crazy little thing called life....: snapshots of my life: flying thru february pt.1

Premier Bowl

The first weekend of February was a crazy one! I had the opportunity and honor of serving our youth group by leading a group for Premiere Weekend (our church’s version of Disciple Now). The weekend was scheduled to take place from Friday evening at dinner time through Sunday morning. Unfortunately, due to extreme weather conditions, a.k.a. the Blizzard-That-Never Happened, we had to postpone the event to start on Saturday morning. For leaders, staff, and host homes this was amazing! The emphasis on personal hygiene was not the issue that it would have been had we been in charge of the student for 48 hours. But, we were not there for ourselves; we were there for the kids. I just hope that they were able to get as much out of the Premiere Day that they would have at the Premiere Weekend.

2 beautiful Freshman girls ready for Worship!

My group consisted of Freshman girls! I really do enjoy this age: they are trying to keep up with the ‘big kids’ but still young enough that they aren’t afraid of going to bed when it is time to sleep!!! I had 11 girls in all, from several surrounding high schools and many different backgrounds. The beauty (and sometimes difficulty) of going to a church in a large city is the diversity that you find amongst the people.

Probably the coolest nails I've EVER had!!!
One of the girls painted them ZEBRA for me :)

Our group stayed at a family’s home not too far from the church. It was plenty big enough for all of us. It was probably big enough for all of the high school girls but thankfully they did not do that to me! The house was the perfect hosting home; they definitely have teenagers themselves! They had a gigantic bonus room upstairs complete with a ping-pong table, sofas and 2 twin beds.

Bethany and I...I won't tell you how many pictures we had to
take to get a decent one; the weekend was wearing on us!

For fun, we played the Bigger Better Challenge, a game where each house went out into the community and asked people if they had anything bigger or better that they could trade for the clear, plastic spoon that we were given at the starting line. My girls won the challenge last year with a brand new dirt bike that someone had given them. You can imagine the disappointment when, at the end of the challenge, we had collected 4 broken flower pots, 3 horrendous jackets from the ‘80s, 2 sets of dinner place-card holders and 1 trench coat among many, many other garage-sale type items. Did I mention that we had a flat tire back at the starting line?!

Thank you, Jen! You saved the day!

A proud, winning team and our prized possessions
(we had not heard the verdict at this point)

I'm not sure what the girls did to get this kind of cash ;)

Back at the Finish line, or church parking lot, we spread out all of our dusty treasures in our designated parking space. After an intense round of judging we were named the winners! I’m not sure if it was the $47 that we came back with or the flat tire that the youth pastors had to change for us in the parking lot that got us the ‘W’. Ha! We won an ice cream party! The only other time I have had as many wonderful choices of Blue Bell Ice Cream at my disposal was at Blue Bell’s 100th Birthday Celebration in Brenham, Texas!

4 tubs of Blue Bell + 11 Freshman @ 11:30 p.m. =
a surprisingly quiet & slumber filled room by 12:45 a!!! Praise the Lord!!!

The worship service on Saturday night was AWESOME. Clayton King--author, speaker, and Campus Pastor at Liberty University--brought IT. His message was simple and straight forward: are you ALL IN for God? One of the things that he said that struck me the most was this: Saying ‘Yes’ to something means you are saying ‘No’ to all of the other answers/solutions/possibilities. I love that!

I was so relieved when I found out that 'The Situation' was
accompanying our bus on our way to the worship service.

Praise & Worship!

There were probably about 100 students that made decisions
for Christ and were baptized at the end of the worship service!

For those of you who don't know, I have two step-sisters, Kristen & Katie. I haven't seen Katie in ages! She was a leader for another campus. It is obvious that we are steps and not blood sisters because I'm only like 17 inches taller than her!

The next morning was rise and shine for 8:30 Bible Study!!! After a weekend of pizza, cokes, and junk Lindsey, Kim, and I decided it best for all if we snuck out and grab a LARGE coffee and fresh fruit. Here we are double-fisting our Happiness! Ha!

Super Weekend

You may remember that the Super Bowl was also on that first weekend of February. Of course I couldn’t just go home and sleep off the weekend! So, after one Sunday School hour, two worship services, lunch, and a quick nap, I headed over to a watch party. I wasn’t able to watch much of the game as the lights were turned low in the Watch-Room thus putting me to sleep. So, I bounced around from the kitchen, the pool table, and the table of girls playing M.A.S.H. (remember those days?!?!) At the end of the night my score sheet was as follows: 17 kids in M.A.S.H., 2-1 in pool, and 0-1 in football for the Steelers not winning the game.