My Weekend!

As frequent readers know, I went to Canada for my Dad's wedding this weekend. My friend Jonathon Frieheit and my brother Joseph drove up there with me. I realized that we had no directions as to where we were going once we got across the border, so the next time my Dad called (about every 30-45 minutes to check up on us) Joseph got some directions to the hotel he was staying at. I think that we drove around for a total of 2 hours total being lost in the Vancouver area!!! Going back was easier, but I still managed to go the wrong way on one of the freeways and had to turn around.

The wedding was held at Karen's church in Port Coquitlam, BC. The church (Hope Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod) was cool and the pastor was an amazing speaker. He presented the story of Ruth and Naomi to the congregation as an example of what love is supposed to be like. The wedding was short and the wedding party was small so it was a really nice atmosphere. After the wedding, Jonathon and I went into the upstairs of the church and just worshipped Jesus, I really needed that at the moment and it allowed me to have grace with my family the rest of the day.

After the reception, the families went to a nice restaurant and the waiters just kept bringing out this delicious food! I think there were like 5 courses to the meal and I ate a bit from each course! It was really good and it was nice to talk to some of the people in Karen's family and talk with my grandmother and uncle as well. Karen's family is very Latvian and they are very sweet. I got to chat with her mother and aunt for a while and I was really blessed by them. They are Lutherans that understand Jesus and love Him.

I was really glad to have Jonathon along because we got to chat for the 3 hour ride back to his house in Federal Way. I love him so much because we can not talk or see each other for a month or more and then hang out and really deal with each others hearts. We were able to encourage each other and I was able to suggest that he find a real mentorship type person in his life.

This morning is Easter Sunday and I was really happy today! We celebrate the resurecction of our Lord, Jesus. The grave could not hold on to Him, He was stronger than even death and the final enemy of eternal life with Him, death, was conquered. I got to church early to join the prayer team in pre-service prayer and I was really blessed. The two verses that I meditated on were Luke 24:5-6 where it talks about the scene at the grave on the 3rd day after Jesus rose and Phillipians 4:4-5 because it describes what our response should be to the great victory Jesus accomplished for us!

Service was great, Justin Isenhart put a great speach by S.M. Lockridge to a video and it was very powerful. They went straight into worship right after that and it slayed me!!! I love how Tad Gaulke went straight into "You Are Good" from the video. The rest of worship was fantastic and then Pastor Tom gave a message about the resurection power of Jesus and asked for people to respond to the Lord. I got to go and pray with a guy who the Lord has been messing up lately, he is a guy that is really down on his luck. I went and layed my hand on him and we worshipped for a bit. I just broke! I started bawling in front of the Lord because He was so beautiful! I felt such a release of the Holy Spirit and I loved it. We didn't even get to pray for anything specifically, God just touched him...

For the offering song, they did a tune by Chris Rice called "Sometimes Love" off of his Deep Enough to Dream album. Justin again outdid himself by putting up soem cool images of Jesus on the cross and stuff like that. I hope that we can continue this trend of doing cool things in worship next week, because I really loved it!