GNAR IS SPELT WITH A SILENT "G"

So this week we all went up to mount Washington to go snowboarding and skiing, it was some of the best snowboarding of my life and I am going back in two weeks with my youth group which is going to be just as fun.  At night time we would have chapels the first night we went around and told each other how we could see Christ in each other, the overall consensus for me was that I was forgiving.  I think I can agree with that but I definitely don’t want people to assume that I am just going to forgive them no matter what they do, although this is usually the case.  The second night we started by talking about name changes in the bible like Simon to Peter or Saul to Paul.  The challenge was to give each other new names people got names like Conqueror Shepard Gem and Care-Giver.  One by one everybody got a name, I kept thinking okay someone has got to give me a name soon, but that’s not how it happened.  I was the very last person to get a name, this doesn’t really bother me at all I was just surprised cause I tend to think of myself as a louder person more in the front so I thought I would get a name pretty soon.  My name ended up being “abundance” or “abundant” I’m not even that sure.  Either way it’s a pretty sweet name they gave me it because of how I live my life apparently I am abundant with life and just loving it.  I can agree with that but not all the time there is obviously times were I get upset and am not loving life but for the most part I think I am a “Half-Glass-Full” kind of person.  That chapel lasted two nights.  So for our final chapel we were challenged to confess something to God in front of everybody the whole time I was thinking about saying something but I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was confessing to the other people more than God.  Not that I think that confessing to our peers is wrong cause it is definitely biblical I just didn’t feel right doing it in such a big group.  That’s all for this week BYE BYE J

GNAR IS SPELT WITH A SILENT "G"

So this week we all went up to mount Washington to go snowboarding and skiing, it was some of the best snowboarding of my life and I am going back in two weeks with my youth group which is going to be just as fun.  At night time we would have chapels the first night we went around and told each other how we could see Christ in each other, the overall consensus for me was that I was forgiving.  I think I can agree with that but I definitely don’t want people to assume that I am just going to forgive them no matter what they do, although this is usually the case.  The second night we started by talking about name changes in the bible like Simon to Peter or Saul to Paul.  The challenge was to give each other new names people got names like Conqueror Shepard Gem and Care-Giver.  One by one everybody got a name, I kept thinking okay someone has got to give me a name soon, but that’s not how it happened.  I was the very last person to get a name, this doesn’t really bother me at all I was just surprised cause I tend to think of myself as a louder person more in the front so I thought I would get a name pretty soon.  My name ended up being “abundance” or “abundant” I’m not even that sure.  Either way it’s a pretty sweet name they gave me it because of how I live my life apparently I am abundant with life and just loving it.  I can agree with that but not all the time there is obviously times were I get upset and am not loving life but for the most part I think I am a “Half-Glass-Full” kind of person.  That chapel lasted two nights.  So for our final chapel we were challenged to confess something to God in front of everybody the whole time I was thinking about saying something but I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was confessing to the other people more than God.  Not that I think that confessing to our peers is wrong cause it is definitely biblical I just didn’t feel right doing it in such a big group.  That’s all for this week BYE BYE J

No one is here this weekend

Well everyone this was our second week in and it was a lot better than last week, only two days of class, Jim is teaching us Camp Ministry its pretty easy but I also found it really interesting we have the last couple classes next week I think. I got a lot of work that’s coming up pretty soon mostly just small stuff but there is a lot. This week in youth was a pretty rough week the kids weren’t doing a very good job at paying attention, the one kid, Colton who usually glues the rest of the group together and gets them to pay attention wasn’t able to come which just threw the rest of the night off. I have been feeling a lot better than I was last week and looking forward more to the rest of the semester than I had. Hopefully this continues. This coming week we are going to be snowboarding and skiing at Mount Washington, its going to be some long days and I hope I nobody gets hurt. God has been showing me a lot lately I’m starting to think that its more than I can handle, pray for me to be able to absorb all of this because it’s been putting a lot on my mind that I feel as though I am not being able to handle along with all the other stresses of Kaleo. I know he is showing me something even through all of this stress (with all he is showing me and all of Kaleo) I just need to find out what it is. I am really looking forward to working in the Olympics and all the sweet conversations I am going to have I pray that God will be able to speak through me when I am there, that he will give me the words to say and the right things to pray for. This past weekend all of the staff were gone and we had our “Kaleo-sitters” Tyler and Nikki both of them are pretty awesome people. We watched some snowboarding videos and had a birthday party for Emma, and I got a bunch of homework done…it was a pretty sweet weekend. I’m sorry this blog is so short but I guess I am just making up for how long the last one was lol J
- matt

one week in

Well this was our first week back and it was pretty rough we had class our second day back which just so happened to be my birthday. I found the class pretty hard and difficult to pay attention to it just wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. Other than the class it has been a pretty awesome first week I felt God showing me lots. I think this semester God just wants me to trust him that everything will be fine in April because I am already anxious about it, I hope these feelings will go away soon by trusting in God so if you guys would just pray for that I would really appreciate it. This weekend we went to missionfest and I had a really awesome time even though I only went to two seminars…

so the first session I went to was about sex slavery in this town in Cambodia this was very powerful for me and I think God wanted me to see it and it lined up with the session that night for the young adults. the town he was talking about was the worst town in the world for child sex slavery so what basically happened is they went in and took to one of the major brothels and saved a lot of girls and arrested a lot of the pimps and stuff, so then what they did is they took the brothel and turned it into a community center and church for all the kids who have been assaulted and continue to be assaulted every night. which just showed so much hope for that community. after that the organization "Ratanak" decided that the kids are not the only ones who need to be saved which i never really thought about. so what Ratanak did was open a gym for the pimps and thugs and the people selling these children but in order to go to the gym the thugs and pimps had to go to a bible study. so even though these people were still committing these horrible crimes i believe they will one day change because of this program. In the last part of the presentation he showed pictures of this massive sex hotel the pimps wanted to build which was almost done but they could not afford to finish it so what they decided to do was sell it to the people working with the children for a very cheap price. This part just amazed me what God had done, if they completed the building and it became a sex hotel almost everything that had gone on in this community would have been for nothing. Instead, what would have been a sex hotel is now going to be a church/clinic/school. My heart goes out to these people and i honestly do want to find a way to help this organization the next seminar i went to was about china but it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be....instead of talking about what the people in china need as far as mission she talked about what the Chinese missionaries are doing. The Chinese church has taken on themselves to bring the gospel back to Jerusalem which means over fifty mainly Muslim countries. She talked about the desire that the Chinese people have to see the gospel shared everywhere and we just don’t see that kind of intensity from western Christians like a lot of Chinese Christians know about suffering for Christ where as most of us don’t. So it just made me think about how God works and the love and commitment to him I need to have.

Wow I think this is the longest blog I have ever written