About Me...(with a side of pop culture)

So I just went back and looked at my last 2 blogs. And I feel like they possibly couldn't be more different. One was all about my ministry and my commitment to showing high school friends the love of Jesus...and the other was about this pop star that most people that are on board with the whole Jesus thing don't necessarily see the appeal of. Yet, I love Jesus...and I love Lady Gaga (for those of you that are starting to question my Jesus loving, let me clarify that the love I have for Jesus is a lot different and realistic to me). I also love the David Crowder Band....and Britney Spears.

I'm just kind of like that though. If you're wanting the type of person you could easily put in a box...you might as well slide on by me. That's why I really hate those "about me" sections on anything. I mean, is it normal for people to feel comfortable putting into a few words what it is that defines them? Because for me, I just feel like there's so many different layers of who I am...that come out in so many different ways at different times...and then there's the things about me that I feel like have to come out in everything...no matter who I am. Such as my relationship with Jesus...its so much a part of me that I feel like it has to affect every part of my life. And then there's the fact that I tend to be a brat...unfortunately that also comes out in many parts of my life....you'd think I would grow out of that...but who knows. I also like to categorize myself as a hippie, nerd, redneck, thug, with a little bit of prep mixed in. How's that for a combo?

This is a rambling post...I'm aware...so if you're reading it and wondering why you're still reading...well....to be honest, I'm wondering why I'm still typing...but so it goes.

In other news, the whole Tiger Woods thing really upsets me...not that I don't feel the need to have grace for him...but just that it happened. It reminds me how stupid it is to put people on a pedestal...but at the same time, its hard for me to thing that I don't want to admire anybody...so where is the balance there? I'm easily disillusioned with the world...which I guess is a good thing...because to be satisfied with this world would be a bad thing...but it makes me sad.

Random thought #67686: I'm currently addicted to the TV show Gossip Girl...its ridiculous. If thats really how life is on the Upper East Side in NY than I really hope they have a strong YoungLife program there :).

Last thing: I recently gave in and downloaded the first episode of Glee...I hope I hate it because I'm really trying not to be that person that just loves whatever is popular...but its inevitable that I'll probably become a fan. Gotta love being a pop culture sellout.

The Lady Gaga Phenomenon and Why I am a Monster!

I have a weird obsession with celebrities. I admit its pretty immature. But I really love music and artists. I purposefully stay very connected to the popular music scene- spending so much more money on itunes than necessary. So recently, when Lady Gaga started to become well known, I was naturally intrigued. At first she really kind of freaked me out. Her videos are insane and her live performances are so incredibly out there...but as I began to listen to her music, I found myself really feeling drawn to it. I will say, I think I partially liked her because she reminds me of Madonna (and I love Madonna). Before leaving for Augusta last week I bought her latest album The Fame Monster and made a GagaSwizzlePick (Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Kellie Pickler- crazy combo I know but amazing nonetheless) playlist for my drive. By the time I arrived in Augusta, I was in love with Lady Gaga...and I'm still not sure why.

I think I'm most drawn to her passion. Her "Monster Ball" (name of her concert) is a truly artistic masterpiece. As is every single one of her videos. Lady Gaga isn't just making videos that she thinks will be popular- she is obviously very focused on the artistry of it and I respect that. So, I wonder, how long will she be around? I don't know...but this I do know, she is created a loyal fan base. Her "monsters" (what she refers to her fans as) are most important to her and she is true to them. She even sent food to a group of fans waiting for her for a signing at Best Buy. Lady Gaga has been quoted many times saying that she's not in it for the fame and you can tell. She is a straight shooter. She'll never be a sell out...and that's why I think people like her. Yes, her music is catchy and risque....but its meaningful. As people continue to follow her, I think she is doing a lot for the true art of popular music. Her "musical theater" take on her videos and live performances are introducing people to an art form that they've (myself included) never really gotten to experience by listening to the top 40. So, I know this is random, but if you're not easily offended...or even if you're just interested in knowing what is popular in culture today- check out a Lady Gaga video. Watch it to appreciate the art of it. Just like you're not offended by the nakedness of the Statue of David...try to observe from a cultural perspective and I think we could all really learn to appreciate something we're not necessarily used to.

Props to you Lady Gaga-- for being original, for never selling out, and for taking me from being a creeped out observer of your music to one that has learned to appreciate that art that you create onstage.

