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 =)
Monday, October 22, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
A Climactic Week
Hey! So I wrote earlier that I was anticipating some awesome things to happen this week, and sure enough they did! This has been a really great week all-in-all. On Wednesday I found out that I'm passing my Aural Skills class with an 86%! That's amazing! I've just been trying to pass with a C, because it's a really difficult class for me and I don't have a natural ear, and I have a B!!! That's a hallelujah, praise the Lord thing! And then Thursday I was feeling a touch down from my oddly excited-ness, but God came through again.
I've been looking for passionate people to be on the prayer team and although I've found some great pray-ers and our meetings have been I just haven't found anyone who is really passionate about prayer and interceding for our campus. On Thursday we had a leadership meeting and Aaron said he might know of someone who could be good for the prayer team and I told him to bring the guy in. So that night before JiB started I met Adam and he prayed with us before things got rolling and it was just incredibly awesome! Talk about God's provision! He was calling down barriers and walls that were keeping God from moving and prophesying and the whole bit! It was so refreshing and exciting, and it got me all worked up too. And that night, our meeting was amazing. Worship was wonderful and powerful, and Russell gave a short talk about love, which has been our theme this semester so far, and said exactly what he needed to say. After he was finished the prayer team and leadership team was around and available to minister to and pray with anyone who wanted to, and I got to minister to Courtney and pray with her. It was great! I want every week to be like that, only progressively more powerful all the time! Amen!
Friday was an equally good day. I had fewer classes and a lesser work load which was nice. I had an extra voice lesson and I finally managed to break out a little bit and sang in my lesson with the same intensity that I sing with when I'm home by myself and no one can hear it. It was pretty good, and I think my teacher was happy with it too. And I got my transcriptions for Aural Skills almost completely finished (I have to finish them tomorrow, it could be a disaster, but I'm hoping not). Then, the really great news, my dear friend Anna called me to tell me that Philip had proposed and now she's engaged!!! I am so excited for them, God has truly brought them together and blessed them in awesome ways. I look forward to see what God does in their life together.
Today was pretty darn good too. I spent most of the day with my sister and nephews. There was a "Family Fun Day" at the university, so we went and did the hay ride, face painting, food, and balloon animals. It was great fun. I love my nephews. Aiden is a lot of fun to play with, although I really can't keep up. He's constantly running, which for me means that I have to walk really fast, but he doesn't stop! So I get tired after a while and he comes and grabs my hands and pulls me saying "Come on Auntie K, come on!" and so I have to go some more. After that I ran into a guy that I share three of my classes with, Kurt (although it might be Curt, but for now we'll stick with Kurt).
He's kind of a funny guy, extremely intelligent, he's just breezing through his classes right now. Anyway, I ran into him at Barnes and Noble and invited him to go to Ginosko with me, which is just a social gathering of Christians to hang out and play games and the like. He said he didn't have a car so I offered him a ride and he actually agreed! Cool, huh? So I picked him up again on my way to the shindig and we were talking about school and plans for graduation, which for me lead into Serbia and he was asking me about what kind of missionary work we were doing there. I explained about reaching the college students and talking with them about God. Turns out he's not a Christian, which I kind of figured. It's been my experience thus far that extremely intelligent people usually go with philosophy and science over faith, for a while at least. God always breaks through. So he hung out with all of us playing games and eating food. It was a good deal, I think I would like to talk to him some more and get to know him better. I think God wants to do something with him that he's not expecting. That's often how things work out though, God doing things we don't expect him to. I see him often enough, so it shouldn't be hard to find out what exactly he does believe in, he's the philosophy type and a deep thinker, which will make it interesting. I think I'll try and hook him up with Aaron, because he can be like that too. I did invite him to JiB, but he has class at 9 pm on Thursday, but I told him he should come and hang for a just a little while at least and he said he would consider it.
