Hello from Oklahoma!
We had a wonderful week at camp Joy El in Greencastle PA. God did such amazing and awesome things while we were there that it was almost difficult to pack up and leave. Personally, it has been too long since I have seen God’s Spirit move in people’s lives in such a tangible way as He did this week at Joy El.
The staff at the camp was incredible, truly defining what it means to be servant leaders. The mission at Joy El is “to connect with each camper on a relationship with Jesus and equip them to share with others”. We saw this happen with every camper as we served there this week. Beginning each morning with staff devotions and prayer for the campers, I was struck by the emphasis the camp has upon personal and corporate prayer, Bible study, and memorization of Scripture. Sadly, such defining dedication to these disciplines cannot be found in most “Christian” environments, but this week revived the importance of these things in my life and with the rest of the team.
The six of us guys were split into 3 groups of 2 and were in cabins with the senior high guys all week. Denny and I had six guys in our cabin. Highlights from cabin time for myself were fly hunting with Kyle (we destroyed at least 30 flies in one night with flip flops and bare hands) and listening to Denny tell ridiculous jokes – like the one about the 3 strings in the desert… We split up into 3 teams for the week, ours being the Pufferfishes. The Pufferfishes finished second in the overall week’s events; waging against team Babbaganoosh and the Terrorific Tugganeers. Highlights from the weeks events include climbing a mountain on the Appalachin trail (we saw a couple hiking from Georgia to Maine who had been on the trail 3 months), capture the flag, sink the ship (canoes), the big swing, Ga Ga Ball, looking at the sunset from the lookout, campfire testimonies, and best of all, chapel! Aaron Meredith, an IWU graduate was the speaker for the week and was captivating to say the least.
Main songs during this week were Jesus Paid it All, Happy Day, I Exalt Thee, From the Inside Out, All Because of Jesus, I Will Exalt You, Your Love Never Fails, and Counting on God. Counting on God was put completely put together in a day and we played it on Thursday night, it was easily the favorite song for the week. The spiritual atmosphere at the camp seemed to increase exponentially during the week with the message of the cross on Wednesday night. The theme for the week was “Share the Message” (Matthew 28:19,20). We were challenged to seriously consider eternity in our lives as well as the lives of friends and this week we saw kids getting serious about evangelism!
Wednesday night we saw God move powerfully. The message of the cross penetrated so many chains and hurts, touching the kids hearts so much that 3 of the kids gave their lives to Christ for the first time along with many others rededicating their lives and calling out to God for the salvation of friends and family. That night we had an impromptu extended worship service, which took the rest of the night, where God truly moved our lives. The testimonies of the kids were incredible as we shared at the campfire on Thursday night. It was an honor and pleasure to be able to be with those kids this week!
After Joy El we drove to Seth’s house to spend the night in St. Clairsville. In the morning we drove to IWU and spent the night there getting to see friends and women of significant interest to some of the guys on the team. Chris Kleman got to finally see his mom who he hasn’t seen since Christmas – so that was definitely a praise! Next we are on to Oklahoma! Sky Ranch is the name of the camp and we are hoping there are horses…
Feel free to leave comments or questions on any of the blog posts! To those of you that have been praying for us, we can’t thank you enough. I hope you have enjoyed reading and please continue to pray. God bless!!
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
A week of Blessing
Hello from Seth’s house!
It’s been a while so I’ll fill you in on some highlights from last time. Training at IWU ended Friday morning and we left Friday night for St. Clairsville Ohio with our 15-passenger van and enormous trailer packed full of our equipment. As a backseat driver myself, it is easy to feel uneasy in such a situation – especially when a 21 year old Honduran is driving for the van’s maiden voyage. Needless to say, that five-hour ride provided us with the now popular phrases “everything you do up there is amplified back here” and (next time a car blows a tire in front of us) “just blow forward” and “this gas station is really ghetto, I think we might get shot”.
