bondfires

This past weekend I went on a retreat with the Christian Campus Fellowship at my university. It was great. The speaker, Will, reminded me of a very southern Francis Chan. Funny, great story teller, and incredible passion and love for Christ and His work in us. God showed me a ton of new stuff in His word that I had never taken the time to notice. A highlight definitely was the night we did the bond fire.

 

 

The fire was started and kept up by two college guys, so of course they made it as risky as possible. They literally could not make the fire any bigger because it might have escaped the pit. They started it with pine straw and some napkins, it grew till it was burning massive logs. The fire was blue because of how hot it was, turning into orange as the flame went up. It was beautiful. We kept turning ourselves like chickens to stay warm. The stars were amazing. We could see so many because there weren't any city lights nearby. I think I saw a shooting star, but no one else was looking so I can't prove it. :D Someone brought a guitar and we all sang. Two girls ended up sharing their testimony. It was an incredible night.

 

 

The trip was also sandwiched by trips to Helen. On Friday we got there early. After nearly running over a dog... we made it to Helen to have dinner. We found THE MOST amazing coffee shop ever. Better than ANY OTHER I've EVER been to. It was called Higher Grounds. If you're ever in Helen. Go. We sat and chilled with our Tuxedos, (Name of the drink), and had "Tee Game" competitions. It's the one with the golf ball tees on a wooden triangle, it's always at cracker barrel. We went back after the retreat OF COURSE. We had to get coffee there again. This time I had a drink that had Coffee, Mint, Coconut, AND Chocolate. It was so good. We saw glass blowers and weird shops. We went in a photo booth. It was my friend's first time.hilarious. The glass carver's shop was unbelievable. The guy was doing it freestyle. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry. And to top it off, in my mystery box (boxes with a random glass inside) was a wine glass with the SAME carving the man was doing! I couldn't believe it.

 

 

The bunks were extremely graffitied. If you can't tell, the close up says "I love Edward Cullen, aka Robert Patterson" My favorite part was that someone scratched it off and wrote "Ew" Glad some people still have their heads.

 

 

All of that with of course some crazy driving and my handy dandy GPS Maggie, made for an amazing trip.

 

 

 

 

stuff people say at passion.

This is a video that pretty much sums up Passion. In a very non deep way its completely accurate. With a smidgen of sarcasm and exaggeration here and there.

Passion

In a word,  Passion 2013 was.....intense.

Highlights?

•  singing "In Christ Alone" with 65,000 people.
•  Francis Chan's sermon was my favorite. John Piper's was a close second.
• standing in line hoping it was the line you needed to be in.
• finding a dollar going up the escalator, though I didn't actually find it, it was GraceAnna, but still awesome.
• sleeping in the middle of the hallway with thousands of other people.
• Watching "poor" college students raise 3 Million dollars for slaves in 3 and a half days.
• Seeing the lives of people change around me.
• Hearing testimonies of freed slaves who have not only found physical freedom, but spiritual freedom.
• Witnessing God work through all kinds of means.
• Being extremely hyper without having caffeine in my system, in other words, running off pure delirium.
• Laughing hysterically at 1am for no reason.
• Trying to find future husbands. (we all know that's why we go to conferences like these... JUST KIDDING)
• Finding out that nine random people can become a family in 4 days.
• Finding out that despite extreme tiredness and crankiness we could all still love each other at the end (and beginning) of each day.
• Crying tears of joy at the amazing work Christ has done in my life and in others.
• Witnessing truly amazing things. Awe-inspiring things.
• 3,000 people in a community group cheering when someone told their family group they accepted Christ as their Lord an savior. EVERYTIME

There was soooo much more I could tell you about, but the one biggest take away was that God can do immeasurably more than we can imagine. Despite the wickedness of this world, despite false preachers and all the other "fakers" that were present at this conference, the true gospel got out to thousands, and maybe even hundreds of thousands through this conference. And lives WERE changed, lives WERE given to Christ, people WERE convicted, people DID repent. Everyone DID see the amazingness of God's love for us. I know I did.