Our Summer - The Short Version

How to get started after a summer break?  It's been a wonderful, crazy, amazing, exhausting and energizing summer - somehow it all makes sense.  First off, I'm so thankful to be part of an amazing church family and student ministry.  Justin, Silas and I have gotten to be a part of so many great moments over the last couple of months, moments that we will cherish for a long time.  We hosted our annual VBA (vacation bible awesomeness) to start our summer off and focused on Walking Boldly in the name of Christ.  It was probably our most favorite VBA yet.

The next week we were able to be a part of a mission project with our church and host a VBS for a group of kids in a community nearby that we are trying to connect with. After that, we were off to Camp Caswell - always our favorite week of the year.  This year we were led by one of favorite people (who also happens to be a really great speaker/communicator) EJ Swanson.  He challenged us that week to be real, get focused and live a life worth of our calling - even when no one was looking (Colossians 3:17).  It was truly an amazing week at camp.

A week later we headed out for our high school mission trip to Nashville, TN.  We connected with a smaller local church who needed help establishing a relationship within a community they were trying to reach and were able to help them make connections through hosting a vbs onsite.  We made such great relationships with the children, teenagers and adults we met there (it was hard to say goodbye!)

We also got to serve with several local non-profits including, Feed our Children, The Bridge Ministry, Second Harvest Food Bank, Operation Stand-Down and The Baptist Children's Home of TN.  One of our favorite times was participating in feeding the homeless under the bridge in downtown Nashville with The Bridge Ministry.  This is an amazing organization that goes the extra mile to offer hospitality, hope and love to the homeless of Nashville.  They not only serve them a hot meal but have someone there to make their plate, carry their tray and provide a chair to sit.  They have children's church, a huge worship time (with the most amazing musicians ever, it is Nashville after all) and also provide clothing.  They serve over 1,000 people every Tuesday night there.  The presence of God was overwhelming there and I don't think any of us will ever forget that night.

That brought us into August where we had to say goodbye to our new college students.  We are going to miss them so much but we are so excited to see how God will lead and guide them over the next few years.  We have an amazing group of young people ready to step up, serve and lead our church.  We are so thankful for the time we had to spend with them.  Justin and I have been working hard on the coming up student ministry year and are excited at what God has in store for us.  Thanks so much for taking the  time to stop by today and catch up with me.  We have a lot more to share, somehow in between all of that we painted our house (mostly) - don't even ask me how that happened (hint - a lot of awesome people helped) and went on vacation.  Can't wait to share more!  Love you guys!!

Shine

We are in full-out summer mode so I thought I'd share a little bit about what's going on in our life this week.  In case there is anyone that doesn't know Justin and I are crazy about a group of students (or maybe we are just plain crazy), specifically the Salem Baptist Student Ministry and they are a huge-gantic part of our lives.  We have been serving in the Salem Student Ministry for a lot of years now and in recent years Justin has taken a leadership role at Salem in leading the Senior High Student Ministry.  We are so blessed to be a part of this great group of students.  God has truly blessed us through them and through our church family there.  After several years of student leadership and a ton of school work we are being blessed by our church again this Sunday as they have supported us in our journey and are presenting Justin for ordination.  We are so humbled, excited and thankful that we are taking this next step in our life and we truly know that we would not be at this step if it were for our God firstly and secondly for the wonderful Godly people we call our church.  So thank you church family, we love you so much.

This past Sunday we kicked off our annual VBA youth week.  What is VBA you ask?  Simple.  Vacation Bible Awesomeness.  It's a full week of nightly gatherings packed with all sorts of games, worship, insane video skits, small groups lead by our awesome seniors and most importantly God's word.  This year we are focusing on what is means to Shine, where our source of light comes from and how we can Shine for Christ daily in our lives.  Please be in prayer for our students this week during VBA, we have about 80 or more students each night and we always have lots of new faces.    We just pray that we can all Shine brightly for our Savior in a dark world.

Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life."  Philippians 2:14:16


Next week we will be traveling to one of our most favorite places in the world, Caswell.  It's only the best youth camp ever.  We can't wait.

Thanks so much for all of the support.  We still have a bazillion things to do in our house and we will get back to that, but right now those things just have to wait while we spend the next several weeks with our students.  I will definitely continue posting about our summer and we have some great etsy features and ministries we will be sharing with you throughout the summer on our little blog (even some giveaways!).   Hope everyone has an excellent week!