My Commitment

Back when I started as YoungLife leader, my area director handed out a sheet to us when he was talking to us about how the mission of YoungLife works. The sheet is a kind of letter from a guy named Bill Goans entitled "My Commitment". I have a couple copies of this laying around, because it has always really spoken to me as a reminder of the harsh world so many of my high school friends live in....and how this is always kind of the case. Today, I recreated my "Wall of Fame" in my office. It's nothing too exciting- but its a place where I put pictures of students- to show them how important they are to me...and how much I value them. In the center of my Wall of Fame is a simple printed Message version of John 10:10 and then this letter. I finally got around to laminating it so it doesn't get messed up. As I was putting pictures up this year, I placed 2 pictures intentionally right above this letter- so that whenever I look at these pictures I will read it...or whenever I read the letter I will look at these pictures. The first picture is of 2 students thave I adore that I've gotten to know recently. These are kids that I know God has put into my life to walk through things with them. The other picture is of 2 younger kids that I've gotten to know in the past couple of years. They're 5th graders now...and seem so young and innocent...and yet they serve as a reminder of how important it is to be in true relationships with these kids...and to continue that. Its amazing to me the Providence that exists in my relationships with these kids....and how I can feel led to a student and God will give me an awesome opportunity to serve them or hang out with them. I've had the name of one of those highschoolers form the pic above the letter written on my mirror in my bedroom for a year now- as a reminder to pray for her. I have no clue why I put her name on that list to begin with- obviously God put her on my heart...and I've been praying for her for a year...and now we hang out and talk and I feel so humbled that God is allowing me to be a part of her life in this way. So anyways, I wanted to share the words of this letter:

My Commitment by Bill Goans
As long as high school kids mill around at ball games looking for love in all the wrong places,
As long as they desperately seek an identity based on the opinions of friends and reputation,
As long as kids limp through the stands broken by family strife, enslaved by drugs, alcohol, and sex
I want to be found- not in the adult section where it is respectable and controlled, but right in the middle where passions, vulgar and profane, blurt out obscenity,
Where raucous and reckless facades hide wounded hearts filled with torment and fear,
Where the price tags have been changed and darkness confuses-
Right in the middle where God has positioned me to shine forth His grace, His Hope, His love and His truth.
As long as there is an enemy who can convince his victims that tomorrow doesn't matter, that harm will not find them, that chains are like jewerly and cool is free,
As long as his lies leave character, soul, and life in ruins- when thrill goes ill and fun turns fatal,
As long as terminal is only a passage word to an eternity of one's own choosing.
As long as God has rendered him a defeated foe using the weakest of us to shine a light that pierces the darkest places, that brings rescue to the lost,
As long as the darkness is blasted away by the light of the world- that Light that lives within all who know, follow, and love Him.
As long as there is such darkness, I'll man my post right in the middle of all that chaos, holding my position until he calls another play, and I steal home.

As long as we stand in such an important place, we must not forget what it means to be salt and ligh in this tasteless and dark generation.

why we do what we do...

In life I feel like it's so easy to get caught up in the motions of everything that we do. Even in ministry- I find this happening. For me, its easy to get caught up in the checklist of it. I work at the school that I am a YoungLife leader at, so interaction with students is an everyday thing. I take it for granted to sit around and hear about their lives.

In all this though, God seems to have a way of knocking me to the floor with the opportunities to really seek Him in my everyday life at FPD. That happened to me today. I've been talking to some girls about a bunch of stuff that's been going on in their lives- which all kind of came to a major crazy point this weekend. In this whole situation I've just been kind of baffled by all of it- I feel like my brain is on information overload of the shenanigans. Its reminded me so much why I have to just take it to the Lord- and do everything I can to direct the students I have these relationships with to Him.

And then, today, sitting and having a one on one conversation with one of the students- I was brought even more down with the knowledge of the pain and hearbreaking things she has experienced. I didn't really have good words in response...and I still don't...I've just kind of sat here heartbroken for her....and that brought me back to the point of why we do what we do. I can't change her past- but I can love her and pray for her and show her the love that can really change her life in Jesus.

I know this post is a little heavier than most of mine...its just really thoughts that are laying hard on my heart tonight...

hmmmm

I know I haven't written in a while. And I still haven't finisehd giving y'all an overview of my summer as promised...sorry. That's kinda how my life has seemed these days though- unable to keep up. I feel like everything I do I just hurry up and do it so it can get done...which is probably not the best way to live. But thats how it is these days. Not really sure what I can do to fix it. I feel like everybody else is so on top of life sometimes- and I'm just not. I'm not trying to whine or make people (if anybody really does read this anyways) feel bad for me...that's really just how I feel these days. I'm stressed about my job, I miss my sister, and I just feel kind of uncertain and weirdly uncomfortable about things in life right now. Its probably all just because my job is so hard right now and there's a lot of pressure there that seems impossible to escape...

Anyways, I'm glad to still be feeling okay enough with life....I'm excited about YoungLife getting started up (even if that does mean more stuff to do)...but that's going to be a lot different this year too.

So anyways, I was feeling overwhelmed as I got to work this morning (I woke up late and somehow actually ended up here early) and so I thought I'd write out some of my stress so I could focus better on my many tasks at hand.

Oh, and I'm designing a new blog on wordpress. I'm excited about it. So if i ever get that done it will be "bye,bye blogger" and on to my newly designed blog.