God might be doing something pretty cool there, we'll just have to see. I think this week has been a great week for discovering the greatness of God and how amazing he is. On my way home tonight I was thinking about Kurt and then about Christ and the more I think about Him the more I smile. I just love Him so much, and He is so beautiful and amazing. I am amazed by the beauty of Christ. I would really love to Kurt to understand that, but it's something you have to experience. If you don't experience Christ you can't know His beauty. If don't experience Him, He's just a guy who died on a cross a really long time ago and there's nothing exciting there. But if you experience Christ... wow, a whole new world of possibilities and adventure opens up. Kurt would really enjoy Christ if he knew Him. He would appreciate the complexities of who Christ is and what He did on the cross and in life. Kurt would understand the musical quality of the Lord... that probably doesn't make sense, but there is a musical quality to His beauty... maybe it's something only musicians really get some concept of, maybe not. I can't explain it. Anyway, Kurt would get that. So, we should pray for Kurt, he's a good guy, worth loving.
That's the excitement for this week, tune in next time for more enthralling exploits in Pueblo. Until next time, be abundantly blessed!
I've been looking for passionate people to be on the prayer team and although I've found some great pray-ers and our meetings have been I just haven't found anyone who is really passionate about prayer and interceding for our campus. On Thursday we had a leadership meeting and Aaron said he might know of someone who could be good for the prayer team and I told him to bring the guy in. So that night before JiB started I met Adam and he prayed with us before things got rolling and it was just incredibly awesome! Talk about God's provision! He was calling down barriers and walls that were keeping God from moving and prophesying and the whole bit! It was so refreshing and exciting, and it got me all worked up too. And that night, our meeting was amazing. Worship was wonderful and powerful, and Russell gave a short talk about love, which has been our theme this semester so far, and said exactly what he needed to say. After he was finished the prayer team and leadership team was around and available to minister to and pray with anyone who wanted to, and I got to minister to Courtney and pray with her. It was great! I want every week to be like that, only progressively more powerful all the time! Amen!
Friday was an equally good day. I had fewer classes and a lesser work load which was nice. I had an extra voice lesson and I finally managed to break out a little bit and sang in my lesson with the same intensity that I sing with when I'm home by myself and no one can hear it. It was pretty good, and I think my teacher was happy with it too. And I got my transcriptions for Aural Skills almost completely finished (I have to finish them tomorrow, it could be a disaster, but I'm hoping not). Then, the really great news, my dear friend Anna called me to tell me that Philip had proposed and now she's engaged!!! I am so excited for them, God has truly brought them together and blessed them in awesome ways. I look forward to see what God does in their life together.
Today was pretty darn good too. I spent most of the day with my sister and nephews. There was a "Family Fun Day" at the university, so we went and did the hay ride, face painting, food, and balloon animals. It was great fun. I love my nephews. Aiden is a lot of fun to play with, although I really can't keep up. He's constantly running, which for me means that I have to walk really fast, but he doesn't stop! So I get tired after a while and he comes and grabs my hands and pulls me saying "Come on Auntie K, come on!" and so I have to go some more. After that I ran into a guy that I share three of my classes with, Kurt (although it might be Curt, but for now we'll stick with Kurt).
He's kind of a funny guy, extremely intelligent, he's just breezing through his classes right now. Anyway, I ran into him at Barnes and Noble and invited him to go to Ginosko with me, which is just a social gathering of Christians to hang out and play games and the like. He said he didn't have a car so I offered him a ride and he actually agreed! Cool, huh? So I picked him up again on my way to the shindig and we were talking about school and plans for graduation, which for me lead into Serbia and he was asking me about what kind of missionary work we were doing there. I explained about reaching the college students and talking with them about God. Turns out he's not a Christian, which I kind of figured. It's been my experience thus far that extremely intelligent people usually go with philosophy and science over faith, for a while at least. God always breaks through. So he hung out with all of us playing games and eating food. It was a good deal, I think I would like to talk to him some more and get to know him better. I think God wants to do something with him that he's not expecting. That's often how things work out though, God doing things we don't expect him to. I see him often enough, so it shouldn't be hard to find out what exactly he does believe in, he's the philosophy type and a deep thinker, which will make it interesting. I think I'll try and hook him up with Aaron, because he can be like that too. I did invite him to JiB, but he has class at 9 pm on Thursday, but I told him he should come and hang for a just a little while at least and he said he would consider it.
