Surprise!

This is one of my best friends, Laura:

She is amazing. She is a beast at math, a true beautiful southern belle, can play the piano beautifully, she lets me rant to her about my life's problems, but the most beautiful thing about her is that she has a heart that spills over with love for the Lord. Like I said, amazing.

Her birthday is coming up, but she will be on vacation, but I couldn't let that stop me from celebrating her day of birth. So I devised a plan.

Her sister, Katie, and I teamed up to plan a surprise party for her. She didn't have a clue that it was coming and was completely surprised. Can you tell?

What made it even better was that she was having a pretty bad day. She was really bummed about not being able to see everyone before she left for Maine and was stressing about it. We got pretty much all of our friends in town to come so that she could see them all one last time before she leaves. Thanks to everyone that came and made it a great night.

     

God is good :)

Ichthus

In my previous post, I talked about the endless wonders of Wilmore and one of them being Ichthus Music Festival. It was about a week ago, but I'm just now recovering from it. It was amazing, entertaining and incredible. Here are 10 highlights/conclusions of Ichthus:

1. Serving backstage is the way to do Ichthus. Plus you get to meet some awesome people.

2. Chris Tomlin knows how to worship

3. The Galleria stage is where it's at

4. Only at Ichthus is screamo Christian music popular

5. I had a glorious reunion with a friend who I didn't know was in town. Lots of jumping and screaming was involved.

6. Watching YouTube videos at 2 A.M. when everyone has gotten minimal sleep for the past few days and is slap happy is the best. Two words: moist quelfs.

7. Getting Zach to jump into a pool is nearly impossible, but a floating owl statue always helps.

8. It will rain every year. Always.

9. Matthew West's songs about Ichthus and Wilmore are hilarious

10. God was glorified and praised.

Amen

Wilmore

As stated in my "About Me," I go to Asbury University in a little Kentucky town called Wilmore. Wilmore has a population of about 5000, but once a year, the population triples when Ichthus Music Festival happens. (I'll write more about that later).

Anyways, Wilmore is small. There are two stop lights, two gas stations, a couple of small resturants for your dining pleasure and then there is Asbury smack dab in the middle of it. The hub, if you will.

I love this town. Although I don't want to live here forever, it'll always have a special place in my heart.

As you can imagine, there isn't much to do in Wilmore, especially on a Monday night, but this past Monday night was different.

I was hanging out at Confrontation Point Ministries with a couple of friends when suddenly we see huge billows up smoke coming from town. Of course we had to see what was going on, so we all jumped in a friend's car and followed the clouds of black smoke.

Upon arriving, we noticed that it was the old seminary housing that was on fire. We were confused, because no one lives in the apartments any more. We then realized that the seminary had donated the aparentments to the fire department to conduct drills. Of course no one knew that, so the whole town was out watching. The ice cream truck even came by. It was good business and the firefighters enjoyed it too.

Resting

I'm really bad at resting.

You may think this is a weird concept, but really, it's hard for me to simply rest. My daily schedule usually consists of the following:

7:50 A.M.- Alarm goes off, hit snooze button
7:55 A.M.- Alarm goes off again, hit snooze button again (this drives my roommate crazy)
8:00 A.M.- Finally get out of bed and get a cup of coffee
9:05 A.M.- Out of the door and on the way to work
9:30 A.M.- Arrive to work and get more coffee
4:30 P.M.- Leave work
6:00 P.M.- Head to Wilmore to hang out with friends/scheduled activity/ work at Bath and Body Works for the rest of the evening and home back between 11 and 1

This is during the week. I can't even begin to explain my weekends, but I love it! I love constantly being busy. I'm a professional at list making. Give me a task and you better believe I'm gonna make a list to accomplish it. (Thank you Zach for introducing me to the application "Things" for my itouch) 

But sometimes, without realizing it, I'm breaking God's commandment.

  ⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. ¹¹ For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Exodus 20: 8-11 (NIV)

Even God had to rest after he took 6 days to create the world. Although I enjoy my jobs and feel like i'm accomplishing a lot, I think creating the world is a lot cooler then what I do and takes a lot more effort, but I still need to rest. I break this commandment way too often.

I am trying to think of ways to keep myself busy, yet still resting. My friend Laura had the good idea of baking on Sundays. I really enjoy baking and I've done this for the past few Sundays, yet I always find time to cram some kind of work related task in.

What I've learned:
Be intentional about resting. God did it, and commands us to do it.
You can still be productive while resting
It's actually kinda fun

"It don't mean a thing, if you ain't got that swing"

I went swing dancing last night for the first time and it was a blast. I am not very good ... at all, but thankfully my dance partner was, as he put it, "on the same level of wanting to learn," as me.

A group of 7 of us went to "Swing on Main" in Lexington. They closed down a section of Main St. and had a live jazz band playing. We missed the lesson at the beginning so we had to just jump right in. 

Can you tell that we had a blast?

The plan was to go to Lyman's house afterwards for a bon fire. Needless to say, it was way too hot, so we had ice cream instead. I absolutely love ice cream and there were so many toppings! It was the perfect ending in to a wonderful night.