Some quick morning thoughts

Okay, so apparently I'm really bad at going back and blogging about things from this summer- but I will at some point in time I promise. But for now I want to share some quick thoughts that I've been reflecting on this morning. Let me introduce this by saying this week has been pretty rough at work- I've worked pretty much non-stop for the past 4 days. Between Tuesday and Thursday I slept like 6 hours total and did a ton of data entry among other things. I love my job all the time, but this week has been a tough one. So, as I was thinking about that I was thinking about how I really just wish I was back in the Bahamas and so I went back and read one of the entries I made it notebook about my experience. This is what it says:

Reference Verse:
"Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete." 2nd John 1:12

I read these words from the second letter of John the first morning we were in the Bahamas as we began our sailing expedition. I was almost surprised to come upon a verse so relevant to what I was doing: sitting there reading the Bible, God written word letter to us, yet also getting an awesome opportunity to see Him and really meet Him face to face. I felt like God had inspired those words through John just so I personally could read them- sitting on the Bahama Star (our boat) in the middle of the ocean on a beautiful Monday. And then the last part of that verse-- so that our joy may be complete speaks so clearly to me of this trip- an opportunity to simply play all day, having a blast and experiencing the true joy of experiencing God's creation.

Now, back to today...as I read that I realized that those words in that verse don't just refer to vacations or retreat times or whatever- they refer to today, when I have to leave for work in 5 minutes and go to place where I have a ton of pressure on me- God wants to meet me face to face there and in everything I do. I don't know why I miss that so much. Today, my prayer is that we can all go and seek to meet him face to face in whatever we do- because He is there no matter what. It makes going to work on a hard week a little easier when I know I'm going to go and be there with my Savior.

Compassion...totally out of order...don't hate

Okay, so I've had something kind of random on my mind for the past day...so even though this is not in sync with my "going back through the summer" series I have going on right now, please indulge me for a minute while I talk about something I care about. Now, anybody who knows me knows of my involvement with YoungLife- a ministry for high school students that I work with. If I ever had to choose a favorite ministry (and thankfully, I don't) it would without a doubt be YoungLife. My heart and soul is invested in this ministry. There's not a whole lot I feel sure about in life, but it is evident to me that God has called me to this ministry. Having the awesome opportunity to walk alongside my high school friends and share Jesus with them is almost unfathomable and indescribeable. I love my kids...I love my fellow leaders...I love how YL is incarnational and doesn't judge. I could go on and on about how awesome it is and the amazing things God has done that I have seen and heard about through the years...and I probably will one day in this blog...but for now, I actually want to talk about another ministry that I've felt called to recently.

You see, because I'm involved in YL, I've always felt like that kind of filled my "ministry" area of my life. I mean, I put lots of time, effort, and even money into it. So whenever people talk about other great ministries, I have thought "yeah, that's great for them...but I have YoungLife and that's what I do". However, I've learned that right when you think you know what you're doing and where you are...the Lord will call you to step up to the plate and follow Him even more. Thus is the case with my newfound inclination towards Compassion International. My family has had a compassion child for a few years, so I already knew a bit about the program-- and it seemed legit. Well, recently as I have started following various blogs, my roommate and I started reading some "Compassion blogs"...these are the blogs of different individuals who have gone on trips with Compassion to visit some of their service centers, the children Compassion serves, and even meet the specific kid they sponsor. Reading these blogs reminded me of poverty that I don't see.

Around the same time that we started reading these blogs, my roommate and I watched Slumdog Millionaire. Alex (the roomie) declared that she wished she could adopt all the little children in India in the slums...to which of course I reminded her we didn't have the money to do (I'm the realistic one sometimes- Debby Downer if you will). So, we left it at that, read the blogs and talked about how cool it was and moved on with life. Until one day Alex called and said she was on the Compassion site and wanted to adopt all the Indian kids on the page. Again, as Debby Downer I reminded her that we couldn't quite afford that...but that maybe we could afford one. So, we (well, technically Alex) adopted Karthigai- a 12 year old beautiful girl from India. As we discussed how we would pay for it, we decided that our best option to be financially responsible would be to give up cable...and so we did. Like that, it was easy actually. Now, I've had cable all my life...so while it wasn't a huge sacrifice it was definitely a change. We currently have about 12 channels...and most of them are church services. I personally prefer to attend my church services in person, so I don't spend a lot of time in the TV Church land. But I digress...

Somehow I found myself looking at the Compassion webpage a few days later. (I blame flowerdust.net- I was reading her blog that day- more on her later)...and up popped a picture of a precious 4 year old boy that had been waiting for more than 6 months for a sponsor. He had a kind of adorable scowl on his face and I looked at him and saw a kid just like my nephew (I have a nephew that just turned 5, so I have a lot to base that on). It didn't take much more to make me decide to adopt Debu, I knew then and there that he was my boy.

Now proudly displayed on our refrigerator are pictures of 2 beautiful children on the other side of the world...but its the same world...and thats the cool part.

Fastforward to yesterday....I was in Atlanta because my nephew Ross just turned 5. I love all my neices and nephews and it was such a blessing to get to spend some time with Ross. I got him a sword for his birthday because he recently told me he collects swords. It's pretty cool- lights up and all that. I was excited that he seemed to be pumped about it too.

