road trip!!

tomorrow morning, at 7 am i may add, me, kara, my mom, and chris are driving to baltimore to see my brother. it started way back when i was talking to bobby about going to visit him; so i picked a weekend and blocked it off. no biggie. as time went on, the road trip party grew by 3 more people. so we are going to baltimore for the weekend. it will be the first weekend in a very long time that i won't be home. its weird to miss church and have to watch bob's sermon online. its weird not to work on sundays at the club. i love my rountines, and its always weird to interrupt that. i went up to visit him 3 years ago for fall break, and we got a great picture down by the harbor.
since friday is halloween, we are dressing up and going somewhere that i'm not sure about yet. i just am not up on the plans we have. kara and i went to goodwill last night to find some sweet costumes. i found a silk chinese shirt thingy, that buttons up the front with a square collar and has an asian fabric design. i was like, score! then i found a pair of black silk pajama pants that has pink piping on the bottom. its adorable. i will be the cutest white chinese person in baltimore for halloween. and...added bonus, i now have a new pair of pajama pants! i'm just worried about being cold. so i packed my long underwear and hat and gloves. i think the highs are in 60 for the weekend.

on a totally different note, i've been watching sermons online from elevation church from their last series on love and sex. a great quote, "if my wife was a bowl of gravy, i would sop her up with a biscuit!" its really good so far, you should check it out.

new topics

so i know i started this blog to update everyone about my ankle surgery back in january, but my ankle is perfectly fine. i haven't been in therapy for months and months, and i have absolutely no restrictions on physical activity, etc. so that's groovy.

but life has been good. i have three jobs, HT, alamance country club, and in an office at elon. so i stay busy. i am very involved in my church here in burlington, and recently, i got to go to atlanta for the catalyst conference. its a huge church leadership conference that over 12,000 leaders from all over the country go to. my friend jayson from elon actually works for catalyst and he got me a ticket last minute, because i wasn't going to be able to afford to go. PRAISE THE LORD that jayson got me a ticket, because it was the most amazing 2 days in my life!

what a great spiritual high! the worship was unbelieveable; steve fee and kristian stanfill and all the other worship leaders from north point community church lead worship.

there were great speakers, including franklin graham and a bunch of other popular pastors from around the country. william paul young is an author from oregon who has written a bestselling book called The Shack. after hearing him speak, i went to target and bought it. i read it in 4 hours. i work a 6 hour shift at the country club on sundays, so its a good time for me to get a lot of reading done. so i'm sitting in the fitness center at the club trying not to absolutely burst into tears. it is crazy how one man can get things so right about so many things. its a story about a man who loses someone very close to him and has a special interraction with God. it will truly change how you think about God. if you are struggling with your walk with God, or wondering why God allows bad things to happen to good people, this is such a wonderful, healing story about God's never-ending love for us. no matter what happens in our lives, no matter how dark the days might be, God is always with us and His love for us is so beyond our imagination. william paul young has personified God in such a way that will change your walk with God.


hearing all these insirational speakers made me curious about how i can listen to all of them through the wonders of technology. so i discovered something wonderful - podcasts! ohmygoodness, they are wonderful! well, all these churches around the country put their sermons on podcasts. so i came back from atlanta with a mission! i got on my itunes and found all these podcasts. i now am subscribed to 11 different podcasts and every week, it downloads the sermons from churches all over the country! technology is just so wonderful, and i know i'm really late in finding out about them, but better late than never!

this was the second time i got to go to atlanta for a church conference. i went to a conference called orange back in april; its a conference more for student ministry. i was working for the church in childrens ministry, so it was relevant that i go. these huge conferences that attract the next generation of church leaders are always held in the gwinnett center in duluth, which is probably about 30-40 miles north of actual atlanta. i have fallen in love with this part of the country! there is a huge, unbelievable church in alpharetta called north point, which was started 12 years ago by a group of forward thinking guys. well, now it has 3 campuses and ministers to over 20,000 people every weekend. this new Christian movement around the country is being headed by leaders in north atlanta. since april, i have had this overwhelming desire to move to duluth/alpharetta. i know its crazy, but i want to go to north point! i know its nuts to want to move just because of a church. but maybe God is calling me there for a church and for reasons unknown to me. in my second year of grad school, i get to do 3 clinical rotations. being the planner that i am, i will definitely be doing a rotation in north atlanta. it can be a test run for me moving there. i will go where God sends me, no matter what.

ok thats it for tonight, but here are some future topics:
}sewing projects
}mexico mission trip
}photography