My Madre

Today my mom took her last test to get her nursing degree. My mom has always been a hard worker. I remember when me and my brothers were growing up she would always work her butt off so that she could provide the best for us and she never failed. She is the greatest woman I know and the perfect inspiration as I go through my life. My mom decided a couple of years ago to start going back to school to get her nursing degree. She started classes and ever since then she has totally dominated every class and test that was put before her. She is completely incredible and I am so happy for her. I am more proud of my Mom for pushing through all of this crap and finishing school. She went to school full-time, worked, and took care of my pain in the butt brothers the whole time she was doing this. I am so happy that she is finally gonna do something that she enjoys and actually be banking for it. I could go on forever about how awesome and great my Mom is but I will shorten this and say this directly to her (even though I know I am gonna get a lot of crap and hear a lot of "mom" jokes because I hang out with people who don't know how to grow up (Nic!)).

Mom, words can't describe how awesome you are and how much you have impacted my life. I am so proud of you and I hope that you have a great time finding that high paying job that will help to pay for all the student loans I have taken out. I LOVE YOU!!!

On The Street Interviews

Today was an awesome day at the office. Nic wanted to teach on a particular subject so we based our interview on that and used JMob's magical mind to do a couple of live interviews to put together a video. We got some great answers and met a couple of cool people (as well as freakin retards). The best thing about the day though was when we were doing an interview and someone came up and started talking to Nic. He asked what we were doing the video for and when he heard that it was for our youth group his response was "Well, I am not very religioius. Will that be alright?" Our response...."Perfect, give it a try!" Our entire purpose for the project was to see what society thought about the topic that we had planned. A lot of the time we get so caught up dealing with "religious" people. I HATE THAT! I hate the way that religious people are so fake. They act like everything is going great in their lives when really everything may be falling apart. That is terrible! It is alright to tell people every once and a while that your life sucks. A lot of people may think that I am a jerk. You guys may get offended by a lot of the things that I say, but you will never see me telling you that my life rocks if I am going through a hard time. So for me it was a great day to be able to get out there and see what REAL people thought and how REAL people answered and what REAL people thought about our religious views. At the end of the day it was refreshing to get out and interact with people that don't give a crap if other people think they are living their lives right (especially all of those people that told us that they couldn't answer our questions because they were too stoned). I look forward to how JMob puts it all together and you guys should look forward to watching the final draft either here or on JMob's blog.

Tithe

Last night J-Mob, Jenna, and I made the trip to Austin to visit Austin Stone Community Church again. So we made the trip and got there a little early and listened to Spur58 rock a new song that we had not heard yet. It is called "Healer" and the message behind the lyrics are absolutely incredible. Stone is doing a series right now called "Money Matters." I am not normally a guy that likes to hear a message on tithing. I would rather hear that one story in the Bible about that one guy dying on the cross for my sins but last night since we had drove 30 miles to go to this service we didn't really wanna get up and leave. Now, I don't want you to think that I leave every time some preacher talks about money. I simply do not like to hear talks about money because I don't have any. Anyways, we sat through the sermon and I instantly felt conviction from God about this message. I don't want to go in to detail about the sermon because I have been trying to shorten my posts so I will provide the link so that you can go and listen to the sermon yourself. Click right HERE. So today we headed into the office and we were sitting around and we were messing around on our computers. Lately I have been fascinated with Perry Noble and the things that his church, New Spring, has been doing. So I check Perry Noble's blog quite often and came across this incredible story. It is pretty obvious that God has been calling me to not only start giving more of my time to Him but it is also time to start honoring my Father with my finances as well. Often I start thinking that because I give up a summer to come and work for free (or pretty much for free) that I have been giving 100% to God. That is bullcrap. God has opened my eyes to tell me that I have been doing nothing with my finances and in that I am dishonoring God by holding back what is His. Hopefully you guys will go check out some of the sites that I have linked for you in this post and if you haven't been obeying God's command with your money as well then I hope that you are convicted. Just a few thoughts for you.

Camp 7*8

I have been gone for quite a while and that is partly my fault but also partly because I just got back from Camp 7*8. Camp 7*8 is our Jr. High camp that we have out at Hi Line Resort on Lake Buchanan. It was an absolutely incredible week. We took about twenty jr. high students and just had an awesome time on the lake. We rented jet skis and a boat and took our students tubing to make sure that they had a great time. However, I don't think that our students would tell you that that was the best part of camp. Our students had a great time just worshiping God in a place where distractions of the outside world weren't present at all. I mean NOWHERE to be found. There were three places at the entire resort where any cell phone service was available and you could just forget about trying to get Internet. Anyways, our students were led in worship by an awesome band called In His Hands....you guys can check out their website here. Also there was some speaking by Corey (and I only put his first name because I don't think I heard his last name at all during the week...so he is just Corey). These guys did a great job of joining us to worship with them and I greatly appreciate everything they did for our students this past week. Like any jr. high camp a lot of commitments were made and a lot of things were prayed about and said. The only thing that we as youth workers and parents can do is to pray that our students don't get sucked back in to the world again. That they wouldn't follow what the world has in store for them but that they would take the much greater road and continue to follow the path that God has started them on in result of what they learned from a week on the lake. Let that be our prayer.

