God Does Greatness

    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!

The kingdom lives

So, this is a story all about how my life.....

Jk. That would be cool, but I don't think I can pull a Will Smith. (Not on this one anyway). To be honest, I kind of had to pick this name out of necessity. All the other "good" names had been taken. I am someone who is really interested in the Greek language. Especially because of the bible. Although I am part greek. My name is Drew. That is short for Andrew. (just in case you didn't know). Andrew comes from the greek word andros which is an island in Greece that was for training warriors which in turn means warrior. God has really given me a lot of purpose through this name and made me a kingdom warrior. So, for all of you that have that as your blog name. Thanks for crushing all of my dreams. Don't worry though. I will survive because God really gave me a new and better name for my blog. The Kingdom Lives. The kingdom lives is a big statement and it is so true. Every day God moves in different and new ways that sometimes we get to see and sometimes we don't. I want to write about the moments that I get to see and be a part of. And trust me. That is probably going to be a lot. I am very fortunate to have a great community of ministry friends around me and that God uses me in a lot of different places and ways. Some of them are still coming to be and some are getting ready to pass, but I can assure you that He is surely not done with me and He is not done growing His kingdom.

Just a bit more about me is that I am currently a student at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg and I am a part of a couple of ministries. On campus I lead a bible study with and I am a part of the core group of Intervarsity Cristian Fellowship. Currently we have 3 bible studies all with 2-3 leaders and 2-3 people training to be a leader. None of the bible studies are the same. We all do things differently according to what we feel God wants us to say to our group. I am a sophmore and have lead since my freshmen year. This bible study that I am leading this semester is the 4th one that I have had the opportunity to lead. Our intervarsity chapter is a smaller part of our bigger community that is a group of people hooked into our church, the Underground Network (tampaunderground.net). The Underground is a giant network church out of Tampa that is comprised of around 80 house church ministries that are all over Tampa and St. Pete. Our community is comprised of about 20-30 people that all live in intentional house communities in south side St. Pete. There are 4 girls houses and one guys house. Within the houses we work a ministry that we started to tutor and mentor kids in the south side. So, in other words, I have a lot of ties to the kingdom in the greater Tampa bay area and God is doing a lot. Trust me.  And there is more. If you stick around I am sure that you will hear more. This is going to be a wild ride.

Gods peace and love.