Anyways, on my way to Atlanta, I saw that one of the Compassion bloggers that I also follow on twitter was going to be speaking at a church near where my nephew lives and I thought this would be a great chance to go hear her speak. Her name is Anne Jackson and she might be my new hero. She was at Oakleaf Church in Cartersville (which is an amazing church btw-- they played Zac Brown's "Chicken Fried" after the service...won me over) talking about Compassion. A lot of the message Anne had to bring I already kind of knew-- I mean her words had already helped in convicting me to adopt Debu, but it was so cool to watch the videos she made in India on her Compassion trip and hear the stories as she talked about these children that it was evident she cared about. Its so easy to forget about poverty in the world. Its so easy to live in my nice little North Macon neighborhood and ignore the hungry people downtown and around the world. One of the things Anne said at that service last night was "if you don't live like you believe you were created to change the world, then you are missing the point of salvation" (that's the Amy Kenney paraphrase probably). That really hit me...I guess because its a pretty bold statement...but so true. Its so easy for me to settle for trying to be a good person, but in reality, Jesus rescued us so that we could go and share his love with the world and if we don't go do that we are missing the whole thing.

So anyways, I've been thinking about the whole Compassion International deal in the past day especially in relation to my neices and nephews. Debu is the same age as one of my nephews. He could be right in there with them. I have 7 (and one on the way) neices and nephews and they are some of the coolest kids in the world. I love to be able to buy them things and take them places and just spend time with them. I don't know if Debu has anybody who loves him as much as I love my neices and nephews...but he has me now...and I hope that I can show him that I love him like that...I pray that as I continue in this relationship with Debu that the Lord will teach me how to show love to a precious little boy all the way across the world.

So, I hope that if you're reading this blog you've at least been inspired to read up on what Compassion is about. You can go to their website www.compassion.com. It's an awesome organization and a great way to get involved in really combatting poverty in the world. Check them out, and if you have the means (or can give up cable or something!) look into adopting one of the precious children. It's only like $38 dollars a month. You can choose an age or country or gender or whatever. One side note, if you do decide to check out adopting a kid- look to see the ones with little hearts by their name- that means they've been waiting more than 6 months for a sponsor. Oh, and to read Anne Jackson's blog check out www.flowerdust.net.

OLD School with Project LEAD

Okay, so I'm trying to catch up my blog on my life...so that maybe there can be some semblance of order to future posts. I was going to work backwards and talk about most recent things and go through the summer that way...but I'm way too anal for that. So, instead, I'm going to try transplant myself back to the begininng of my summer and go through all the awesome things I did and talk about them. I feel like this is kind of a cheating way of blogging...I mean, if I was blogging about things as they happened that would probably be much more intriguing...but I guess I'll have to just say take what you can get with me. :) That's just kind of how I roll.

Before I start discussing OLD School and the Project LEAD trip, I will say I went into this summer already stressed. I looked at my schedule, realizing I would rarely be in Macon and had a ton of places to be and was ready to throw in the towel of productivity. I realize this is ridiculous- especially since so many of my trips (actually all of them) were awesome opportunities and projected to be great fun, but I'm a structured person, and so being away from home so much and not being able to focus and organize everything about my summer was stressing me out. But the cool thing is, God has taught me a lot about stresss this summer. Really, God has taught me a lot about Himself in general, and I think it took me not having control over everything for me to learn these lessons. I don't know if that makes any sense at all...but it seems to have worked as I have really worked to give my time to the Lord and he has blessed me immensly through that. So anyways, let's start with the Project LEAD trip:

Project LEAD is a student leadership organization at FPD that I work with. We were excited to have a big group this year and really excited about participating in this program I found in my internet research called OLD School. OLD School is Outdoor Leadership and Discipleship School and is a wilderness/backpacking program through a Christian Camp called Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. Our Project LEAD group was divided into 2 groups- one co-ed and one all girls. My group was the all girls group and it was awesome (I'm sure the other group was awesome too..but obviously I got to experience my group's awesomeness first hand). Our group also included 2 guides- Meredith and Rachel who were wonderful.

The trip consisted of lots of different adventuresome things--- this is how our week looked:
Monday-- spend night at basecamp

Tuesday-- hike about 8 miles
I will say that this was a tough hike definitely. It was our first day, our packs were heavy but luckily we were enthusiastic and so it worked out great. We stayed together as a group and it was awesome to see the girls encourage each other and work together to keep moving even when we were really hot and tired. We camped on the trail and had fun trying to build a fire that night (i.e. it took forever to build a fire but we made it happen).

Wednesday-- hike about 6 miles, canoe to peninsula
We hiked back down the mountain this day-- which was also tough. I enjoyed hiking along and talking with Meredith (one of our guides) and Lauren (one of the students)...we would stay back to allow everybody some time to get ahead and had fun discussing books, beliefs, etc. Its a cool opportunity to meet with other believers. I think God often puts people in our lives in random situations like that to teach us and remind us of the things we can so often forget in our day to day interactions (even with other Christians). Once we got down the mountain we had a crazy rainstorm which is always fun so we had to wait to go canoeing to our next campsite. Once the thunderstorm stopped we canoed over to the peninsula. My canoe partner was Alyson (student) and I must say that Alyson and I have some awesome canoeing chemistry. We had a ton of fun doing 360s in the middle of the lake waiting for everybody. We camped there that night--- staying up late and praying bears couldn't swim.

