Outings

Believe it or not, I DO do things. Though my blog may not show for it. I'm going to try and post more. maybe I'll inspire you to go places. HA. this is really more for my own amusement. :)

 

 

Going out with Leslie is the most natural thing in the world. When I first started having a car and money I thought it would be weird. I don't know why, maybe because I wasn't used to it. But we just continue our lives. We have the same conversations we would have at home, the only difference is the location. 

 

 

 for about two years that I can remember, our group from church has been going out after church on Wednesday nights. Its usually always fun. It depends on who goes. But no matter where we go, our usual place or somewhere new, with the right people, its always a blast. Which I've seen goes to show that its the people, not the place, that makes an outing fun.   

 

 

One morning I woke up at six am, not to go to work, not because I had too, call me crazy, it was because I wanted to. It was to go have coffee with Lauren. Woke up before dawn and got to the coffee shop when the sun was still peeking over the edge. But despite the ridiculousness of the early morning. Its always worth it. Making an effort to have a cup of coffee with someone is always worth it. And its not the coffee that's worth it, like I said earlier. It's the person. And Lauren is pretty awesome.

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.

 

 

Fantastic

The most exciting times, the most flavorful moments. The ones that make you say "fantatastic" and "brilliant" (oh wait, that's the Doctor...), they will almost never be captured on camera by me. I'm too busy enjoying and living in the moment. So sorry. You'll just have to take my word for it. I used to be consumed by taking pictures so I could "capture it all." I ended up missing most of it and yet had 500 plus pictures. Not good. So while anyone who reads my blog may think, man she has a boring life, I am happy to say that I don't. I just don't write every little thing down... which unfortunately leaves me with the not so interesting stuff to write about... Oh, well nevermind that... When you are enjoying a flavor of life, whether it be a food, a place, a person or thing,  or any moment really, don't get caught up it what you have to show for it later, what you are going to tell people about it. Just live in it, and if you just so happen to snag a few pictures, or steal someone else's, yay, if not. your brain will remember it just fine. For example, tonight I went rollerskating. It was incredibly fun. However, instead of taking ten paragraphs to describe the night that would never do it justice anyways, I'll just tell you to go too. It's worth all the screaming children. especially those last 15 minutes before close.

 

empty rink = pure freedom. 

 

 

p.s. It helps to have friends who love to take pictures, friends who enjoy the moment more by taking pictures. Also search engines. They all usually have great stuff to steal.  Thank you bing, google, facebook and twitter. and Anna thompson.

Coincidence...

I don't think it's a coincidence that my favorite color and food are both green.

 My aunt came over for Christmas this year from the wonderful state of Florida where all things delicious grow. She brought with her a ton of...... AVOCADOS! And then, the next day, my neighbor said his son came up from florida and brought THEM a ton, so many that they gave us some. Our fridge was FULL of them. It was a happy day for me. A happy two weeks really, I ate so many forms of avocado I can't even remember them all. The two best ways are sliced up, salted and eaten with soup, and then the other is of course, GUACAMOLE! It was a happy Christmas vacation indeed.

Remember this kid?

Well he FINALLY has a brother.  only TEN days late. >:P  

Here he is in all his preciousness! Alexander, born Jan. 5th. 2013! (what a noob, literally)

Now keep an open mind, doesn't he kind of look like Gollum mixed with Yoda? In the cutest sense of both of them. I call him Goda now. :) At least till he grows out of it. And for the record, Julian looked like a straight up alien when he was born and now he is the cutest kid I've ever seen, so there is hope.

Let's see... Oh I finally joined the smart phone world! now you guys will NEVER miss anything delicious I eat. ;) Don't worry, I'll try and keep em' short.

Christmas was fun. This year it was technically the same as last year, same events, same people, same food, though I think everyone grew up/changed quite a lot last year so there were actually quite a lot of differences. It was still great, reminds me that life keeps moving on and God is always in control

I also went to the Passion Conference! more on that later.
I know it's late, but Hope you all had a good Christmas and a fantastic first month of the year.



P.S. I realized after posting this that I put avocados BEFORE my new nephew... I think I've got my priorities mixed up.

a day late

Happy birthday to my wonderful mom!

even though it was yesterday.

I know many of you may not realize just how amazing my mother is, or rather how amazing YOUR mothers are. I have only just discovered it. This year it seemed like my brain finally matured just enough to realize just how much my mom does, and APPRECIATE IT. Sometimes I can't even believe it.

 Sometimes my family and others try to stop her. I suppose we do that to other people too, when we think they are giving too much. Why do we do this? Is it really our place to try and prevent someone from giving all they have for Christ's sake? Simply because we don't understand how they possibly could be willing to do so? This brings me to another point I've recently been challenged by in various ways. To be actively living out my faith.

Sure, I could write all day long on how I'm growing or how I see changes, but where is the proof? Where is my involvement in the Word, in my church, in the people around me? Are my actions demonstrating the amazing love of Christ that I talk about? My mom is definitely one of the best examples for Christ that I have, and for that I'm thankful. My one and only resolution for this coming year is that by God's grace, I will stop talking the talk, and start walking the walk. 

James 1:22-25

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. ²³ For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. ²⁴ For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. ²⁵ But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.