Holidays

So, Christmas is over and I escaped without any major disasters. Last years Christmas was one to forget and I was hoping for much better this year. It really was a good one because I got to see most of my family and give them all gifts that they all really liked. I gave my Mom, brothers and sisters a card that I made out of really nice paper and I wrote down some reasons why I love them so much and put a special scripture in their for them. They all really liked it. For my Dad, I had to make an under the table deal with this lady to get him the CD I wanted him to have. I went to a christian bookstore thinking they would have the CD, but they did not. One of the clerks helping me said that she had a copy in her car that she owned and that she would sell it to me. So I came back the next day and bought the CD from her, it was the most unique shopping experience I have ever had.

I got a couple of CD's and money. All I asked for was CD's, like the new Hillosng United, Bebo Norman etc... I have taken the money and gone out and bought some stuff for my guitar pedals and some more CD's from bands my family would never have heard of. I also asked for an iPod (or any type of portable music player) but I didn't expect to get that and sure enough, I did not!

Almost everyone in my family is gone to Orlando for the week because my sisters basketball team is playing in a tournament down there. I have the house all to myself and I am bored!!! I will find some mindless activity to fill the time, I may just clean the whole house and bless my family that way. Pray that I don't watch too much TV during this time so that I don't fall in to that time trap. I am excited for this week because I am hanging out with some of my real good friends and another friend is getting married on New Years Eve. I have plenty to do, just not anything right now.

I will be back at school in a couple days, Sunday I think and will have more consistent access to the internet there. I am on myspace now... I know what is the world coming to, so go ahead and add me as a friend there.

Finals Are DONE!!!

I am finally done with finals and I am very excited!!! On Monday, I took my conseration final and I was dissapointed in the proffessor, it was a cumulative test and she reused questions from our previous tests and the questions from the last section was straight off the study guide. I feel like she could have written a better test. On Wednesday, I took my Natural History of Vertebrates final and I feel like I did fairly well. On our last test in this class, our proffesor had written two questions about mammal teeth that no one in the class had studied for because he had said they were not going to be on the test. He promised us that there was going to be a question about mammalian teeth on the final, but there was not one question about them and me and all the others in the class had studied hard for them. My ecology final this morning was not hard, but there were parts on the test that I knew but could not remember the correct word.

As a way to celebrate the end of finals, some friends and I are going to Snoqualmie for some time on the mountain. It will be so much fun and I can't wait. I will be going home to Vashon for a few days over the break and may not be online for awhile. You can pray for me that I will have time to spend with the Lord and that I can be a light for my family. I am excited because I am sitting on my couch, procrastinating... Oh, wait I have nothing to procrastinate!!! I am done for the year!

Christmas will be an adventure as always with my family... We are going to Arlington to visit my Aunt and Uncle and cousins who live up there. All my mom's side of the family wil be there and we can start the drama now. I think I will bring my guitar, play worship music and let the Holy Ghost fall on the place! That would be fun, seeing my entire family drunk in the Holy Ghost and not pretending to be normal and okay when there are so many wounds and scars that everyone covers up. Please pray for the salvation of my family.

After Christmas, my sisters and mom are flying to Orlando, FL for a basketball tournament and I am really excited for them. I will not be going, but this will be the first plane ride for my sisters. I had my first plane rides this fall with the football team on our trips to LA and Wisconsin so I am an experienced verteran now. I am thinking about (seeing if it is okay) to help coach my sisters team during the break. I think that it would be fun to go back, hang around my sisters and model the way that Christ would have competed. We will see if that will happen.

Enough for now... I need to start packing my stuff for the break (oh and snowboarding tonight).

Weekend before finals week

Well, dead week is over and now it is time for finals. I did fairly well on my biology lab exam, I got a 42 out of 50. I love it when the Lord tells me the answers especially on tests. There was one station during the exam where I had to tell what the common name of two skulls. The problem was that they were both skulls of foxes and I head to answer whether they were the Arctic Fox, the Grey Fox, Swift Fox or the Red Fox. I knew that they were foxes, but which one? I put down what I thought they were, but I really was guessing and then I felt the Holy Spirit whisper that they were the Arctic and the Grey Fox. I responded something like, "What?!?!? Yeah right." But I realized that if the Lord was saying something, I really should trust what He is saying, even on a final. Long story short, He was right and I did well on the exam.

I got to go and watch my nephew Tyler in a Christmas play at his church this morning. He got to play the angel Gabriel and he did a great job, so cool!!! They did a great job in presenting teh story of Christmas from the point of view of the angels. I then got to take my niece Montana back to my sisters house while they all stayed at chruch for the second service. Montana has Tuberous Sclerosis, and it causes her to have seizures, but she is 4 years old and I love her to death! We got to play tea party and in general hang out. The Lord really layed a burden of prayer for her on my heart and I can't wait to seek the Lord for her healing.

