The viewfinder is blurry

"Time fly's when your having fun." What about when your not having fun? Does it crawl? Stumble? Tilt to the side? What? It's the same story I believe. For the last few months I have been an 8th grade computer teacher and needless to say it hasn't all been fun, but time has still flown by quicker than you can imagine. It seems that just yesterday I was getting home from camp and coming to the interview to start the job. Now its the end of the 2nd nine weeks and I'm staring Christmas dead in the face. It's scary how fast time gets away from you. I'm 25 with a buisness and a career and I can look back and its seems just last week that I was living in Gulfport, spending summers hanging out with Faye and swimming all the time. Where did it all go? Being an adult is not all fun and games.

Another scary thing about life is that you never really know what path you are suppose to go down. I look back to the Robert Frost poem of "The Road Not Taken", the only difference with his poem and real life is that sometimes there more than one path to choose from. You can stand and stare down one all day but there is always another and another and another that you can spend just as much time studying. Sooner or later you just have to take that step and choose one of the paths but we tend to get worried that we might choose the wrong one and it might lead into disaster. The way God works though is if you do choose the wrong path, He builds onto your until it comes back around to the path that He wants you to take, you just have to step back and let God work.

I say all of this because this is what I am working with in my mind as of lately. Have I chosen the right path? How long will my time run? Will everything ever just fall into place? Questions like these and many many more just float around my head on a constant basis without any end.

When you pray...He answers

I know its been a while since I have updated yet again but A LOT has happened since I have returned home from Fuge. Let me just fill you in on things..

For the past 2 years of working camp, I have always just wondered what I was going to do when I got back home. The first time I knew I was returning just to finish school and then move back home. The 2nd time I was returning to just be here, not knowing anything really. This past summer I knew I was returning home to run my business, sub at the school, and just be. Well that was not the case at all. Before I had even started my return trip, I had some people from Newton Public Schools calling my dad to see when I was going to be back because they wanted me to come interview for a job that was open. So, less than a week from coming home I had an interview to be an 8th grade computer teacher. Big change of plans from what I thought I was going to be doing. But that's how God works. In His time, His plans would be revealed. This was apparently His answer to my prayers of "What am I suppose to do with my life?" So here I am now. I am a certified teacher. It has great benifits and its not really as bad as I thought but then again I am finding out something new every day that they didn't tell me to begin with.

Other than being the teacher, my business is picking up pretty good. I am getting more senior portraits, I am progressing in my techniques and learning new things every time I get behind the camera, and I am gaining more contacts. I love they way God is working out the life path I just wish at times I could just slow down enough to just sit and exhale because it seems that every time I might get too something else comes up.

Yet another thing that God has planned out is Youth Ministry. Conehatta Baptist Church has an amazing group of youth that are just crying out for some leadership and ministry and I have been approached about being the person to step into that role. I love youth ministry. It has always always always been a passion of mine to work with youth in bible study, dramas, music, and whatever other aspect I can help out in. So I am in the transition phase of moving everything to this wonderful little country church.

This is where God has my life at the moment and I just wake-up everyday wondering "What's Next" because it seems like there is something new everyday.

Closure

So the camp part of the summer has come to an end. Earlier in the summer I thought I would be rejoicing that it is time to make our journey homeward, but I'm actually saddened for it to be over. We had a wonderful week to go out on though, so that made it a complete circle for the summer. I had an amazing group of students and everyone was just so amazing. I think I was fine until the tears started flowing from some of the others at the airport last night and this morning and being on the road all day I just had time to remember all the things that went on throughout the summer. I have so many new stories that I will have to take hours to explain so people can at least give me a pity laugh. I look forward to seeing where God is going to Move me within the next few days, weeks, months, etc. After going through the bible study I know not to worry about what is to come but just know that He has prepared me for whatever it is. It has been an amazing summer and to get everything out I will have to do speech on it all cause it would take forever to type out. I am currently in Burly, ID on our way back home so I now go to slumber land and get rest for our next leg of the journey tomorrow.

Finale

We are at our last location for the summer finally. Turner, OR at Aldersgate Conference Center. This place is pretty cool, well not cool as in 40 degree weather like last week, but just cool as in its a nice place. Last week we were in Casper, WY where the weather was literally mid 30's one day and it actually snowed. Yes, end of July and it was snowing. That week was an interesting one on top of the weather. We got there and found out that we had to do a 6 day camp instead of a 5 day which made us change everything programing wise, I had to teach 7/8 grade bible study which was rather difficult, and I made my 2nd trip to the Emergency room for the summer. It should have been my 3rd but I was stubborn the first time. This trip though I came away with 5 stitches in my leg so I get a nice reminder of the week of camp in Casper, WY. There has been a lot to go on other than camp but its too much to explain in the blog. Its time to get to bed so we can begin camp tomorrow, please continue to pray for us though.

