Hey guys. Sorry it has been so long since I have posted. I have been meaning to jump on and get some stuff going, but I have been pretty busy. Thankfully I have been busy being with students, seeing and seeking God move.
Three weeks ago I gave my first talk here. Talking about identity and what identity in God looked like. It went over pretty well and I felt pretty good about it. Later on through talking with my fellow interns and the head youth pastor, Harold, I found that I was really conversational. That isn't always a bad thing, but in my situation it made it that I didn't communicate fully to everyone. People that didn't know me well or know my speech pattern didn't understand everything. And the majority of my talk lacked the full passion that I actually had for the subject. Fast forward to Wednesday night I had another crack at it. I did things much differently. Trying to communicate the best that I could both with passion and what message God gave me. I was talking about living a radical life. The cool thing about this is that I got to share a lot about what I was doing in St.Pete and God truly blessed that.
Last week I had a great opportunity to do a missional retreat with the middle school kids. We went to the Wounded Knee American Indian reservation in South Dakota for the entire week. South Dakota is beautiful by the way. Evidence by the pictures. There Victoria and I were in charge of doing vbs for the kids of the reservation. Four of the day's that we were there we had the kids come and do vbs at the church we were staying at. The kids we brought were amaing. They were all crazy and energetic, but they loved the heck out of us. The picture of the little girl is a girl that became my buddy. Her name is Grace. She was absolutely amazing. Lots of fun and lots of learning about Jesus. She stuck by my side, on my back, on my shoulders, walking on my feet, etc the entire time she was there. The last day we took her home was so sad. Seeing a little girl just crying her eyes out because she didn't want me to go. She didn't want me to leave. She said that she would miss me. That broke my heart.
This week was pretty crazy too. We had a lock in with the highschool students. That's when I gave my second sermon. Just to give some time reference. It was great! God really blessed the time we had with those guys and girls. Lots of good conversation and hangout time with kids that I didn't know berry well. It was great. Then last night we had a guy's and girls night out. We all went to qdoba for dinner and then went to see monsters university! It was great! Had a great time with the kids. Thought the movie was great. It was awesome.
Thanks for sticking around. Hopefully I will be able to keep up enough to blog a bunch more. I'll be shooting for at least once a week. So stay tuned! And please continue to pray for me. God is great!