As we were having our tea party, I really came to realize another facet of the Lord. How ridiculous does it look to normal adults for a 22 year old to be having a make believe tea party with a 4 year old??? I loved it, every minute of it. I really began to realize that this is how the Lord feels in a way when we come to spend time with Him. It may seem ridiculous, how can we possibly be in the presence of the Most Holy God, but He loves every minute that we spend with Him.

I love having study parties in my room, especially when we get stuff done. I also really like the Seahawks playing well and the fact that I have a few days left in this semester. But most of all, I love procrastinating homework and studying to write on this blog!!!

Huge Biology Test

So I have a humungous test in my Natural History of Vertebrates class. I need to know the class, order and family of about 70 different organisms. For example, the Sea Lion belongs to the class Mammalia, order Pinnepedia/Carnivora and the family Otariidae. I need to be able to identify the organism by a pelt or their skull!!! I feel fairly well prepared because memorizing things comes easy to me and a lot of the organisms belong to the same class, order or family.

I also get to have a meeting with Trevor, my Offensive Line coach today. It is a standard meeting that everyone of our players go through, but I have a few things to talk to him about. Trevor is a really great guy and he and his wife just had a baby girl named Mylie. I want to know where he sees me as a part of the team and how I fit into the whole scheme of the O-line next year. This last season I was kinda the utility lineman and I was on the depth chart at every position on the line. I feel that I have a great feel for our offense and can play almost any position, which is good but leaves me the Jack-of-all-Trades, good at a most things but not great at anything. We will see how Trevor sees me though.

I finally came to the realization that God LOVES ME!!! I have the hardest time in allowing people to love me, long story and I don't blame anybody but that is how I am. I was reading the book by John Eldridge, "The Sacred Romance" and it finally is starting to sink in that I am the beloved of the Lord and that He would move heaven and earth to get my attention! I have read the verse in Song of Songs 4:9, "You have stolen my heart, my sister and my bride. You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes." It finally is starting to sink in that whenever I look to the Lord, His heart breaks with love for me. What Freedom!!! I can't wait to lead worship tonight at church... I just need to figure out what songs are on the Lord's heart tonight. I am really enjoying this whole worship thing and I love growing into this calling. Maybe I can share a little about letting the Lord love you at youth group tonight.

Kaj and Janel are back!!!

So I knew that Kaj and Janel Martin were back from India but I had forgotten when I walked into the sactuary and I got so excited when I saw them. It is very good to have them back and it was relly cool to hear about some of the things that God did in India. We also had a pretty cool drama today as well.

It was good and in the drama there was a part about the angel Gabriel and the actor said something like, "I am the angel Gabriel, God's champion and I stand in His presence." This really made me think. A champion in an ancient army was the dude that was the best warrior in the army. He was the guy that the opposing army would try and take out first. He was the guy you could count on to not lose to regular soldiers, you needed another champion to take him out. Only the best warriors could take out a champion and he was the leader of the army. The champion would be involved in the strategy of the war and would need to stand in the presence of the leader. This has been an inspiration to my heart for so long that I cannot remeber. To be the guy that is counted on to come through when it counts is a huge deal for me and I love that challenge. I also love the history of ancient armies so the combination of all these things made for a really sweet worship time!!!

Long story short church was awesome yesterday and it really spoke to me, especially the report from Kaj and Janel. I can't wait to hang out with him some more and he invited me to go with him to Calvary Full Gospel Church on Vashon Island sometimein the spring. He said that he wanted me to speak as well, along with him of course, and that exctited me.

Am I called to preach? I don't know... I know that the Lord reveals things in scripture to me that are really cool to me and I lot really made me start thinking about my calling and giftings and how I want to be a champion of the Lord. I want to be counted on to fight the battle that needs to be fought and to take out the strong points of the enemy. I know that I am called to fight against strongholds but I don't know what to fight or when. The funny thing is that I was considered for the role by the writer/director of the play and did not get it.
ve sharing them with people, but am I called to that? Who knows but Him.

Tired but Happy

I have not been getting a lot of sleep lately. I stayed up late (3 am) to play in the snow on Thursday and then got up early for morning prayer. I had lots to do yesterday because we had a core leadership getaway. I did not go to sleep until 6 am and we had to be up at 9 to get the church cleaned up. I won't be getting much sleep tonight either because we have All-City Worship. Afterwards, I will need to put away all the sound equipment that I borrowed from the church. After tonight I will be getting up early to drive the van to church tomorrow. I am kind of glad that the Seahawks are not playing tomorrow because I will be able to sleep in the afternoon and get some homework done.

