No, I am not playing Battleship for those of you wondering about my blog title. I am attending the Christian Camping and Conference Association (get it? 3 C's and 1 A) Super Sectional Conference in Cour d'Alene, Idaho. I feel blessed to be in an amazing part of the country and glad Idaho greeted me with a dusting of snow after a 7 1/2 hour drive. I have been even more blessed by the worships, workshops, and wonderful contacts I have made these past three days.
I know going to the meetings were suppose to focus on how to better our individual camps. But I took away an individual (personal) betterment. First off, the speaker for the General Session, Bob Kraning, is in a nutshell a magnificent speaker. His life has been led by God and his dedication to His Work (meaning God's) is evident in his tone of voice and crackle of his throat as he gets chocked up talking about people that have touched his life. He talked on Proverbs and I won't get into details about why and how what he said touched me. I will just give you the titles of his messages and you can go from there, "Words Can Never Hurt Me! Oh Yaah?" and "Angry? Who's Angry? I'm Not Angry!" To learn more search in Proverbs chapters 12-29.
Mila Polevia (pronounced ME-LA) is the man who has been the Worship Leader, or as he says the Lead Worshiper. Which he encourages everyone to be as I learned in his seminar "Killing Worship: Identifying Dying Devotion." He calls us to be active participants in our worship 24/7 and not to "lead worship, but be the lead worshiper." We need to know WHY? Who Holds Your story, current job, life ministry, devotion, and worship. The easy answer is just to say God, the hard answer is us. The hard part is identifying how not to focus on us and in turn kill our worship with the automaticity of the same negative routine. The challenge is to turn negative words like routine, elementals, and proof into positives that can help improve our worship with God (both personal and at church). Mila gave us the tools and scriptures to be the Kings Knights. To learn to serve and worship our Lord with duty, honor, and loyalty.
I bold these two men's names because if you don't know who they are you should. Plain and simple.
I also found out tonight, Mila is Adventist.
P.S. a lot of the words I used to describe Mila seminar were his and some I paraphrased. Just so he doesn't try to sue me. lol
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Day of My Birth
You'll have to talk to my Mom if you want all the goopy, gory details about the day I was born. She can probably describe it for you contraction to contraction. Nevertheless here am I at the young age of 24. I'm very excited about my 24th year of life; 23 was just kinda like "eh no big deal...nothing special" except for graduating college, being PE major of the year, and moving to a state that I had never been to and is pronounced ORE-GUN, not ORE-GONE. OK I guess kinda bigger than I thought. Turning 25 is half way to 50 so I'm not going to even go there. haha. 24 is my favorite number, my basketball number, my man's number (Jeff Gordon). Let's just say I think it's going to be a good year.
Today was basically awesome. It started out with a 60 minute massage from a lady whose hands should be ensured for millions, because her touch was gold and I drooled a massive pile of saliva onto the floor. At noon I met up with my friends Songbird and Jason who said they had a surprise day planned for me. We drove to the coast to a town called Lincoln City where I was scheduled to glass blow at 3pm. Needless to say I was SO very wicked excited! But kinda nervous at the same time because let's be honest, I'm no Martha Stewart. If I could bounce, serve, or hit the glass ball I probably would have been better off. It turned out great though! I made a round "float". A float is a glass buoy that fisherman used to use to tie their fishing nets to before plastic was invented. To this day on the Oregon Coast different colored floats make their way to shore holding a mystical story of their time at sea. The one I made today has different shades of purple swirls (go figure) and also some purple "dots". It's hard to explain, the glass has to cool for 18 hours so I couldn't take it home today. I will post a picture when it arrives via the most careful and sure footed UPS man to ever deliver a fragile package. (I hope).
Next we went to a restaurant in Newport, OR which is another coastal city. The food ranged from pasta, felafel's, to burritos. All with the option of vegan, veggie, or meat. On Friday evenings there is live music. The folk, jazz, acoustic guitar player Brian (as he described his style) even sang Happy Birthday to me. Everyone else seated at the array of booths, tables, and bar stool turned and clapped as the wife of the owner brought out a chocolate cream dessert for me. The consistency was not cheesecake, but not as light as moose. It was a cream, made with semi sweet chocolate. A very yummy place I will be going to again for sure!