God might be doing something pretty cool there, we'll just have to see. I think this week has been a great week for discovering the greatness of God and how amazing he is. On my way home tonight I was thinking about Kurt and then about Christ and the more I think about Him the more I smile. I just love Him so much, and He is so beautiful and amazing. I am amazed by the beauty of Christ. I would really love to Kurt to understand that, but it's something you have to experience. If you don't experience Christ you can't know His beauty. If don't experience Him, He's just a guy who died on a cross a really long time ago and there's nothing exciting there. But if you experience Christ... wow, a whole new world of possibilities and adventure opens up. Kurt would really enjoy Christ if he knew Him. He would appreciate the complexities of who Christ is and what He did on the cross and in life. Kurt would understand the musical quality of the Lord... that probably doesn't make sense, but there is a musical quality to His beauty... maybe it's something only musicians really get some concept of, maybe not. I can't explain it. Anyway, Kurt would get that. So, we should pray for Kurt, he's a good guy, worth loving.
That's the excitement for this week, tune in next time for more enthralling exploits in Pueblo. Until next time, be abundantly blessed!
Monday, October 08, 2007
Anticipation
Good afternoon avid readers! I have some exciting news and some things that I need your help with via prayer. The bad news is that when I last wrote I was intending to meet with a couple women to talk about the gospel and CCC (Campus Crusade for Christ), and I didn't get to meet with either of them. Somehow these meeting just aren't working out. I've rescheduled so many now that I don't know what to do and I've rather given up on them for the time being. Truth is that I highly suspect that all the women I was going to meet were already believers anyway, so I'm not really concerned.
So now the bad news is out of the way I can get into the exciting news! I am pleased to inform you that we have seen one student on CSU-P come to Christ!!! YAY GOD!!! I'm very excited about it. One of the girls I am discipling e-mailed me last night to tell me that one of the freshmen girls we've been loving on finally surrendered her life to Christ. That's the best news I've gotten since my return from Serbia! I'm still praying for 49 more to find there way to the arms of our Love by December.
In other news... well I'm just really happy. I have a good feeling about this week, it's going to be stellar and I just feel very expectant to see what God is going to be doing. I don't know if he'll be doing it here or in Serbia. The Stint team in Serbia is handing out Vox magazines to gain contacts and reach out to students on their faculties over the next two weeks. Last year they distributed 1300 magazines and got around 900 contacts from people willing to talk about God. That's amazing! Lets be praying for a rich harvest at our brothers and sisters invest in God's work over the next two weeks! Then again, maybe something incredible will happen this week *shrug* I did ace a test that I didn't study for, that could be a good sign!
Continued other news, I do need your prayer support about a few things. Typically I wouldn't use this to distribute prayer requests, but I really need it. I'm not sure where to start though... hmm... Ok, I'll start with a friend of mine who goes to UNC. I'm a little concerned about him, and I feel like I may need to just go up there and have coffee with him or something. I think he is a believer, but I don't think he has much fellowship with other strong Christians and I think I may need to go up and see him, build him a bit and such. The question is when, so please pray that the Lord would direct me in that and give me wisdom. Next, I think I may start helping out with worship for the potential youth group at my church, or maybe see if I can get a girls Bible study going for the High Schoolers. Time is also the problem there. I would love to be involved with the youth ministry, but with school and CCC I don't know if I'll have time to do that. So pray that the Lord will give me very, very clear direction about that as well because I don't want to get committed to something I can't rationally do.