Thursday- "cliff" jump, canoe, rafting, rainstorm
Before canoeing back to get picked up to go rafting, we had the opporutnity to climb some rocks and jump into the lake...it was about a 30 ft jump and I will say I was definitely scared...but I'm glad I did it. The highlight of Thursday, though, was definitely rafting the Nantahala River. Our group had quite the rafting trip- as the water was freezing, it torrentially rained on us for a while, and both me and one of my students (Sydney) got pretty roughed up. It was an awesome time- even getting smashed into a rock :). That night we camped at a more legit "campground" with flushing toilets which was nice...but it thunderstormed pretty bad and so we pretty much eneded up sleeping in puddles, but it was okay because we still had fun.

Friday- mountain biking, base camp, Huddle House, not sleeping
Friday morning a few of us got up and went mountain biking which was awesome, especially because of how muddy it was from all the rain the night before. I wrecked/fell off the bike twice and we all got ridiculously muddy. One of my favorite pictures of the whole trip is me and Lauren ridiculously muddy. That night we slept back at basecamp...they actually gave us a cabin which was awesome, but we didn't sleep. We took our awesome guides to Huddle House and then sat in the van for a couple hours talking and just hanging out.

Saturday- home sweet home

Let me just say that this week with Project LEAD was awesome. Throughout the week, my group was studying the book of 1st Peter. It was cool to sit with my students and hear them really hash out what the Lord was saying through these words. And Meredith and Rachel were awesome leaders- I was so impressed by their biblical knowledge and ability to lead discussion. That is an area that I always feel deficient in- knowing how to lead group discussions and being with them (people my age, even a little younger, that were confident in this) definitely gave me a desire to study the word more to have a better understanding of it. In fact, being a Snowbird in general really helped me in my journey with knowing Jesus. I was reminded of the importance of true and intense study of the word and specifically of memorization of scripture. This is something that I have carried on through the summer and I'm looking forward to continuing this growth. In fact, the more I really take the time to sit and study God's word, the more I want to. Also, just to give a Snowbird plug- if you are looking for some good teachings to listen to look up Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters on itunes. The main preacher for them is this guy Brody and he is defintiely legit.

With all that being said, I think that God have the perfect plan for my summer-- especially starting out with this trip, plus I made 2 great friends in Meredith and Rachel which was awesome. Oh, and this trip is also what inspired me to try to turn my cell off for at least an hour a day...and I must say that was a great decision in general. I'm super addicted to my "crackberry" and so turning it off for an hour a day (which i dont always do but I'm trying) is a great time to just be away from it and allow me to focus on other things and not be so dependent on a stupid little machine.

Anyways, be looking for the contiuned saga of my summer...I believe I'll be talking about the Whipple Hill User Conference next. So if you're a nerd...be sure to tune into that post :).

So bad at blogging

So I'm really bad at blogging. I mean, I rarely actually take the time to sit down and write things out. But this summer has been crazy in an awesome kind of way....so I think I'm going to have to sit down at some point in time in the next week or so and talk about it. For now, I'll give you a preview of some of the things I'll talk about.
-OLD School- backpacking in North Carolina with Project LEAD
- Boston- Whipple Hill User Conference
- Kentucky- Annual Family Reunion trip
- Bahamas- YoungLife Senior Sailing trip
- and maybe just a little bit about the little bit of normal life times I have gotten to experience in Macon.
Be looking for some updates....hopefully soon. But for now, I'm at work, so I gotta keep trucking.

:)

So, I find it really difficult to keep up with the whole blogging thing. I often find myself thinking-- "i really need to blog about that" as I experience different things in life. I don't mean like I have many life changing events occurring constantly or anything like that...but more so that I want to be able to highlight the things in my life that are memorable and worth stepping back to recount. So, based on that, for this blog I'm going to have to share some randomness of the past few weeks in my life and things that I have been thinking about, etc.

1. The Hititchi Trail Adventure: One Sunday evening a couple weeks ago, Alex, Steebo and I are eating at Francar's and decide to go fishing. Its getting to be the time when the sun will be setting soon...but we're adventurous and so head to fish anyways. We end up going to a place A-Flo knows of and has been to once. Well, to make a really long story short...we ended up hiking about 2 miles in and of course by the time we go to the river it was dark. We had quite an adventure hiking out in the pitch black with only my cell phone light as a guide. This evening is legendary already for the three of us. We had too much fun...i especially enjoyed carrying a walking stick around that was convertible into a javeling, spear, or bayonet, depending on what the sitaution neccesitated. Needless to say, we made it out alive and well...but I would like to give a shout out to everybody that we called to tell "please send a search party if we don't return".

