A Little R & R

I love breaks from normal & this week Cody & I were able to have a few days of rest & relaxation & it was great. We started off the week celebrating our one year anniversary! Can't believe it has been a whole year since our wedding. I have loved thinking about our wedding, we both had so much fun. This year has been full of new journeys together, new friends, a new job, a new place to live, a new church, it's been a great first year.

For our anniversary we went to Austin for a few days. We spent one night with Matty, Cayce, & Madison & had a blast eating pizza & playing wii. We spent the next night at a hotel downtown, we spoiled ourselves.

First dance - one year ago

We ate Amy's Ice Cream - we had to do it b/c we had it at our wedding, but neither of us actually had any that day!

Amazing dinner & special dessert
We also went to see my parents & my mom had the top layer of our cake ready for us to eat. It was still so yummy :)
Cody trying to be funny, while I was trying to have a sweet picture of us cutting our cake.
I am sad our little vacation is over, it is always so good to go home & chill with mom & dad. Hope everyone is enjoying Easter / March Madness weekend.

Greater Things Have Yet To Come

The new blog layout is in honor of spring (here just in time for spring break), St. Patricks Day, & our anniversary. I love that spring is here, the beginning of so many new things, & everyone seems to be a lot happier when the weather is nice outside.

We finally got to have the much awaited "Body Snatch" scavenger hunt this week at YL. We had 45 minutes allotted to kids for the scavenger hunt they were to go & get as many people as they could to come to club. For each person they got, they got a certain number of points for their team. For example, if you brought a student already in their PJ's it's 50 points, a student who has never been to YL before 150 points, etc. We had drivers lined up to take the kids around town & we had one team come back with almost 2,000 points. It was so fun to see new faces at club, as well as kids who had not come in a long time. We had kids run in & get kids from the dinner table, a group of kids picked up 2 boys eating at McDonalds, & one group even went & got some girls from cheerleading practice - everyone had a blast.

When we got all the kids back at the club room, we did a 20 minute club & then took everyone home. During this club we played a fun game show, sang a song, watched a camp video, & listened to Cody tell the kids about Jesus. I love listening to Cody give club talks b/c he holds the kids' attention so well & he speaks great truth in such a loving way. This week he talked about Jesus being the greatest Dad anyone could ever ask for. He told the story about the prodigal son & then talked about how no matter what our relationship with our earthly father is like, we can have a relationship with our heavenly father & this relationship will be filled with love & with acceptance. As Cody ended his talk I was praying for the kids sitting around me in the crowded room. Out of the 13 kids I was sitting with in the back corner I know that only about 3 of them have healthy relationships with their Dads. Please pray that despite the family lives of the kids in our ministry that they will desire to enter into a relationship with a Dad who won't ever leave, yell at them, hurt them, or let them down.


Everyone should treat themselves to a little spring break treat & go out & buy the newest Passion CD - "God of This City" it might change your life. On the way to hang-out with kids today at school I was listening to it & almost started crying, but I was trying to hold myself together so I would not be the emotional loser at school. Here are some of the words that encouraged me, spurred me on to keep doing what I'm doing, & reminded me that greater things are still to come at the dark high school I was about to walk into.

You're the God of this city, You're the King of these people

You're the Lord of this nation, You're the Light in this darkness,

You're the Hope to the hopeless

You're the Peace to the restless, You are

There is no one like our God

For greater things have yet to come,

and greater things are still to be done in this city

Greater things have yet to come,

and greater things are still to be done in this city

The rains came down, snow even fell from the sky - the weather was just plain nasty & I had no idea who would show up at club on Monday night. We had planned to do our annual body snatch scavenger hunt, but due to weather we postponed it until next week. I was ready to just hang-out with a few kids & maybe not even have club. God brought kids despite the weather, we had a pretty good crowd.
Club pretty much consisted of mostly games as we didn't really have much time to plan as we were planning on having the scavenger hunt. We did play one of my all time favorite YL games - apple on a string. In this game you hang an apple on a string & then have a couple try to eat the entire apple without using their hands, it is hilarious to watch!
At the end of club I talked about John 10. I was trying to talk about how Jesus is truly our good Shepherd, but our crowd was more chatty than ever. I think it was the weather or maybe all the games got them totally wound-up, but we could not get them to calm down for anything! Through all the talking I pray that our students got another clear picture of Jesus, the man who was willing to "lay down his life for the sheep" (John 10:15). I told them how he loves us so much, he is willing to die for us & then talked about what great love you have to have for someone to honestly say you would die for them. I pray that they saw how attractive Jesus is & that their hearts are getting ready to hear the story of the cross, that we will tell them in just a few weeks.
Thanks for your prayers for students. Please continue to pray as we get kids signed up for camp, it seems harder than ever this year as they are all staying so busy. I truly believe that for so many kids camp is life or death - they will have the chance to get away & focus on the one who offers us real life. Thanks!

A few pictures from last week:
Cody got to go visit his baby brother in Wyoming

I spent 3 days at Crooked Creek planning the first session of camp this summer, it will be here before we know it.