Then there is my general health. My health gets it's very own paragraph, which is kinda sad. Good grief I'm tired of feeling crummy and generally unable to accomplish anything worth doing. Last time I wrote I had some stomach thing, well that's gone, but now my heart and other organs in the general chest region are all acting up again. I'm having really bad heart flutters and having a really hard time breathing some times. It comes and goes, accompanied often by pain. It gets worse when I sing, which is darned inconvenient considering that I'm majoring in vocal performance. I just can't get the air support I need to hit the notes I have to hit and it aggravates my chest even more. So be praying that I would be relaxed and at peace so that everything would settle down and I would have to deal with this any more. (Praise!) My Mom just got a new job and we'll have insurance fairly soon and when we do I can go to the doctor and find out what exactly is wrong with me, if anything, but I don't think this is normal. Pray that I won't be distracted and therefore stressed out. I do have a distraction to deal with, which I'm not going to elaborate on in such a public fashion.
Anyway, tonight is prayer, which is exciting all by itself! Whoo-hoo for prayer! I am so ready to see the campus changed, and I think Jesus is too, so this gonna be a good week =) Thanks for reading up on life and praying with me about what God is doing here and over in my new favorite place, Serbia!
So now the bad news is out of the way I can get into the exciting news! I am pleased to inform you that we have seen one student on CSU-P come to Christ!!! YAY GOD!!! I'm very excited about it. One of the girls I am discipling e-mailed me last night to tell me that one of the freshmen girls we've been loving on finally surrendered her life to Christ. That's the best news I've gotten since my return from Serbia! I'm still praying for 49 more to find there way to the arms of our Love by December.
In other news... well I'm just really happy. I have a good feeling about this week, it's going to be stellar and I just feel very expectant to see what God is going to be doing. I don't know if he'll be doing it here or in Serbia. The Stint team in Serbia is handing out Vox magazines to gain contacts and reach out to students on their faculties over the next two weeks. Last year they distributed 1300 magazines and got around 900 contacts from people willing to talk about God. That's amazing! Lets be praying for a rich harvest at our brothers and sisters invest in God's work over the next two weeks! Then again, maybe something incredible will happen this week *shrug* I did ace a test that I didn't study for, that could be a good sign!
Continued other news, I do need your prayer support about a few things. Typically I wouldn't use this to distribute prayer requests, but I really need it. I'm not sure where to start though... hmm... Ok, I'll start with a friend of mine who goes to UNC. I'm a little concerned about him, and I feel like I may need to just go up there and have coffee with him or something. I think he is a believer, but I don't think he has much fellowship with other strong Christians and I think I may need to go up and see him, build him a bit and such. The question is when, so please pray that the Lord would direct me in that and give me wisdom. Next, I think I may start helping out with worship for the potential youth group at my church, or maybe see if I can get a girls Bible study going for the High Schoolers. Time is also the problem there. I would love to be involved with the youth ministry, but with school and CCC I don't know if I'll have time to do that. So pray that the Lord will give me very, very clear direction about that as well because I don't want to get committed to something I can't rationally do.
Then there is my general health. My health gets it's very own paragraph, which is kinda sad. Good grief I'm tired of feeling crummy and generally unable to accomplish anything worth doing. Last time I wrote I had some stomach thing, well that's gone, but now my heart and other organs in the general chest region are all acting up again. I'm having really bad heart flutters and having a really hard time breathing some times. It comes and goes, accompanied often by pain. It gets worse when I sing, which is darned inconvenient considering that I'm majoring in vocal performance. I just can't get the air support I need to hit the notes I have to hit and it aggravates my chest even more. So be praying that I would be relaxed and at peace so that everything would settle down and I would have to deal with this any more. (Praise!) My Mom just got a new job and we'll have insurance fairly soon and when we do I can go to the doctor and find out what exactly is wrong with me, if anything, but I don't think this is normal. Pray that I won't be distracted and therefore stressed out. I do have a distraction to deal with, which I'm not going to elaborate on in such a public fashion.
Anyway, tonight is prayer, which is exciting all by itself! Whoo-hoo for prayer! I am so ready to see the campus changed, and I think Jesus is too, so this gonna be a good week =) Thanks for reading up on life and praying with me about what God is doing here and over in my new favorite place, Serbia!
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