Last night was really cool, becasue everyone shared their testimonies and we got some time to be together as a leadership team. I think the benefit of last night was all of us being intentional in building relationships and letting each other know that we care about them. I think that we all can realize that none of us are perfect or have it all together and that in our brokenness is the Lords strength. We need to embrace our flaws and say, "Lord do what you will with me and my shortcomings." I can't wait to see what the Lord does in our group.

What a great way to end the year!

So it is snowing hard right now at PLU and it is sticking!!! I love the snow almost more than I ove the sun! I can't wait to go snowboarding, I am going with some friends at the end of finals week and I can't wait!!!

We are going to have an All-City worship event on Saturday night. It will be awesome and I cannot wait but there will be a fair shar of problems. The sanctuary is a old school style that will be tough to get a good sound out of. We also are putting the worship team together that night so it will be interesting to say the least. I am excited about it becasue God is going to do some awesome things that night and it will spread to the entire city of Tacoma. It will be fun because a lot of the different college ministries will be there and will be a part of the fun. I am believing for a real release of God's prescence and I can't wait.

I hope that school is cancelled tomorrow so that I can sleep and not have to sit through a few lectures about stuff I really don't want to hear anyways. I would much rather run around and get things ready for the All-City worship on Saturday and do nothing in general.

SNOW!!!

So it is snowing here at PLU and I am very excited. Because I have lived here my whole life I know that it won't stay around for long. We need the temperature to drop another 10 degrees to get some quality snow. I think that because people on this side of the state don't get much snow, at least in the Puget Sound basin, we get real excited and everything takes a back seat to the fact that it is snowing.

In class today, when it started snowing, our entire discussion about plant life on Mt. St. Helens after the eruption in 1980 pretty well stopped and we all stared out the window. I am very excited to get classes over with but I know that I have a lot of hard work to do before they are done. I have a large lab exam next Thursday and I have started studying for it fairly hard. I will need to recognize at least 50-60 organisms by their fur or their skull and tell what the comon name is and the scientific family they belong to. This won't be easy but I think I can manage ok.

On the Thursday of finals week, some friends and I are going snowboarding. I am very excited about this, but I do have a final in the morning. That will be a great end to finals week for me and the snow should be excellent up on the mountain.

Summer in Aberdeen

So I was thinking today about the internship that I did in Aberdeen this summer. Talk about a great time!!! The more I think about it, the more I miss that small, economically depressed town. Sure the living arrangment was not ideal, but the Shath more than made up for it.

The Shath was just the start, I remember Jake Broady and I driving around Aberdeen trying to find parts to convert an old claw foot bathtub into something like a shower. We eventually got it finished and the Shath was born. You could not stand up in the Shath due to the sloped ceiling overhead, but we put a plastic milk crate and sat on that. The Shath highlight was when the band Coretta Scott used it to clean up before their show in Aberdeen.

The Shath was just a small example of the cray things that happened in Aberdeent this summer. I really learned how to spend time with the Lord and that caused me to grow in ways unimaginable before. All the teaching, road trips, fights and Go Camp changed my life in ways I will not soon forget.

I really love al the people out there. Such a real family atmosphere, they really love the Lord and it shows. I especially miss a lot of the youth group that I got to meet and hang out with a lot. I will see you all soon...

I would recomend the summer internship in Aberdeen to anyone, seriously you will grow in the Lord so much because you get to teh point where you have nothing left but God.

So there is a llittle about my summer, I don't know why I was thinking so much about Aberdeen today, but today has been a really awesome day in the Lord so maybe that was it. Church today was great and I got to spend some time with Pastor Tom tonight and talk to him. Anyways, this should be a very random blog, sorry about that!!!

Just getting started

Hey so this is the blog about my life...
Random moments and other things that impact me in some way.
A little about me, I am a student at PLU in Tacoma and I love it. I play football and am invoved in the campus ministry from my church (PSCC) to PLU called Ignite. We have lots of fun and generally stay out of trouble. I really love playing football at PLU because of the EMAL tradition. We care more about being a team and daily choosing to become better football players and people than we do about winning. I really enjoy the fact that all our coaches are Christians and they live their witness on the football field. I started my college career at UPS and then I transfered to PLU. On weekends during the fall you can find me at a PLU football game on Saturday and then watching the Seahawks on Sunday.
I am the oldest of five kids and the majority of my family lives on Vashon Island. I really enjoy the Island and find it interesting the type of people who live there. Some of the things I did on the "rock" was to play Football, Basketball and run Track. I also was a volunteer firefighter/EMT for the fire department on the Island. This led to my last job at Tacoma General Hospital as an ER Tech.
My current passion is in worship and music in general. I am on the worship team for Ignite at PLU and I lead worship occasionally for the youth group at PSCC. I love to experiment on the guitar and try and write music. I really enjoy finding new ways to worship the Maker of the Universe. I am not sure as to what my calling will be in life/ministry but I know that part of it will involve music.
So there is a little about me, I hope you find it usefull.