It has been a really great week at the Friends Church and getting to stay with the Wengers. There couldn’t have been a better way for us to start out the summer. Sunday morning we led worship for the all three services. Sunday night we attended youth group at the church and got to participate in banana night – every game involved the eating, tossing, spewing or handling of bananas. We’ve played and helped out at VBS all week, which has been a blast. Our main songs for VBS this week have been Undignified, Lord I Lift Your Name on High, One Way, Every Move I Make, and I am Free. The kids have a lot of fun dancing and clapping with us as we sing; we even had a train form in church for the past four days! Wednesday and Thursday nights we got to play worship sets for the youth group and the college aged group as well as play ultimate frisbee and make smores with the kids and adults. Anthony shared his testimony at the youth night and several of us were able to share our testimonies and challenge the staff for VBS in the mornings this week.
Soccer (FIFA) has consumed a large part of our free time.
We have had some serious hospitality from the Wengers and the people at the church. God has been so gracious through the hands and feet of the church! When you have random ladies walk up to you and ask you what kind of pies you like, you know life is good ☺ The leaders at the church have been so gracious and so much fun to hang out with that our final favorite phrase for the week is “look at me right now. Yup, I’m getting paid for this!” Other phrases of the week deserving honorable mention are “it’s my favorite”, “you just took it to the next level”, “what is this? A center for ants?” and “it’s ok, I’m a nursing major”.
All in all we are so thankful to God for such an amazing week and are looking forward to the week to come at came Joy-El. Tonight we play at the VBS closing ceremony and then we’re off Sunday morning. Keep us in your prayers and keep the kids and camps in your prayers as well. The message that hit home for all of us this week is that God is love and He is always faithful! Hopefully that truth finds you today as well, wherever you are. Thanks for reading guys (if you made it this far that is haha).
It’s been a while so I’ll fill you in on some highlights from last time. Training at IWU ended Friday morning and we left Friday night for St. Clairsville Ohio with our 15-passenger van and enormous trailer packed full of our equipment. As a backseat driver myself, it is easy to feel uneasy in such a situation – especially when a 21 year old Honduran is driving for the van’s maiden voyage. Needless to say, that five-hour ride provided us with the now popular phrases “everything you do up there is amplified back here” and (next time a car blows a tire in front of us) “just blow forward” and “this gas station is really ghetto, I think we might get shot”.
It has been a really great week at the Friends Church and getting to stay with the Wengers. There couldn’t have been a better way for us to start out the summer. Sunday morning we led worship for the all three services. Sunday night we attended youth group at the church and got to participate in banana night – every game involved the eating, tossing, spewing or handling of bananas. We’ve played and helped out at VBS all week, which has been a blast. Our main songs for VBS this week have been Undignified, Lord I Lift Your Name on High, One Way, Every Move I Make, and I am Free. The kids have a lot of fun dancing and clapping with us as we sing; we even had a train form in church for the past four days! Wednesday and Thursday nights we got to play worship sets for the youth group and the college aged group as well as play ultimate frisbee and make smores with the kids and adults. Anthony shared his testimony at the youth night and several of us were able to share our testimonies and challenge the staff for VBS in the mornings this week.
Soccer (FIFA) has consumed a large part of our free time.
We have had some serious hospitality from the Wengers and the people at the church. God has been so gracious through the hands and feet of the church! When you have random ladies walk up to you and ask you what kind of pies you like, you know life is good ☺ The leaders at the church have been so gracious and so much fun to hang out with that our final favorite phrase for the week is “look at me right now. Yup, I’m getting paid for this!” Other phrases of the week deserving honorable mention are “it’s my favorite”, “you just took it to the next level”, “what is this? A center for ants?” and “it’s ok, I’m a nursing major”.
All in all we are so thankful to God for such an amazing week and are looking forward to the week to come at came Joy-El. Tonight we play at the VBS closing ceremony and then we’re off Sunday morning. Keep us in your prayers and keep the kids and camps in your prayers as well. The message that hit home for all of us this week is that God is love and He is always faithful! Hopefully that truth finds you today as well, wherever you are. Thanks for reading guys (if you made it this far that is haha).