Summer Update

I know I'm not the best blogger but its hard to blog with no internet. It has been a strange and difficult road since the last post that is for sure. After reuniting with our team we all headed to West Virginia to for our week there. We knew going into this week that it was going to be a struggle because our coordinator was going to be there so that but added stress to everyone and it was pretty much our first time to set up a lot of our stuff that we didn't have to set up at Skycroft. Well the week started out really bad. I won't go into details but just know that it didn't look like a promising week at first. As the week progressed it got a lot better. The students there were Amazing so that helped out a whole lot. By the weeks end everything had gotten tons better between the team so there was hope for the remaining weeks. It was a sad end of the week though because we had to say goodbye to our pastor R.D. who had been with us from the beginning. He was only hired through that week so he had to return to his life and we had to continue without him. Once we left WV we started to head towards Bambi Lake, MI. We put in our address in the GPS and started driving. 3 hours later I looked at a map and we had been going way far out of the way. We were still headed to the same place just going the super long way. After being up set for a spell we realized that this was Gods way of tieing things into our bible study. Just as He led the Isrealites the long way out of Egypt, He led us the long way to Michigan. We finally arrived about 7 pm on sunday and had to be ready for campers on monday, which we were in plenty of time. I hate to compare my students from week to week but so far my favorites have been my Michigan ones. They were just a joy to be with. I wish I could take people from every week and make one super epic bible study group. As the week closed out in Michigan, Kristen and myself had to leave early to get a head start with the Ryder truck for our long haul to Wyoming. This make me sad becasue i had to cut a day short with my students. We left at 1030 on thursday evening and got to casper wyoming at 945 on saturday. We stopped in the upper part of michigan, and in Mitchell, SD for our nights but we drove pretty much all day friday and saturday and we saw some amazing scenery. God knew what He was doing when he created SD and Wyoming. We went through the Badlands and stopped by Mount Rushmore in SD so that made my trip worth while. It didn't seem like it took as long as it did though. Well that is the journey up to this point. Please continue to pray for us as we have 2 more weeks of camp and then 4 of us have a week drive back to Nashville.

Continuing....

Sorry for the long delay in updates, but it has been a very tiring and busy past couple of weeks. I finally get a few moments to update so here it goes. We closed out our time at Skycroft Conference Center in Maryland this past friday. It was sad times because we had become real close with the people we had met there and we had become comfortable in our location, but that is not what this team is about this summer, so we packed it all up and said goodbye.

While we were there we had some major thermonuclear spiritual warfare going on. Satan seemed to be camping out there just to hit us when there was even a small amount of hope in the distance. We had to keep reminding ourselves and each other of why we were there. We fully became and embodiment of God over the past couple of weeks because without Him I do not see how we made it through. I met some really awesome people while I was there as well and both of my groups of students were simply amazing. My first week I had 40 which was a little over whelming at first but it quickly turned around and they helped encourage each other and just turned into this unstoppable force of Epicness. Week 2 I only had 17 and they turned out to be just as amazing. Both groups deserved the "Fuge Cup", the trophy one group gets that all campers look forward to at the end of the week. Week 2 brought it home but week 1 was a very very very close 2nd. I miss each and every one of my students so far but I still have 5 more weeks to be apart of an amazing group of students like these past 2.

Now to the present. After a very unneeded 13ish hour trip yesterday, our team is split at 2 different locations because our original week 3 was canceled, so instead of giving us a week off they split us to be special teamers for 2 other locations. Corey, Jenni, Kristen, and Myself are at Ridgecrest for the week while Heather, Thad, R.D., Katie, and Jenny are at Carson Newman. I'm looking forward to this week cause all I have to focus on is bible study and my students so I get some much needed rest because I have been fighting off sickness for a few days now. I haven't had a voice for 2 weeks so I hope to get that back as well.

So this is where the journey has come to so far. I continue to learn from God about so many things and I look forward to seeing what happens when camp is over because I have made some great connections and we will just have to wait and see where God wants to send me. Please continue to pray for myself and my team because we all need it.

Training Week

We just finished up with day 1 of training and I am already getting excited about everything. The bible study is going to be great. It talks about Moses and him answering God's call to be the man that he was born to be. I'm still nervous about teaching a bible study but I know that everything will work out fine. The recreation games for day 1 are going to be great and my lines for my acting are coming along at a quick pace now that my partner and I have finally had time to run over them more than once. The only thing that I am still extremely worried about is getting the staging and worship center together because we can't get  into our worship center till the night before camp. 

I want to thank everyone for the prayers and I just ask to continue to pray for me and the rest of my staff as we continue to train and get comfortable with everything that we will be doing during camp. 

More to come in the future.