Friday Night

Haven't been feeling well the last few days but I am definitely feeling better. We had our Caramel Apple Fest 09 Wednesday night and it went AWESOME! We had our biggest attendance night @ REMIX which was great (I guess caramel really draws kids in). We had a blast ending our series. We are starting a new series next month called, "You Asked For It". Wednesday we had the students fill out a questionnaire about things they deal with, topics they want to learn about, food items they want in the cafe, & more! This next month is ALL about letting the students pick EVERYTHING we do @ REMIX from the games to the message. It was really interesting seeing the overlaps of what students filled out. There were for sure some things that seemed like the common denominator with issues they deal with and things they want to know about.

Sunday night is our annual Capture the Flag event with 6+ other youth groups from the area. We are having a cookout, games, prizes, music & more! We were supposed to have it a few weeks ago as a pre-rally for SEE YOU AT THE POLE, but it got rained out. Sunday night is the rescheduled night for this event.

We also had a wedding rehearsal tonight. Tomorrow I am doing Dustin Huffman & Jessica Smith's wedding. Zion is the flower girl and she did amazing throwing the pedals tonight. I love doing weddings. Erin and I were reminiscing about our wedding not too long ago (2003). It is such an exciting and awesome time getting married. Truly I am more excited now about this beautiful thing called marriage than I was even then. Our marriage seems to get better and better over time like a good stew or something I guess. I LOVE my family!!!

Caramel Apple Fest 09

Tonight we are ending our series, THE APPLE with a HUGE Caramel Apple Fest. That's right we are going to dip apples in hot caramel and let the students walk down a line of candy & toppings and just dip away viking style!!! It's going to be insane tonight. This has been a great series talking about temptation and how the enemy throws fake apples at us to bite into. We talked about how to know the right apples in life, how to overcome the fake apples that will destroy us, and all kinds of great things. This has been one of our best series that really built on each other week to week.

Things are going great and we are keeping busy as always. Our Community Service Day was great. We had 200+ people helping out downtown cleaning streets, cleaning up neighborhoods & more! One guy stopped us and asked who we were and why we were doing what we were doing. He couldn't stop talking about how amazing it was we were here in the community on a Sunday morning just serving. He pulled away in his truck then turned around and gave us a donation (even though we tried to refuse). How cool is that? It made an impact far beyond just our blessing of being able to serve. It blessed others too!!! There were many other stories too. It was truly an act of the church last Sunday!!!

We are in a series right now on Sunday morning talking about, "THE OTHERS". This series is all about reaching out, not sheltering ourselves, interacting with the un-churched, and being the loving, compassionate people God has called us to be. Too many times we have a us against the world mentality rather than a us for them mentality. We are called to be for, encourage, reach, love, pray, and interact with those who don't know Christ no matter WHAT!!! This series is tackling those issues head on!

Community Service Day

Well, I'm sitting here in bed getting ready for our HUGE community service day tomorrow. We are going to meet for our regular Sunday morning service do a few songs then head out into our community here in Martinsville and be the hands and feet of Jesus. That's right we are cutting our service and getting OUT THERE!!! As our pastor says, "Let's not just do church let's be the church." We are going downtown and cleaning up the streets, ally ways, weed eating, pulling weeds, mowing, & more! What a great way to do something practical for the community. So many times the church prays for the community and talks about reaching out but... nothing more goes on other than that. This service day is a way not to just talk about reaching out but actually doing something that is REAL. Sometimes we over spiritualize things when God is simply looking for those who will GO and serve. Jesus was more about serving & loving than He was about talking & debating.

On a side note I have been introduced to Mind Mapping which is this AMAZING way of organizing your thoughts, plans, strategy, & more. I have heard of mind mapping years ago but never really paid much attention. Then I came across some software that let's you create mind maps and I am learning a WHULE NUTHA way of processing and taking things to a new level. I LOVE learning ways to be better and more efficient. This is going to take my BRAIN to some serious good places. I will let you know more as I study this thing and dig into it. So far I HIGHLY RECOMMEND looking into Mind Mapping. Erin and I have been mind mapping how mind mapping works (kinda crazy).

Here Goes!!!

Not even sure where to start but here goes...

So many things have happened in the last several months. We had our summer camp INGAGE for the first time. This camp is something that we started this year and God brought the people in. We had 7 churches involved from all around the different states. About 155 people total for the kick off year. It was a great start to something great in the years to come!

We also had Zion's 5th birthday, a great vacation in Florida, a youth trip to St. Louis City Museum, the county fair, the state fair, & much, much more!!!

Things are going great at the church. We are in a great season of moving forward. Each Sunday gets even that much more momentum. Last night we met with our adult leadership team for the student ministry and we talked about the whole semester. We have some great things planned with the different series, events, and creative ideas to take us to a new level. As we talked about the last year we celebrated a big growth year. We have had over 20+ salvations in our Wednesday night services, we have had literally a 300% growth rate over the last year in our numbers. Worship has gone to a new level, and we are hearing great feeback from parents & students about what God is doing in them. We had over 20 events/steps forward this last year which has been great.

Need To Post More

Well, tonight at youth was fun. We ended our team challenge for the semester (a challenge where students have been gaining points bringing friends, bibles, & winning various games that sometimes goes along with the message). We have a lot going on right now with everything. We are gearing up for our huge summer camp called INGAGE! We are hosting the camp with about 6 or 7 other churches coming from different states. We will be going to Pigeon Forge for an intense week with God. Our students are working hard raising the money for that. I wish every student could go because these experiences are truly destiny changing (I know from experience in high school). Money is always the issue with students being able to go, sadly it cost a chunk of bling to go to these type of environments, but we are believing God to bring in the money for these teenagers.

This Friday is our Experiencing God worship night at HHC. This is going to be a great night of breaking out of the box and truly connecting with God's presence in a laid back way. No agenda, no hurry, no rush just PURE worship to an amazing SAVIOR!!! I am really excited about the night. Our worship team is so incredible. These guys & gals truly have talent and a worshipping heart for God. I love being a part of the team and worshipping together.

I started running Monday night again. It has been almost a year since I was running consistently. I was actually running 3 - 5 miles a day (can you believe that) REALLY I WAS. Then we moved and I packed up the treadmil. But don't fear I got it out Monday and have ran 1.75 miles each night since. It feels great to run and get in shape, it has been far too long for me. I have a lot of weight to lose and some muscles to form so I am on my way!!!

On a side note we got a camera the other day. We were just missing too much of our beautiful little girls life to go without one. So we got a Nikon D40 and started shooting. Here is what came out...

Well, it has been busy lately as always! We have many things going on here @ HHC! We had our Whyi Conference that went great a few weeks ago. We spent the day with WII's, games, great food, incredible sessions about making a difference as a wife, husband, parent, behind the scenes @ HHC, making a unique difference & more!!! Check out the highlight video below.

Also, we went to the mall the other day to get a few things and this is what happened as we sat around table while eating some great Lucas Pizza!!!

Allie's 1st Birthday

Well, we had Allie's 1st birthday last Friday! It was a great time with family! I can't believe she is one year old now it has gone by so fast! She is so awesome! I have the BEST family in the world!!!