Monday, June 7, 2010
Who's who?/What's up?
Hey everyone,
So we started training week today! Everything is a lot of fun and we have been able to be really productive so far as a team. Today we knocked out T-shirt orders, coffee and donuts from Carmal McNuts, song choosing and printing, mastered trailer training, got polar pops from circle K, experienced Baldwin, figured out setup and the running of our crazy awesome sound system, and thoroughly nailed down 6 songs. Twas a good day ☺
The team is doing well and excited to be here and finally playing – what we’ve been waiting for, for 6 months. All the guys are phenomenal musicians and everyone has sweet equipment – like Chris’ sparkly orange drum set. Here’s a little about each of the guys:
Denny King is the team leader, sings and plays keyboards for us with mad skills. Denny is a junior and in nursing and music at IWU.
Seth Wenger was one of my fellow RA’s last year and will be an RA again in Hodson next year. Seth plays lead guitar and sings. He owns a Gibson Les Paul... enough said. He’s a church music major and a junior.
Anthony Cottrell is our bass player. He owns the thing even though he is technically a guitar player. He also is using has one of the coolest bass rigs I’ve ever seen: huge powerful speaker, and ridiculously amazing head. He’s a senior and a CM major.
Chris Hurlehey plays drums and can beatbox like it’s his job. He also follows in the footsteps of Aaron Gillespie and Phil Collins singing harmony from his perch on his super comfy drum throne.
Finally, Chris Clayman is our soundman and everything else the team needs. Chris mastered our system today and is really good at communicating with the band what things we can do to tweak and refine. He also has an amazing heart for worship that is really apparent even in the back at the soundboard. In fact he told us last night that his greatest fear about the summer is that he will end up on his knees during the songs and forget to run sound for us.
Please pray for our equipment that it doesn’t get beat up, damaged, or broken.
And pray the same for us as well if you would ☺
So that’s us. We practice all week and head out Friday. I’ll let you all know the rest of the cool things we do once we do them. God bless you all. Keep us in your prayers, as well as the kids and staffs we will be working with this summer.
So we started training week today! Everything is a lot of fun and we have been able to be really productive so far as a team. Today we knocked out T-shirt orders, coffee and donuts from Carmal McNuts, song choosing and printing, mastered trailer training, got polar pops from circle K, experienced Baldwin, figured out setup and the running of our crazy awesome sound system, and thoroughly nailed down 6 songs. Twas a good day ☺
The team is doing well and excited to be here and finally playing – what we’ve been waiting for, for 6 months. All the guys are phenomenal musicians and everyone has sweet equipment – like Chris’ sparkly orange drum set. Here’s a little about each of the guys:
Denny King is the team leader, sings and plays keyboards for us with mad skills. Denny is a junior and in nursing and music at IWU.
Seth Wenger was one of my fellow RA’s last year and will be an RA again in Hodson next year. Seth plays lead guitar and sings. He owns a Gibson Les Paul... enough said. He’s a church music major and a junior.
Anthony Cottrell is our bass player. He owns the thing even though he is technically a guitar player. He also is using has one of the coolest bass rigs I’ve ever seen: huge powerful speaker, and ridiculously amazing head. He’s a senior and a CM major.
Chris Hurlehey plays drums and can beatbox like it’s his job. He also follows in the footsteps of Aaron Gillespie and Phil Collins singing harmony from his perch on his super comfy drum throne.
Finally, Chris Clayman is our soundman and everything else the team needs. Chris mastered our system today and is really good at communicating with the band what things we can do to tweak and refine. He also has an amazing heart for worship that is really apparent even in the back at the soundboard. In fact he told us last night that his greatest fear about the summer is that he will end up on his knees during the songs and forget to run sound for us.
Please pray for our equipment that it doesn’t get beat up, damaged, or broken.
And pray the same for us as well if you would ☺
So that’s us. We practice all week and head out Friday. I’ll let you all know the rest of the cool things we do once we do them. God bless you all. Keep us in your prayers, as well as the kids and staffs we will be working with this summer.
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