Two in Row!

This past week was just as climactic as the last, I'm happy to report. Much of that is due to the retreat I attended this past weekend, Rocky Mountain Get Away (RMGA). The whole week was pretty cool though, all around. Tuesday I found out that one of the Serbian women I tutored at the English Camps surrendered her life to Christ. I was so happy I just started crying, it was the sweetest part of my week over all. She happens to have been my favorite student too. That's Teodora, from Novi Sad. She's a brilliant young woman, with bright and powerful ideas and questions. She's passionate and loving. I just absolutely adore my Teodora, she's amazing to me, and inspiring.

Thursday, I took a big step for me and sang with the worship team for our Crusade meeting. I had to use a mic... I really don't like those things. I probably wouldn't have done it except that the Lord keeps pressing me about being involved with worship, which is what I want, but I want to be doing it for all the right reasons and not get in the way of worship. I think it can be really difficult for musicians to separate themselves from what they're doing and really worship during that time. Worship is one of my favorite things ever, and I don't want to lose my passion in worship for anything, be that pride, or timidity, or performance, or what ever. So I did it because the Lord keeps telling me to, and I think I'll continue doing it if Russell wants me to. He told me to "eat the mic", which was difficult. LOL I'm a singer/musician/performance major who doesn't like to be heard! How is that for a paradox?! Worship was good though, all in all.

Friday we left for RMGA! It was a really good weekend. There were about twelve of us total from CSU-P that went to it, there were a few hundred though from other schools around the state. RMGA is a retreat for all the Campus Crusade ministries in Colorado alone. Pretty soon we have The Denver Christmas Conference (DCC) which includes all the ministries in the great plains region (Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, part of New Mexico, and one or two other states I can't think of presently). DCC usually has couple thousand people attending, but it's a major blast. Anyway! We got there, (Estes Park YMCA) just in time for the first session. I'm going to be completely honest, worship was my favorite part of the whole weekend. If we hadn't done anything else the whole time I would have been quite content. Our speaker took the weekend, (four main sessions), to talk about relationships with God and as a community of believers. He illustrated God as a Father, and did a really nice job of it. He was a really funny guy, and there was much laughter as he told us stories about his experiences with his own family and his relationship with God as a Father.

Friday night after the main session we decided to get something to eat because we hadn't had dinner and were starving. It was after eleven though and everything was closed, except for Dominoes! The running joke through out the trip was about how Estes Park was completely shut down after 11pm and how little sense that made to us. Everything is closed! Even gas stations! It's amazing, but then it Estes Park, not exactly a raging college town. When we got back Russell broke out his guitar and we spent an hour and half or so just in pure, unplugged, whole hearted, fly by the seat of your pants worship. We didn't have a set or anything, we just picked out songs at random and spent time praising God. It was fabulous. I can't think of a better way to stay up until two in the morning =) After we finished worship I got to spend some quality time pouring out my heart to a few of my Sisters in Christ (SiCs... wow, I'm giving a lot acronyms, good luck remembering them ;)), which I was in desperate need of doing. This was a really good weekend, but difficult too, for reasons I'm not going to post about publicly, sorry ;) It was really nice to share with my sisters about what has been going on in my life and get their prayer support.

Saturday was another great day. We had some devotional time and awesome worship, a main session and then three hours of free time to play games and enjoy the mountains. I personally went back to my room and crashed for a long time because I had only gotten two and half hours of sleep the night before. By the end of the night Saturday I was shaking with exhaustion. Tip: don't get so exhausted you start to shake, it's just not as cool as it seems. We had some time to chill with our campuses and talk about what God had been doing through the weekend and then there was a two hour worship concert. I was really excited about the worship, of course, and the band was decently good. The only problem was that they played all these songs that I didn't know! I'm willing to learn, but out of maybe 10-15 songs I only knew three, and that seemed to be the same for most people who attended. So that was kind of a bummer and then Amy, Russell, Jenna, Josh and I all went back to our dorm and broke out the guitar again! So we had our own private worship night too =) Which was cool. By the time we left the main hall to go back to the dorms it was snowing quite a bit, which brought huge cheers from the crowd.

Sunday we finished up, packed our things and headed home. It snowed off and on through out our trip, but it was really pretty. We even stopped at Chipotle on our way back, which was a special treat since Pueblo is apparently not cool enough to have Chipotle or even Qdoba. I got some extra sleep in on the trip home, which was pleasant. And that's what happened at RMGA. It was really, really good time of praising God and singing out, and moving to the rhythm of the music. I LOVE worship, it's just about the best things ever. Just throwin' that out there.

Today has been a little bit more rough. The store is in another slow point and we are praying for God to bring in the money we need, I would appreciate your prayers as well, who ever may read this. I had a test today, I don't know how I did on it, I'm not entirely sure I care either. There was a bomb threat at the school, which for the time being hasn't turned into anything. The police came and checked each building over four times, and didn't find anything amiss, I don't think that most of the students even know about it. I only know because I have a friend working the in ELC who heard about it from his boss. And finally, Russell is now sick. He sounds like he's got the flu. So the school and brother Russ could use your prayers as well. And that's it for this week, stay tuned for more =)