anywhere! We came very close to strapping a brand new one on top of Vic’s SUV – but didn’t. You can read the essence of my message, titled “When Riding Tandem, Somebody Has to Be Second!” HERE – in which I faked it in Marsha Dunn’s back yard using my regular mountain bike and a clip art of a tandem bike with its two riders atop taped to the cross bar!

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was when I saw this bicycle shop in Frisco that was actually selling its rentals from last year. One of the salesguys (he may have been the owner, for all I know) enthusiastically answered every question I had about tandem bikes. They had two different kinds. The one pictured here is  a model that has been on the market for only three years. It is a new concept in tandem riding: it is designed for an adult and a child, and the child sits in the front. That almost blows the concept of having the Captain in front, as I talked about in my presentation at First Saturday – except for the fact that the child has no control over the steering or brakes. It makes a lot of sense to allow the child to be in front so he or she can actually enjoy the view.

So now we know, ladies, where we can rent a tandem bike!

CUTE ALERT!!! As I was leaving the bike shop, a cart of 3-year-olds rolled by! One adult was pushing this darling custom-made wagon while another walked alongside.

“How did you get so many little ones?” I asked.

“These are kids from our day care,” one of the proud adults answered. They agreed to pose for a quick photo before rolling on down the street, probably for lunch and a nappy.   

This is a typical creature carving you’ll find in these mountain town resorts.
Mr. Moose here is perhaps larger than most.

It was getting close to 4 p.m. and I needed to head back to Copper Mountain to turn in my bike rental. But before I did, I saw this hilarious sign posted in one of the retail shops:

Do you notice the fine print? They even have a web site: www.TheEvilPineBeetle.com! My family has had its share of warding off Evil Pine Beetles at our small historic cabin in Allenspark! See the post about Tree Dudes, dear husband Chet and Steve Nuss as they cut over 125 trees one weekend last spring. (Only a few of them were actually beetle-infested. We were working with the local and state forest service to prevent the problems that have occurred on this side of the mountain.)

Finally, it was time to head back to Copper Mountain. I did not realize that my 25-minute journey downhill to Frisco would become an hour-and-a-half huffing and puffing bike trek back! Needless to say, I did not make it in time to turn the bike in before the shop closed at 5 p.m.

 

 

 

Cycling Heaven! Part 1…

Knowing how much I love to ride, Chet rented me a bike on Tuesday while he was working the RMRPPR Trade Show in Copper Mountain. I didn’t get a chance to use it until that afternoon as I needed to work on my books for Good Catch Publishing.

But at 3:00 Mountain Time, I was whizzing across Highway 70 to catch the bike trail from Copper to Frisco. What breathtaking scenery on a perfect fall day! From trailhead to trailhead, it was 7.6 miles of bike path flanked on one side by a rushing creek and on the other still ponds with Canadian geese, yellow-green aspen, evergreens and mountainside rock.

“I LOVE THIS!” I kept saying to noone in particular, thoroughly enjoying to ride. “This IS THE LIFE!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It took me only 25 minutes to get to Frisco.  Good thing I enjoyed the cool breeze, colors and natural surroundings on the way down…little did I realize I would be heaving and heaving up the hill for an hour and a half pedalling mostly in gear 1-1 on the way back! Payback time!

As I entered Frisco, I saw a very peculiar sight…rock creatures to my left and right! Either space aliens landed in this pristine mountain area and decided to create self-portrait sculptures…or some bored kids were having a bit of fun! I tend to think the latter…

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one even has the ring in its snout.

Riding through Frisco on the path reminded me of my walks with Jan Tennyson, Director of Dare to Dream Children’s Foundation. We holed up for several days in one of the gorgeous mountain homes banging away at Part One of her Dare to Dream book. We worked hard, ate good food and took walks around the lake and on the path. Frisco is a darling little resort town. I fantasized what it would be like to live there year around.

Who would have thought that one would run across a Cart o’ Kids wheeling its way down Main Street? And guess what Open Book Mentors and Mentees – I found two different kinds of Tandem bikes to rent – or buy! Also, took a refreshing walk around the Marina. Many of the boats were moored there, but quite a few the owners had pulled out of the water and parked in winter quarters. AND – most surprising of all – I discovered, in an effort to ward off a very serious problem that has ravaged the landscape, the quirky humor of the small mountain town folks …

All these and more in the next blog entry! (Awwww, shucks!!!)

Chet Works the Trade Show

While I am having a blast traveling the stunning colorful fall bike path and exploring the small mountain town of Frisco, CO, my dear husband Chet is working his heart out at the Rocky Mountain Region Promotional Products (RMRPPR) tradeshow. (I will have to say, I worked my job as book project manager for Good Catch Publishing on my laptop in the condo until late lunch time.)

He bought a box lunch for both of us, so I snuck over around 1 p.m. and sat with him for a while, munching while Chet helped customers.

Chet is a manufacturer sales rep in four states – Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona – for several lines of sporting apparel. The two lines he was showing here were his top-producing line, Holloway (whose corporate office is in Ohio) and the fast up-and-coming fun line, Boxercraft.

Although it is hard to trace product sales to a specific show or road trip, Chet felt really good about this one: he said he got to talk to a number of people interested in the apparel.

It’s a wonder I actually got Chet to pose for a photo – and SMILE!!!

Hiking in Copper Mountain, Part 2

 

On our hike, Chet and I viewed the beautiful town of Copper Mountain, built around a ski resort from the mountain across the highway. Though the tourist center tries to attract people for the summer sports, such as bicycling and golf, Copper Mountain’s mainstay is still the winter ski season.

As we neared a forest area on our path, an interesting homo sapien confronted us. At first, it looked like a soldier wearing fatiues with mud on his face, carrying a weapon. We soon learned this was Bob and here at 10:30 am, he was returning from an unsuccessful day of bow hunting.

It is archery season here. Bob says 15 years ago he decided he wanted to hunt elk, but took up this method for more of a challenge.

“I heard one bugling this morning,” he told us. “But some horse outfitters who travelled the trails recently must ‘ave mostly scared ‘em off.” Bugling, for those of you who may not know, is when the male elk call out for females during mating season. It also happens to be hunting season.

The day was perfect, with a refreshing cool breeze blowing; the sky was chrystaline blue, no clouds. The air smelled a bit musky. At first Chet thought that could be elk scent, then ruled it out. A stereophonic buzzing filled the air all around us, especially up the mountain. Very loud grasshoppers? Chet thought they were dragonflies and my DH even gave a poetic description: “neon lights burning out.”

The rocks were very colorful and had more character than any other mountain rocks I’ve encountered.

Sadly, this resort area has not esaped the brown that has blemished so much of the green Rocky Mountain landscape. Pine Beetle infested trees.  In the next entry, I’ll tell you of a humorous way the mountain community is fighting the epidemic the end of the month…