The night ended perfectly at midnight with my favorite frozen yogurt place in Corvallis, OR called Yogurt Extreme! The only extreme thing about it is that you serve yourself the frozen yogurt, which I have seen get pretty extreme for some people. My favorite is Dutch Chocolate and Raspberry soft serve married side by side, paired with fresh blackberries on top. (can you tell I've been watching too much Top Chef: All-Stars)
My day was full of fun and memories. I feel like a very special girl surrounded by people near and far, (and on Facebook) that love me. I look forward to 24 being the best and brightest year yet. :)
Today was basically awesome. It started out with a 60 minute massage from a lady whose hands should be ensured for millions, because her touch was gold and I drooled a massive pile of saliva onto the floor. At noon I met up with my friends Songbird and Jason who said they had a surprise day planned for me. We drove to the coast to a town called Lincoln City where I was scheduled to glass blow at 3pm. Needless to say I was SO very wicked excited! But kinda nervous at the same time because let's be honest, I'm no Martha Stewart. If I could bounce, serve, or hit the glass ball I probably would have been better off. It turned out great though! I made a round "float". A float is a glass buoy that fisherman used to use to tie their fishing nets to before plastic was invented. To this day on the Oregon Coast different colored floats make their way to shore holding a mystical story of their time at sea. The one I made today has different shades of purple swirls (go figure) and also some purple "dots". It's hard to explain, the glass has to cool for 18 hours so I couldn't take it home today. I will post a picture when it arrives via the most careful and sure footed UPS man to ever deliver a fragile package. (I hope).
Next we went to a restaurant in Newport, OR which is another coastal city. The food ranged from pasta, felafel's, to burritos. All with the option of vegan, veggie, or meat. On Friday evenings there is live music. The folk, jazz, acoustic guitar player Brian (as he described his style) even sang Happy Birthday to me. Everyone else seated at the array of booths, tables, and bar stool turned and clapped as the wife of the owner brought out a chocolate cream dessert for me. The consistency was not cheesecake, but not as light as moose. It was a cream, made with semi sweet chocolate. A very yummy place I will be going to again for sure!
The night ended perfectly at midnight with my favorite frozen yogurt place in Corvallis, OR called Yogurt Extreme! The only extreme thing about it is that you serve yourself the frozen yogurt, which I have seen get pretty extreme for some people. My favorite is Dutch Chocolate and Raspberry soft serve married side by side, paired with fresh blackberries on top. (can you tell I've been watching too much Top Chef: All-Stars)
My day was full of fun and memories. I feel like a very special girl surrounded by people near and far, (and on Facebook) that love me. I look forward to 24 being the best and brightest year yet. :)
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
um...chickadee...i love you
I love you.
Every night before we went to bed these three simple but elusive words would slip the lips of my beloved camper. The day before we were lifting our voices to God in a vice grip of a hug, and now she was telling me that she loved me.
It's one thing to hear from your parents and other family members that they love you, because for me at least it is a given. But to hear it from a cute, short haired, big hearted, newly friended down syndrome camper is another. I said "i love you" back but then thought, how do I love her? And the bigger question have I felt that love?
I'm a firm believer that there are different types of love. I should have prefaced this whole blog-oso with a disclaimer that "love" isn't a word I use or throw out around often. Anyway, there are different types of love. I love my family unconditionally with a bond of love that transcends airplane rides, Skype chats, or snail mail. I have a few close friends I love like a brother or sister. Like for example "Abby, I love you, you're a great friend."
I guess what I'm getting at is that I've never had that BIG LOVE (capital letters for emphasis). That love that stops you in your tracks, takes your breath away, you know... movie love like you see on The Notebook and stuff. HA! All joking aside. I'm waiting for that love that fills the piece of my heart that is missing. I realized here recently that God is that Love. He has to be that love that is there. Because I truly believe that once I fill myself with His Love, then that BIG tall, dark haired, light eyed, athletic man that treasures me and God truly, madly, and deeply LOVE will come along. I know it.
Now I just have to set my very type A, human, worldly attitude aside and let God do his thang thang. Because this looking at wedding websites, athlete swooning, Facebook friends engaging thing isn't getting me anywhere...let's just be honest.
Every night before we went to bed these three simple but elusive words would slip the lips of my beloved camper. The day before we were lifting our voices to God in a vice grip of a hug, and now she was telling me that she loved me.
It's one thing to hear from your parents and other family members that they love you, because for me at least it is a given. But to hear it from a cute, short haired, big hearted, newly friended down syndrome camper is another. I said "i love you" back but then thought, how do I love her? And the bigger question have I felt that love?
I'm a firm believer that there are different types of love. I should have prefaced this whole blog-oso with a disclaimer that "love" isn't a word I use or throw out around often. Anyway, there are different types of love. I love my family unconditionally with a bond of love that transcends airplane rides, Skype chats, or snail mail. I have a few close friends I love like a brother or sister. Like for example "Abby, I love you, you're a great friend."
I guess what I'm getting at is that I've never had that BIG LOVE (capital letters for emphasis). That love that stops you in your tracks, takes your breath away, you know... movie love like you see on The Notebook and stuff. HA! All joking aside. I'm waiting for that love that fills the piece of my heart that is missing. I realized here recently that God is that Love. He has to be that love that is there. Because I truly believe that once I fill myself with His Love, then that BIG tall, dark haired, light eyed, athletic man that treasures me and God truly, madly, and deeply LOVE will come along. I know it.
Now I just have to set my very type A, human, worldly attitude aside and let God do his thang thang. Because this looking at wedding websites, athlete swooning, Facebook friends engaging thing isn't getting me anywhere...let's just be honest.
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