2. Mike Kinnebrew/ Drew and Ellie concert: YoungLife held a concert to benefit campership for club a couple weeks ago and it featured some of my favorite artists. Mike's playing and passion always draw me in. He ended the night with my favorite song "Something Worth Saving" (mentioned a couple blogs ago) and it was just a truly amazing moment to be a part of. I know that song also means a lot to one of my friends that was there...and I feel like I was able to truly undersatnding its meaning as I sat there listening to it. It was beautiful. Drew and Ellie Holcomb with Nathan followed Mike and they are truly amazing. We joked about how every girl there wanted to be Ellie because she is amazing. I love Drew and Ellie and their music-- as well as their heart for high school students and YoungLife in particular.

3. Middle School Field Day: I was asked to play on the Faculty team for the legendary middle school field day student vs. faculty volleyball game. It was fun even though I pretty much sucked it up...I was glad to not to make the team lose. It was one of those things that really wasn't a big deal, but I was glad to be able to hang out with the middle schoolers and have a good time.

4. SharpTop Cove: This past weekend me, Laura, Alex, and three of our high school friends went to SharpTop Cove for family camp weekend to do Kid's club. Well, it turned out that they actually were short on work crew...so we ended up doing that too. So, we basically spent 2 and half days working our tails off at YoungLife camp and it was glorious. There is something about being on that mountaintop with a ton of people that you know are in the same boat as you...and on the same team in a way. I worked harder this weekend than I've worked in a while...and I would go back and do it all over again every weekend if I could. It's hard to explain that magic that occurs are you arrive onto a YoungLife property...but it is truly amazing. It's not that everything is perfect or that there is not stress or problems...but it seems that there we remember that we can give our problems to Jesus (which is the case all the time...but it just seems easier to remember on a mountain top i guess) and our stress is about getting things done, but not angry or frustrated. One of the little girls was playing tag and fell on the ground while we were there...I helped her get up and dust off her knees and then said to her "You know what the best thing about falling at YoungLife camp is?...even though your knee might hurt a little...you're still at YoungLife camp- it's beautiful and the most fun ever!"....and sweet Molly quickly agreed. All I can say is if you've never been to a YoungLife camp, you should totally remedy that if you ever have the opportunity. It will be the best time ever-- guaranteed!

5. Missional Community: My church (New City Church Downtown) has these small groups called missional communities. AFlo likes to refer to them as house church. It's basically an opportunity to get together ina smaller, more intimate environment with people in the church and start really living out the concept of community. We just started attending an MC and we had an informal dinner gathering last night. It was the frist time I've really felt at home in a church group outside of my family's church (currently in Augusta). We arrived early to fish in the pond where the MC is held (The Evans'--- wonderful people!), which is amazing becuase we love fishing and actually caught something. After fishing we had an awesom meal and then played ping pong and really just hung out and had a good time. It was a great experience. It makes me fired up for getting involved at New City.

So anyways, I know these are some random things...but they have been on my heart and on my mind lately. I'm thankful for the opportunities the Lord has given me lately to have fun and relax...it helps me keep my focus on Him...and with that, I know I can't go wrong.

A long week with a great ending....

So it's been a little bit since I've blogged (well a week or so) and I have to say its because I've been super super busy. The craziness all started last weekend when I went to see my good friend Mike Kinnebrew (see his page here) play at Eddie's Attic in Atlanta. I love Mike's music. It's a sweet kind of acoustic soulful sound. He has this one song "Something Worth Saving" that literally made me tear up as I heard it live. Listen to it, love it.

Anyways, after the show I drove the the tornados home to Augusta and got to go to the Masters on Saturday with my dad. The Augusta National is beautiful and I really appreciate my dad being willing to take me as his golf watching partner.

So then it was Easter family fun times and I came back to Macon to a slammed week full of all kinds of meetings, stressful stuff, YoungLife and getting ready for Prom. Prom at FPD (where I work) is a huge deal with leadout, a pretty intsense decorations/set-up, party buses, a great band, and dresses worth more money than most of my clothing costs all put together. I was so stressed leading up to it because part of my job is to make sure it happens and everything goes okay. I know that prom is so important to these highschoolers, so I wanted to make sure everything was perfect for them. Prom is an important milestone in life...and no matter how insignficant it may seem as you look back on it after 10 years, it is incredibly important for a junior or senior in high school. I really hope the kids had fun. I had a blast just watching them have fun and act crazy. I loved it because it was great to watch my highschool friends having some good, clean fun. Sure the dancing was a little sketch at times, but in general the kids were just out there having a blast. It reminded me of my favorite YL verse John 10:10 where Jesus says "I have come so that you might have life, more and better life than you have ever dreamed of" (or something like that--- that's the Amy Kenney Message Paraphrase for ya!). Last night, I witnessed kids living life and having fun with it. I've been thinking a lot about where Jesus would be in interaction with my highschool friends...and I have to say, I think he would have been right up there on stage with Perry Lee dancing with the band....or maybe with the group of some of my favorites running up the stairs to embarass me and dance all around me as I tried to stay out of the way. It was just such a joy to see those kids having such a great time and living life. I'm glad I had the opportunity to be there with them.

