Another Busy Week

Whew! We have been busy to say the least! Last Friday went great at the 5th Quarter United. We had probably around 300 students hang out throughout the night! All of our bands played, which was awesome! We had a inflatable boxing set, a huge slide, pizza, and just pure hanging out! Everybody is already talking about trying to do another thing like that again, they loved it so much! Then Erin had her, "Chick Flick Night" They had a great time playing some great movie games and eating some awesome snack food!!! Erin does such a great job when she does events and basically anything she does!!! I LOVE her sooooo much!

Things have been going great with the students, we are doing our series, "Who I Am" and it is really tuning the students into what God wants to do in their lives! Sunday night with the high school we had like 45 students, so that is great! God is really moving and opening the students hearts up. Tomorrow we are having Fall Fest 07! We are setting up outside in the church parking lot and having our band play, games, and some food & a costume party! It is going to be a lot of fun! I have a pirate costume, Zion is going to be a bumble bee, and we still need to get Erin an outfit! It is going to be a lot of fun outside tomorrow! Then Friday night after the football game we are having a TailGate Party in the parking lot until 12pm! We will have hot dogs, some music and just good 'ole fashion parking lot hanging! Sometimes students just want to hang out and not do anything so we are going to just hang Friday night! Then on Sunday the girls are going to join the Ladies Night that Mrs. Steph is putting on for the women of the church. While that is going on the high school guys are going to come over to our house and cook out, play some 360, and play some other games!

Well, a lot is going on so I am going to get back to it and hammer things out for all that is going on this week and the weeks to come!!!

Another Wonderful Day

Tonight we had a great service with the jr. high! We started our new series called, "Who I am" talking about who we are in Christ and how God sees us! Wednesdays are always really fun services and we have a huge group of 6th - 8th graders. This Friday we have a 5th quarter united that we are doing with 3 other churches in the community at the middle school gym after the football game! We are having inflatables, live music, pizza, drinks, and more. It is going to be a great night of hanging out and doing the event together with other churches! Erin is having the chick flick movie night for all the girls this Saturday from 6pm - 9pm in the zone! They are going to play movie games, eat food, and watch a chick flick movie!

We are keeping super busy with the day to day operations of running the church and more! God is doing great things though! Tonight I had a parent tell me about how God is just blessing their socks off everywhere they turn! Miraculous thing too that are totally God and nothing else! It is so great to be part of such a wonderful church where God is moving all over the place in the lives of people!

It's late right now and I can't sleep! My brain starts to wake up at this hour and it is not good! I have been running 1.5 miles everyday and yesterday I ran 3.5 miles! I felt pretty good and couldn't come up with a reason to stop so I kept pushing myself! I figured since Rachel (the MC student staying with us) could run 26 miles on Monday out of nowhere then I could push a little more than 1.5 miles. It felt good, I hate to run but I love how it makes me feel afterwards. Well, I am going to attempt to lay down and try to fall asleep. Hopefully I don't become more awake thinking and brainstorming, I tend to do that way too much at night!!!

Operation Overnight & More

Whew I am still resting up from operation overnight! We had 70 students come out for this awesome event! We played dodgeball, crazy games, worship, food, skavenger hunt, picnic, and more. It was a blast!!! 24 hours of intense youth ministry at it's best!!! Sunday at church was great, we started our new series Identity! I was able to lead worship since Chad was out of town of vacation and that is always fun! Then Sunday night we started the youth new series called, Who I Am. We are talking about what's makes us, us! And how does God see us! We had a fun night, and a great time in worship together. Our high school is totally pressing into worship and going deeper and deeper each time we meet!

Today we are cleaning and just catching up on things. These last few weeks have been crazy with everything going on! We are getting caught up though with everything today! Tomorrow we have a doctors appointment for Erin and the new baby! We are excited to go! Here in a few weeks we get to find out what we are having, yeah!!! I think we are having a boy or a girl, so we will see! Well, lots of thing to do today so I better get back to it!!!

Oh YEAH!!!

Friend day went amazing we had 560 people within our 3 services! Many people got saved and rededicated their lives to Christ and it was great! Then we had party at pastors which had about the same amount of people! We had multiple inflatables, food, music, hayrides, pony rides, 4-wheelers, mechanical bull (which really hurt by the way), horseshoes, chili cook off, and more! It was great to get everyone together within all the services and just hang out! Everyone did an amazing job rallying together and working all the events and making Sunday morning services be all they are! As pastor Jeff says it takes great people, serving a great God to make a great church, so true and we have GREAT people here @ Journey!!!

