Hey y'all! These last few weeks have been straight up craziness. We're doing a ton of different things because there are some big events coming up soon and we have to be completely ready for all of them before we leave for camp tomorrow. Oh yeah, we've been prepping for the camp that we run during the summer. It's only a week long but things are different and get crazy when you're the ones planning every detail. Anyways, I just wanted to post a quick update. I will have other posts ready and being posted throughout the week while I am away from internet.

To start with, is anyone else still amazed that it is already over halfway through July!? Where has the summer gone? I'm pretty sure it just started a month ago. Seriously though, it's been a great summer and I am so excited about what the next month has in store. I just got my new frames last week. Finally! I had been waiting for them to come in because about three weeks ago they got broken when I picked up one of the kids from church. So I had been walking around for about three weeks with duct tape holding them together. Real classy, right? But it worked. Now I have new frames and the best part is that they were free because they were still under warranty.

So nice not having duct tape on my glasses

I also recently made one big 'frivolous' purchase before making some big adult purchases. I've been wanting to learn acoustic guitar for a while but always ran into the issue of not having a guitar readily available to practice on. Well, I fixed that situation a couple weeks ago during a sale at a local music store. The sale at King Music was great and the guys took care of me. I bought myself a Fender CD 60 Acoustic with a hard case for just over $200. A great deal all around in my book. I've been working on some chords but will really hit some good practicing after getting back from camp and things slow down.

My new baby

 I love spur of the moment decisions on one hand but on another I still wonder if I made the right decision. I guess I will find out after doing some more practicing and seeing if I am really any good! Anyways, that's about all I have for now. While I have some down time I am going to get things ready for next week. I hope you all have a great week!

God Bless!

"You're Killing Me Smalls!" || Weekend In Review

As I sit here reminiscing about this past weekend I have the privilege to listen to church band practice. The guys in that room who play for us are truly talented and it sounds great! They are currently working on figuring out all the chords for the song Cornerstone by Hillsong. If you don't know this song you should definitely check it out here! It is a great song and I am enjoying listening to them practice this song along with others.
This weekend was pretty full and we were going almost non-stop, especially on Sunday. We didn't have anything going on Saturday during the day, but that evening we had a softball game. Originally we were supposed to drive almost 40mins in order to play a team that lives about 10mins from us. Crazy!! Luckily someone had a bit of common sense and changed the schedule and we were able to play on a field in town. This made the evening so much shorter in regards to the game and allowed us to spend more time fellowshipping together after the game. We all headed over to Beef O'Brady's to grab some dinner and just enjoy each other's company for a while. It was a great night!
This lead quickly into a very early Sunday morning. I woke up without the aide of an alarm clock around 3:40...and I wasn't too thrilled about it. However, I got up and got ready for the day. We were in town and unloading trailers by 6am. There was one plus to this Sunday that made getting up that early worth it. Seeing as we are a church plant we set up and tear down everything every Sunday morning. This means that we have early mornings and a little longer time getting out afterwards. The school that we set up in decided to help us out this summer by allowing us a totally awesome opportunity. We don't have to set up again for 10 weeks!!! YAY!! :) While we would have gotten up and set up every Sunday all summer if we had to this is a welcomed break for everyone. 
Church went well and we transitioned straight from service to prepping for our JourneyKids event that evening and our first Super Summer activity, a Community Movie Night. We were gathering our supplies and then doing set up for the evening. We spent a couple hours setting up our movie screen, picking up popcorn and helping trim hedges. We went straight from there to our Kids event with a car load of kids. Two hours of games, small groups, bible lessons, worship, and of course, food. It was fun and we have gotten some more kids coming to JourneyKids since we are doing it on Sunday evenings now. It is awesome to see how it grown in just two weeks and how excited the kids are!!
After JourneyKids we loaded up the church bus and one other vehicle with kids and took them over to the movie night. We watched a good ol' classic...The Sandlot. There were several kids and adults who hadn't seen the movie and it was so funny to watch them watch it! It was a cool evening, but not uncomfortable. We had lawn chairs and blankets set up in Mike & Amy's lawn and popcorn all around. It was a great night with some awesome people!! I'm definitely looking forward to our other two movie nights this summer!
After all of that we had yesterday off to recoup and get ready to take on the week. I was up and doing absolutely nothing productive with my live. Sometimes that kind of day is just needed lol! A friend and fellow intern decided that it was a good day to sleep in...until 5pm. I'm still trying to figure out how someone can sleep that long! He slept for 17hrs. Seventeen straight hours. That's ridiculous. But as long as he is rested I guess. Last night we headed to BDubs (a.k.a. Buffalo Wild Wings) to play Late Shift Trivia and hang out. It was definitely fun! 
There was something else that really hit me this weekend but i'll save that for a post later this week. I'll also have to post some pictures from the weekend later since I can't access them right now. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and a great start to the week!!!
God Bless!!

This Weekend

This was our first weekend with everyone here and it ended up kind of being a chill weekend at the beginning and a little but of a busy weekend by the end. We didn't have any real plans on Friday night or Saturday morning so we just hung out at the house. Saturday afternoon we found out we were leading kids small groups and worship tonight and then we had a softball game. 

Our first softball game of the season was a bit rough since no one had played in almost a year, but this time we held our own. We were up one at the bottom of the seventh and they scored two runs. I think that after a rough first game only losing by one run was pretty good. It was a fun game and a good time with some awesome people!

We then grabbed a bite for dinner and headed to our pastor's house to go over songs and motions for Journey Kids worship tonight with his wife and daughter. We had actions for two songs and came up with motions for the third right then. It made for a fairly late night with our normal 6am Sunday, but it was fun and we were able to get it done.

 

Today we had church in the morning, then all four of us interns spent the afternoon at the office prepping for Journey Kids tonight. We're doing a temporary new thing with our kids program for the month of June. Instead of doing their lesson and small groups in the morning, we are having them go into the service in the morning and then having their normal Sunday morning activities in the evening. If we keep getting a turn out like tonight (and hopefully larger next week!) then it might be beneficial to keep it going on Sunday nights. We had twelve kids with about half of them being new or kids who hadn't been there in a long time. It was a really active night and the kids really seemed to enjoy it! Most, if not all, are planning to come back next week and are planning on bringing more friends. It would be so awesome if God is able to use this time on Sunday evenings for us to impact kids in a better and more effective way! I'm excited to see what happens!

Now we're all just sitting around the house in our own areas doing our own things in hopes of a little recoup before some heavy work tomorrow. It was a good first week of the summer with all of us interns here and I look forward to a great week leading up to our first summer activity!

So there's a little recap of the weekend!

Have a great night and a great start to your week tomorrow!

God Bless!