1-27-13: Blast summary preview

Hey everyone!

This past weekend was Student Impact's winter (Willow Creek high school ministry) retreat, and it was alright. It was awesome for others, and I admit it was...alright...for me. Only the worship touched me, and I was hoping I'd be affected far more, especially as last year's Blast rocked my world, and Sandblast (the summer retreat) also made a major impact (no pun intended). One of the songs with the biggest impact on me was "This Is Amazing Grace" by Bethel Music (lyric video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iFEOB8Coes). Especially the line "Jesus I sing for all that you've done for me". It LITERALLY brought me to my knees, crying tears of joy. I've had several bad points in my life, and I just thank God for all He's done for me!

More on Blast will be posted later this week, I just wanted to get an overview up.

We had the Uprising rally a couple weeks ago at Barrington High School, and we had probably 50 different people say they wanted to be contacted by someone from Uprising! We had around 10 new faces at Uprising this morning, and I have a friend who says she wants to come, but the only limitation is the fact that she drives her sister to school as well, so her sister may not want to get up early! Darn early-morning club! Ah well, it's fun anyway! Please pray that we continue to have more new faces at Uprising over the next few weeks and that we continue to grow as a club.

That's all there is for now...as I said, more later this week.

Prayer request: More people come to Uprising and my friend's able to come to Impact this weekend. Her twin went to Blast, and my friend was interested, but as neither go to Willow, my friend didn't feel comfortable, unlike her twin.

And instead of a verse, a psalm. At Blast we had the opportunity to write our own psalm, and here's mine. Sorry it's so blurry! The camera isn't great. "The LORD my God has given me life"

God bless you all!

1-15-13: Here goes my second semester

Hey everybody,

In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly the regular blogger, having something up on a steady pace, i.e. weekly, daily, etc. I mostly post just when I have time, so sorry if these are a bit long with updates. And this one will be short due to a lack of time.

This prayer request is so big I need to start with it. PLEASE pray that I don't end up in this stupid "well disguised anger management class" next semester! It's mostly because my councilor thinks I don't have social skills because he never sees me with people...because I'm usually with people OUTSIDE school. PLEASE pray something turns around. That'll just drive me over the edge. Haha, not exactly what "anger management" is supposed to do, huh? :)

Ok, "on to your regularly scheduled reading." God's been stirring in my heart, especially with "I Used To..." going on at school. It's Barrington High School's Christian club's outreach rally, with speakers talking about how they used to do drugs, or partying, or felt useless...until they found or recognized Christ. Today's the first day, and maybe 80 people showed the first day! Not bad I think...could do better by the end of the week (when we finish).

Plus BLAST IS COMING UP NEXT WEEK! It's Willow Creek's high school ministry's winter retreat. We "invade" a resort for a weekend, and it is SOOO much fun! Can't wait!

Ok, sorry guys, but I gotta go. Bell's about to ring (7th period).

God bless!

1-9-13: Truth Vow

HEY EVERYONE!

Sorry I went AWOL, I've been stressing with school stuff and whatnot. AP Chem is a killer!

Anyway, I hope everyone had a nice winter break, and good luck with getting back into the groove of school! (I've never used that word, at least not on purpose...weird.) Did anyone get anything nice for Christmas/Hannukah/whatever else you celebrate? I got a few books, money for my Dominican Republic mission trip ($400/1600-1800 covered!) One of my favorite books is Phil Callaway's To Be Perfectly Honest. It's a book about a year of trying a challenge his editor gave him: to be 100% honest for a full year. He wrote in a journal about how he did the day, almost every single day. Not bad!

From reading his book, seeing how it's helped him change a bit and be more truthful, as well as grow in his faith, I've decided to accept the challenge, with my own twist. As I'm sure that I'll probably have a bit more trouble with it, I'm doing it by the month. I started Jan 3rd, and at the end of the month, I'll think back to how I did. If I did well enough, I'll try another month, and another, until if I do well, I'll end at the end of 2013 (assuming the world doesn't end a year later than it was supposed to! haha!) So far, so good.

On a bit more solemn note, this past weekend was a bit hard on me, though probably far more so for one of my friends. He had some problems with his mom and ended up kicked out of his house. For privacy purposes, I won't give his full name, but if everyone who sees this could please pray for him? His first name's Joey. Thank you all. I ended up taking him in Friday through Monday, but still. Not easy for anyone. He's a cool guy, though, so it wasn't THAT bad. We still had some fun. Thanks all.

Ok, I'll wrap this up with another prayer request, a reference, and a verse.

Please pray that the funding for my Dominican Republic trip continues to increase and I raise all the money I need to to be able to go. I definitely don't have the money to pay by myself.

The reference is to my other blog, Many Worlds Set in Few Words. The URL is "mwsfw.blogspot.com". It's set on private, so it'd need to be directly typed into the address box.

Verse of the day: The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy. -Proverbs 12:22