Chicago

I love wireless. I'm sitting here in my great hotel room. The conference has been good so far. Great worship time tonight, and I've met tons of people. Tomorrow I'm going to explore downtown Chicago with Greg, defintely enjoying some great pizza. Haven't had any seminars or speaker's yet, just mostly welcome stuff. It's just a great break. Excited to pretty much do whatever I want, and nice to hang out with other youth worker's in similar situation's as me! See ya'll later.

Chicago

I love wireless. I'm sitting here in my great hotel room. The conference has been good so far. Great worship time tonight, and I've met tons of people. Tomorrow I'm going to explore downtown Chicago with Greg, defintely enjoying some great pizza. Haven't had any seminars or speaker's yet, just mostly welcome stuff. It's just a great break. Excited to pretty much do whatever I want, and nice to hang out with other youth worker's in similar situation's as me! See ya'll later.

DONE!!!

Yey no more learning to interpret scripture. After 8 hours of work on it today I am completely done! Yey me!

Here's Your Sign

I really like Bill Engvall. For those who don't know he's a comedian who does the bit where he gives stupid people signs. For example he was telling his wife that a plane he was on hit a reindeer. His wife asks if they were in the air. Bill says somtehing about yes Santa was on a testspin, here's your sign. Stuff like that. Well today I committed an absolutely wonderful act of stupidity. To begin the story I was checking out a Nooma video and found $20 this morning randomly. great start to my day. I then discover my car won't start. I try to jump it, doesn't work. Call a tow truck, he comes out, car won't start. Asks to look. Yeah, car's don't start when they're in Drive. So I'm dumb, I left the car in drive and tried to start the car. So the guy (cool christian guy by the way) says I don't want to write it up but want something for my time, so I give him my randomly found $20 and everything's good. Gotta love stupidity at it's all time finest. But it's a cool story that it worked out!

Brad

Quick Update

Hey all just wanted to write a quick update. School's coming down to the wire. 1 paper and a final by Friday. SHould be no problem, but lots to do! Also I'm off to Chicago this weekend. I'm looking for a great pick me up at a youth conference. I'm going with Ben (former youth pastor here). SHould be a great weekend of catching up and relaxing. I'll update more when I get back on Monday!

Brad

Update

Well it's been a while since my last real update. Things the last week and a half have been fairly difficult. There seems to be a lot of stuff going on, and I get to be in the middle of what seems like all of it. It's interesting cause I guess the number one thing through all this that I'm learning and could use prayer for is how to deal with criticism. No one likes it, and it's not fun but I'm trying to learn the best ways to handle it. At times I've felt like it's "Criticize Brad Week or Month". I need to continue to remind myself that despite the criticism and the stress that God is in control. In Oregon the joke was when I got stressed I would get flustered. I feel like I've been in continual flustered mode for a few days now. My prayer is that I can let things go. That I can let go of the criticism and keep doing what God is calling me to do. I have to remember even in the tough times I'm here for a reason. I need to be able to relax and go with the flow (as sarah puts it) and not let criticism effect me so much. I also need to think about the good things that are happening. Sunday school for sr. high was awesome on Sunday. We watched a nooma video and had a great discussion. Some of the quieter people that seem unengaged were the most talkative, and they really opened up. It was really encouraging!
Another prayer would be school. I'm down to the wire, with 10 days left to finish my class. I have 3 assignments and a final left, so lots of work but I think doable. Also we're in need of more staff, particularly in the jr. high program. I think the Wednesday night stuff goes well, but more staff is needed to take it to the next level. Thanks for your prayers! Great to know that people are out there praying for me.

wow

It's been a pretty hard few days. There's just a lot going on, and I"m totally drained right now. Just pray for the church with everything still going on. It's interesting cause the message tonight was on James and considering in joy when you face trials of many kinds. I'm trying to find the joy in these last couple days. However, I know that God has a plan and is in control. Pray that my day off tomorrow will be a strength building day. Thanks for praying!

Brad

Back in the Flow

I'm sitting here in my very nice, quiet office feeling like I'm trying to work on 72 million things at once. I have a bunch of projects and things half done in front of me, so I figured this was a good time to take a break and write. It's been a great week ministry wise. I'm really excited about the things that have happened the last couple days

• 3 students have randomly dropped by my office (some more than once). It's great that they're coming to me also, and not just me getting out there.
• Had 14 at jr. high wed. night, our largest crowd in a few weeks.
• Met with Steve (youth pastor at Grace Covenant) and we're doing a couple combined events in the next few months. We're doing a game night and broom ball!
• Have breakfast with Tom Horton tomorrow morning.
• Really nice to be back in the flow of things
• Excited about jr. high for the next couple months. We have a sunday school teacher in place.
• Youth committee's starting on Sunday (I know crazy I'm excited about a meeting!)
• The staff is great and Gary (the interim pastor) is a neat guy to work with.

I'm just feeling really refreshed and excited about what God has for me this quarter. It seems like I'm getting lots of opportunities to get plugged in with people like Steve and Tom, and try some new stuff. It was great to see that even though we had a break for a couple weeks, we didn't lose momentum. It's funny cause yesterday I was in this weird funk, and I was reading in Philippians 4, and how Eugene Peterson puts it was really impactful for me these past couple days.

Phil. 4:6-7 Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

It's been awesome to see that come together last night and today. Things have a way of working out, and when I get over the worrying aspect and trust God, things go so much better. Well there's my update for the week! Back to my 7 million things!