Tonight we had a blast at our 6th - 8th grade service. We are in between starting a new series so we had a fun night of team challenge and just having a good time! Tomorrow is Operation Overnight and we have like 50 students coming already! We are staying the night at the church from 6pm tomorrow until 6pm on Friday. We are going to have a blast hanging out, playing games, video scavenger hunt and tons of other stuff!!! It takes many events outside of normal weekly services to make youth ministry really powerful. You can't just rely on services to impact teenagers it takes so much more to get into their world! They have to really build trust and respect for leaders in order to really open up their hearts. Sometimes students have been so hurt from family and friends that they tend to keep high walls up between others. Events really tear down walls and build great relationships and memories for the students. It makes the weekly services that much easier and better to speak into their lives. It was super busy last week and yet super duper busy this week for the youth ministry too, so I will be sleeping like a baby on Saturday to say the least!!! God is awesome and doing great things. It is so great to hear parents come to me and say, "My son/daughter NEVER would come to church or youth and now they beg me to bring them out on Wednesday/Sunday for youth!" We are hearing praise reports and changes of attitudes and other things all the time from parents. That makes everything so much more rewarding when you see the seeds sprouting right before your eyes!!! What a great church, great pastor, and most importantly GREAT GOD we serve!!!

Trying To Post More!

Alright I am going to try and post blogs a little more often! We have been so busy though. This is peak season for us as a church with ministry. August - November seem to always be the BIG months that churches have the most people and most opportunity to impact! And that is what we are doing!

Today the t.v's for the foyer got hooked up thanks to Kevin Rodden! He did a great job running all the power and everything else! We have got some painting done thanks to Daryl Jones & Angel and we will have more helping these next few days with other projects. We have a lot of irons in the fire so to speak! This weekend is going to be great!

Tomorrow Erin's dad and step mom are coming into town for a few days, so we are excited about that! Homecoming is tomorrow night and the parade during the day, so that will be fun as well! Football is like the state fair here! The whole town goes to the games on Friday nights, kinda like the movies! It's a lot of fun seeing everybody there and getting to meet new faces!

Well, Zion and I are watching Annie and just hanging out getting ready to go to bed! I am still doing some laundry though, so I might wait up a bit! I had lunch today with the youth pastors here in town and we are doing a combined event October 26th after the football game in the middle school gym. This will be the first event we have done together in a long time I guess. It will be fun to get together and reach these students. The youth pastors are great guys doing a great job in their churches and the community! Well, I am going to get to the laundry and clean a bit, Good Night!!!

8 Students Got SAVED!!!

We had a great service tonight 8 students gave their life to Christ!!! God is moving and doing great things! After worship tonight, I just felt like the message I had prepared wasn't for the night so we changed things up a bit and just let the Holy Spirit lead us. I just got up and shared about being connected to the power source Jesus Christ and how we are like an extension chord. An extension chord is nothing of itself but when it is connected to the power source (an outlet) it comes to life and has juice!!! So we just gave a salvation call and 8 students responded. We have grown so fast that we have many students who just simply don't know Christ and what it means to follow Him. We have a great opportunity right now to build some foundations in these students with salvation. I love when God brings totally lost people to you and you don't even have to go out! Our students are doing the work bringing friends and God is touching their hearts week after week!

Well, this is an insane week with getting ready for friend day, party at pastors, and everything it takes to make that happen well! We are on top of it though and everything is falling into place the way it should! We have such great people here at Journey that make things easy, fun, and such a joy!!! Friend Day is going to be great with tons of people here that don't know Christ and we get to help point the way to Christ, HOW COOL IS THAT? God is going to move in power and anoint this service soooooo much! It's awesome being at a church that is so healthy and focused. We have such a great pastor that leads us and great people who serve so faithfully each week, I am blown away!!!

Well, I am so tired and ready to just lay down and rest!!! We have much to do these next few days and only so much time to do it!

Time Is Flying

Whew! Time is flying bye! It seems like time is a snowball effect the more it goes bye the faster it gets in life! If what I hear from older people is true, which is, "Just wait till you get my age and see how fast it goes!" then a day will be like 3 minutes (which is not good). Anyway, things are going great we are rockin' and rollin' as usual! We have so many great events coming up with Friend Day, Party @ Pastor's, Operation Overnight, Football team meal, Halloween October stuff, Services, Dig (which is going to start October 17th for the high schoolers on Wednesday night. Dig will be second base for all of our high school students that want to go deeper into God's word and their relationship with Him! Daryn Crawford is going to be leading it while the jr. high service is going on! 1st base for our high school students is coming out to Sunday night high school service then going deeper on Wednesday with Dig! It is going to be a great!

Holidays will be here before we know it! We are so excited about seeing our family back home around the holidays. We have been here 7 months and I have only been able to get back home once for a few days for my brother's wedding, so we are so excited about seeing our family and friends back home in Indiana. Our parent's have come and visit quit a bit actually which is awesome! But we haven't really been able to see our brother's, sisters, nieces, nephews, and so on! We are anxious to see them! I can't believe that it is the fall already! Time is flying and we are sailing on the wind of it! God is awesome and is moving all the time!!!