Prayer Request

Last week while doing Mission LTX at the Southpark Apartment Complex the manager of the apartment came up and talked to me a little bit while the kids were doing Rainbow Express. She told me that the previous day during Rainbow Express the owner of the complex came over to inspect the apartments. She said that she saw the kids doing Rainbow Express in the hot sun and was so impressed with what we were doing she told the manager that whatever we asked for just to give to us. Now that is a pretty big deal considering on Monday morning we didnt even know if they were gonna let us knock on doors at that place. Anyways, the manager asked us to go to another complex in town that they owned and do RE over there the next week. Never being one's to turn down an awesome opportunity for God we accepted. We have been over there for two days now and have some pretty awesome kids so far. I just want to ask all of the readers out there to be praying for the entire city of Lockhart but especially for the Southpark and Springfield apartment complexes. We as a youth staff feel that God has really big plans for that place and we just need prayer to make sure that we see what He wants to do with it and for us not to get in the way of that. Thanks for the prayers and I will be updating about Mission LTX Part Deux as soon as we finish out the week.

Mission LTX Recap

This past week was absolutely amazing. Sometimes when you work with students every now and then you start to realize that students really annoy you and that sometimes they may be good for nothing at all. Then there are times (like this past week) where students can just incredibly blow your mind!!! The things that our students did for the community and for the little kids in the apartment complexes did was nothing short of incredible. They each payed money to come and teach kids the love of Christ and then show the love of Christ to the community by doing various work projects. It was a perfect image of "The Great Commission." Words really can't describe what took place this last week in the community of Lockhart, Tx so I will just end by telling you that JMob made of video of last week and it is posted on YouTube (search "soundman23" and you will find all of his videos) and it is also posted on Nicky B's blog. It is an incredible video and may be JMob's greatest video to date but it is the only way to get a glimpse of what our students did last week so I would HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY suggest that you link to one of those two places and check it out.

Mission LTX

So this week our group has started a project called Mission LTX. We go out in the community in the morning and have a Backyard Bible Club for the children of two different apartment complexes in town. In the afternoon we have been doing work projects for people in the community including clearing out a burned down house for a family that lost all of their stuff in a fire. We have been clearing it out so they can build it back. I will give a better recap at the end of the week but right now brinner (breakfast for dinner) is being served and so here are just a few pictures.

Time To Think

It is officially the middle of the summer for the First Lockhart Baptist Church youth group. I apologize for not blogging for so long (not that it's a big deal Mom, since you are the only one that reads this thing) but we have been crazy busy and I am exhausted. I am actually so exhausted that I took a week off this week to go on vacation. You are probably thinking where I would be able to go on a youth interns salary, well, the answer is Stephenville, Tx. That is right, I took a week long break and came to my apartment in Stephenville just to get away from everything for a while. The past two days I have done nothing but lay on the couch and eat Chicken Noodle Soup. It may not seem like a glorious place to go to rest but I am thoroughly enjoying it and while I am here I have had time to review some points of the month of June. They are as follows:

1. I had an awesome 21st birthday thanks to my wonderful girlfriend. I had a great day and she did everything she could to make sure it was like that. THANK YOU JENNA!!! I wanted to thank everyone that wished me Happy Birthday and let you guys know that I appreciate you all.
2. Our two summer trips thus far (Beach Break and Mission Arlington trip) have gone absolutely incredible. I have had a great time trying to minister to these students and hopefully they are getting something out of what we do this summer.
3. I am having an incredible time working with Nic, Dusty, and JMob that I work with. It is a major drawback of my vacation that I don't get to hang out with them this week. They are some awesome people to work with and even just greater people in general. I become better friends with all of them over the summer and look forward to not only working with them this summer but for future projects.
4. I have my family reunion coming up this weekend. There are not a lot of families like mine (unless you travel to Mississippi or Arkansas or somewhere like that). I really do like hanging out with my family especially in the big gatherings like our family reunion. I am looking forward to seeing my Granny for a couple of days as well as the rest of my family. Also on a side note I would appreciate a lot of prayers for my Granny as I don't think she is doing very well.
5. Finally, while sitting here in Stephenville and listening to nothing but music and the television it really make me realize that I absolutely love what I do. I would not trade my job for anything in the world. If not for my reunion this weekend I would have already headed back and started hanging out with students again, especially for The Attic. Please be praying for our students. Pray that they would lose themselves over the summer and just be fully aware of what God has in store for them and let them know that it is better than what is going on in their stupid little everyday lives.

Thats all I got for now but hopefully it won't be as long before I post again.