Isaiah (the book not the baby)

So I'm at work so blogging is not really okay but I just wanted to share a quick note. I've started trying to read through the book of Isaiah lately. I chose Isaiah for a few reasons--- I mean, the fact that my nephew is named after this prophet is definitely one of them, in addition to the fact that I've never really read it but lately I've heard many passages from it used in various sermons. Also, I know the book is full of God's promises...and I feel like it would be good for me to focus on his promises more. So anyways, today I read chapter 2 (just started yesterday) and the first time I read it I was a little like "ouch" because its just a harsh chapter. But then when I went back and read it again, I was able to find quite a few very uplifting things among the warnings that Isaiah speaks of. Specifically verses 3-5:

...Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, the he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths...
and the shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into purning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. O house of Jackob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord...

I think those are some good things to remember. And i also think its important in life to go back and think things through to find direction of God in them. It was easy for me to find this to be a harsh chapter, but I found the true hope in the chapter when I went back and looked through it again.

Anyways, back to work....

My life is full of crazy activities

My life is full of many different unique activities I feel like. I mean, maybe its not so unique...but certainly full of activities.

Saturday began with some yardwork and fun with my dad and then getting stuff ready for the church easter egg hunt with my mom. My mom teaches the 3-4 year old Sunday School class at my church in Augusta (The Quest). The way the building the facilities are structured, my mom's class is actually a few doors down from the actual worship space. So,she was talking about the issue of walking 10-20 preschool kids down the sidewalk and how it is somewhat unsafe. Being the fan of the Gosselin family that I am, I suggested we make a Jon and Kate Plus 8 style walking rope. So, Saturday I also had the big project of getting materials for and putting together this rope. Mom said it worked great and her kids all stayed attached. If you don't know what I'm talking about by the way, you should probably be watching Jon and Kate plus 8 more....it's a great show. So anyways, Saturday evening my dad grilled steaks and I got to hang out and play with the boys a little more before we left. Here's a couple pics from playing with them on the deck.





After fun times at home I headed back to Macon where I met up with Steebo and Melissa at El Som and then Steebo and I headed to the DubDub to listen to a band. The band was great and we hung out with these fun "real adult" guys that were cracking us up. Those guys had some classy shoes on.

Sunday started with a great time at church--- which Steebo slept through even though I called to wake him up and had a 2 minute conversation with him--- where Alex and I met Dr. Paul and his wife Alesia who we are going to attend their missional community group for the first time tomorrow. We're excited about that. Our church has been talking a lot about living in community lately, so it seemed logical that we should get involved.

Sunday afternoon was glorious because we decided to go fishing. I had to run by Prom workshop first, which was completley an epic fail since we couldn't unlock the warehouse door. But anyways-- back to fishing. I recently found out that FPD actually owns half of a lake. This is probably the third or fourth time I've been fishing there. Alex, Steebo and I went fishing and it was a trip. In fact, hanging out with them always keeps me laughing. They're adventurous...and therefore make me more fun :). We ended up climbing onto this ridiculously broken and moss covered "used to be a dock but is currently jsut some boards nailed very loosely together". It was crazy. Oh, and we lost about 10- 12 lures between the 3 of us. Ridic. There is something in that lake that eats lures.



After fishing, we took our dirty selves to the Amstar to see Fast and Furious which was Brilliantly Amazing and made me want to drive fast and marry Paul Walker. Of course we were hungry after the movie so we went to our typical happy place-- the DubDub for some dindin (yes I just said that-- that one was for you Laura). As if we had not had enough fun in all that we then went to Barnes and Noble where Alex and I sat in the addiction/recovery section (ironic--- hopefully not) which is frighteningly next to the Sexuality section and read through a couple different books (from the Ad/Rec section!) that we thought were interesting. Actually we more so analyzed whether we thought the people that wrote the books had any clue what they were talking about. I mean, so many doctors and things have written book after book about all kinds of issues--- yet so much of what they write seems so out there to me. I also feel like with a lot of the whole addiction/recovery genre is more so about experience and understanding than head knowledge. The best books to read about any of that kind of stuff to me are memoirs and other books written by people who have experienced the various issues. But there's my soap box on that.

Then of course yesterday was back to work as usual. Luckily we did have club last night (so us leaders were able to stay out of trouble). For club we played kickball....in the 3 degree weather. I prefer to refer to it as Arctic Kickball because it was freezing....like ridiculously. It was still fun though and I got to see some kids that I hadn't seen since before Spring Break so that was good. Oh, and before club me and A-Flo ate CFA with Molly. I was excited because I got her this awesome elephant made out of diet coke cans during the Cherry Blossom Festival. 2 of Molly's favorite things are elephants and diet coke so it was pretty much the ideal combo. After club a bunch of us went to Starbucks and then Steebo and I hit up the DubDub b/c I was hungry (count it--- 3 days in a row at the dubdub).

So, that's probably more detail than you'll ever get out of a blog from me...but it's been an eventful 3 days...what can I say? Looking back on it all....I have to say, I have a great family and great friends (both my age and in hs!)....and I love it.

I love Chuck E. Cheese!

So I had today off from work. Its Spring Break at the school still so I just got one day off. Let me tell you working all the time really makes you appreciate any days off. My phone rang at about 9 a.m. with somebody calling about a work question. That's kinda my luck--- have a day off but then get a call that wakes you up. So i decided to get up and go get some breakfast at Panera. I used to go to Panera all the time on Saturday or Sunday mornings so I brough a couple books along and left. As I was g-chatting with Alex about my day off, I was trying to decide what to do...and I randomly remembered that my mom was going to be helping with my twin nephews, Andrew and Tyler, this weekend because my sister-in-law and neices were out of town.

I ended up decided to drive home to Augusta and take the boys to Church E. Cheese. Let me just say...it was definitely the best decision I could make! By the time I got to my house the boys were just itching to get going...they were so cute! Its fun when they are just so excited. We went to Chuck E. Cheese and spent about 70 coins and played in the toddler play area and just ran around and danced and had a great time. They are at just an adorable age. And I love to take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese--- I know for some people Chuck E. is like a nightmare-- with screaming chilren and crazy games and huge rat walking around, but it has always been one of my favorite things to take my neices and nephews to Chuck E. Cheese. Back in the day when Morgan was like the only one that could go I would randomly take her. It really makes me happy to just take the kids and play with them. They're so easy to please. In fact, for the rest of the days the boys were just kind of stuck on me...wanting to follow me around and sit with me and stuff. I told my mom, "well, we know the way to Drew and Ty's hearts...it's just to take them to Chuck E. Cheese". I appreciate the opportunity to hang out with them.

Here are a couple pics from our fun:

So this is what happens when you take a two year old to Chuck E. Cheese....Andrew was "playing skeeball" (which means throwing the ball up the ramp so it would slide back down to him) and somehow threw the ball so that it hit the cup with like 90 coins in it and they of course went flying in 90 different directions. I couldn't help but laugh because it was hilarious.

This is boys playing a pretty tough racing game...it came down to the last couple seconds but I think TyTy ended up pulling out the victory!

This one cracks me up because Drew is doin some legit dance moves. I knows its blurry and I really wished I had videotaped him but you can still get the point from the pic.

This is my boy TyTy dominating the car game. Drew was content to just sit and let Ty take the wheel and I gotta be honest-- Tyler was pretty good at driving the "Funny Car".

On another happy note I just got off the phone with one of my highschoolers and that brightened my day. She was cracking me up with her Spring Break shenanigans. I'm gonna be honest...this week has definitely been pretty dull and kinda sad without all my highschool friends and the excitement they bring to my life...maybe that sounds pathetic...but I'm okay with it. I love them...what can I say?!

On that note...I'm going to bed.

So now apparently I'm supposed to blog...

Okay, so yesterday it was mentioned that I have a blog and haven't written on it since 2007. My bad. Its been a busy couple of years I guess :).

So, in recent news in my life....well....my life isn't very exciting. However, I will say that the highlight of my week (thus far I guess) is probably last night. Let me start off by saying it is Spring Break for all the high schools this week in Macon. Because of Spring Break, we had no YoungLife last night. That was probably the first downfall...apparently, me and my YL leader friends don't really know how to act like normal adults on Monday nights. With no committment of hanging out with our favorite high schoolers this week-- we just went a little wild (and a very good clean fun type of way of course!). The day began with hanging out at the pool at the house where Alex is housesitting. That is probably where the crainess began with me and Laura's dance party to M.I.A.'s paper planes (which would definitely appear again later that night). From there we headed to Dan's softball game (picked up Steebo along the way) and then went to our typical WildWing. The funny thing is we go to WildWing (or the DubDub as I prefer to call it) every Monday after club...but yesterday we were there much earlier and as we walked in we were greeted by our typical waitress who informed us that we were way too early and that there were people at our booth. We had a good time eating and stuff with lots of friends and then headed back downtown for another one of Dan's softball games. We also go to give Laura a tour of the Mercer library while we were there and explain to Laura and Steebo what MerPo is like :). After that we headed back to Alex's housesitting house which was an adventure in itself and had a legit dance party in their living room. Let me just say, this all may not sound nearly as entertaining reading it as it was. I mean, I normally go to bed at like 11 and Laura goes to bed even earlier. So let's just say the fantastic 4 crazy YL leaders had a good time as usual doing nothing and acting foolish.

I will say that the ihome speakers for my ipod are definitely the best purchase I have made in a while. I mean, the dance parties today would not have been possible without them.

Let me just tell you if you ever want to see any amazing penguin dance play Laura the Paper Planes song. It will make your day. Thank you Laura for being such a fun friend :).

In other news, most of our kids are Spring Breakin it at the beach--- from PCB, to St. Simons, to random places like Mexico Beach and Cape San Blas (whatever that is). Its definitely been a fun and exciting for them from what we can tell, but we'll be excited when they are home to hang out with us again.

So, my new goal is to actually write on this blog some. Maybe I'll have some exciting things going on that are worth reading about...but if not feel free to read anyways.

Peace out cub scouts.

A