What's in a Grin?

In case you don't know me, let me tell you, I'm a fairly happy person. Now, I get upset and have bad days, and I've never been accused of anything near "bubbly". In fact, I'm a pretty mellow person. Regardless, I'm good at being generally cool with life. I try to keep that up by looking to the little things, little messages from God. A sunset. Or a kind gesture between two strangers. Or a smile.

I got the privilege of being a part of a worship night for the second time the other night. We were supposed to practice on Monday, but then Granger decided it needed a blanket, so it put on a foot of snow. So our practice was pushed back to Wednesday, which was also the night of the actual worship night. People were late to rehearsal, (including myself), and we had some technical difficulties, so we didn't start for probably another hour. Off to a great start, huh? Referring to all of the snow and problems that night I remarked, "You know, it's almost like someone out there doesn't want this thing to happen..." (That's right satan, I called you on it.) What I didn't know yet was why he wanted that.

A shot of the mood, pre-students.
Credit goes to @tsutch on Instagram.

Then we started singing. Practice went pretty good. I love playing with those artists, the songs were terrific, and I generally knew what was going on, which is helpful. After breaking for dinner, Tyler took some time to talk to us and read some verses, to get us centered on why we were there: to praise God. After that, practice was just better somehow. When we finished, and people came in, the crowd was a bit smaller than I had hoped, so I was just praying that God knew what He was doing.

The music started with a relatively upbeat song, then slowly descended into the songs that people tend to really respond to. After a couple of songs the band got to take a seat to watch a video with the rest of the crowd, an acoustic rendition of the song Oceans, which is one of my favorite worship songs out there. That's when it got real for me. I really met with God in that song, and He held me for the rest of the night. The climax of the night was the song Set a Fire. The lyrics are very simple and repetitive, and we in the middle we just hung out on the chords while clips of one of Mark Beeson's sermons played. but in the down time, when nothing was happening, us in the band just kept playing those four chords, B...E...G#...E...B...E...G#...E... I couldn't tell you what happened in the crowd then. They all just faded into the background. All I know is that the musicians had our moment. Tyler wasn't singing into the microphone, but we were on stage living in those lyrics.

               There's no place I'd rather be...
               There's no place I'd rather be...
               There's no place I'd rather be...
               Then here in Your love, here in Your love LORD...

And I don't know when, but at some point I looked out into the room, and saw two lights on the ceiling. To me, almost anything can make a face. Cars have faces on the front and back, the two headlights and the bumper, that's all I need. I'll often draw a curved line beneath double O's, and make that into a face. But I saw those two lights, and there was no mouth to that face. No lines, no frown, no smile. A few choruses later, I looked back out, and that's when it hit me. The two lights were the eyes. They were God's eyes. And beneath them, were all of those bright faces, reflecting His glory. Because God wasn't smiling.

He was grinning.

What's in the grin of God? You are. I am. Anytime we praise Him, serve Him, love Him, we are the embodiment of the Joy of our Father.

Nicaragua2012 (Part 3)

*Post three of my Nicaragua2012 Posts.*
*This is partially for you, and partially so I have a place to write it all so I remember it. So pardon all the horrific details.*

At this point, you may be thinking, "Wait. He's already at the end! How can he have a third post??"
Well, this post is just for a few stories that I've thought of. So let the stories begin!


1. Imma start out with a good one.You may know Nathan Arndt. You probably don't. Regardless, this story is amazing. Picture this:
It's day four. It's 6:30 in the morning. I'm still in bed, half asleep and honestly I'm amazed I have any recollection of this. Riley Robbins is walking around. He cringes, and says something about the painful blister on his foot. Nathan, out of the blue, says "Hey, you want me to pray for it?" Riley says sure, so right then and there, at 6:30 in the morning, Nathan kneels down, and says a prayer of healing on Riley's foot.
Moment of honesty, I doubted. I thought, why would God spend His time, just so Riley could get out of a little pain? But later, Riley's is asked about it, and he says "I haven't felt it all day......but in a good way!"


2. This is gonna seem really shallow after that one, but whatever.
Thing is, down there, they don't get the luxury of lawnmowers, weed whackers, or anything of the sort. But they still need to keep a little bit of landscaping! So how do they do it??
Machetes.
They sent four of us guys out, to see what we could do. We couldn't. I actually thought we were doing decent! It only took like 15 swipes to get a tiny patch of weeds down! Then a Nicaraguan lady comes out to show us how it's done. With a piece of bread and a cup full of juice in one hand, she takes a Machete, and in THREE SWIPES gets what it took us twenty to get. Talk about an ego buster!

We were even less adept when they started throwing them. Yes, you read that right. They grabbed a few machetes, and started throwing them and getting them to stick into trees. I actually got the most out of any of us Americans! Which was two. But neither of them was as impressive as theirs! And they did it over...and over...and over again!



3. Obviously, there are people who live at the place we stayed. They prepared food, and cleaned our rooms while we were gone. Similar to a hotel. Except the food was FLIPPING INCREDIBLE! I would live there just for the food!!!
Anyway, one day we get back, and there are two piles of clothes in the middle of the rooms. I realize after look for a few seconds, that it is a bunch of our clothes! A few seconds later, I realize that its the stuff I already wore, and got all dirty! That's right. Those ladies, out of their own free will, hand washed all of our dirty clothes. Shirts, socks, and even underwear! I wouldn't even do that for myself!


Once again, I just wanna thank anyone who supported me, through either money or prayer! You don't know what a blessing you were!

So there you have it. That's the end. Until next year that is!

Nicaragua2012 (Part 2)

*Post two of my Nicaragua2012 Posts.*
*This is partially for you, and partially so I have a place to write it all so I remember it. So pardon all the horrific details.*


OK. So you may remember, when we left off, I had come back from the beach. The next four days were our designated "work days". I'll begin there...

If you want the most basic overview, "We built two houses."

They started lifting before I could get to the side...

For a more detailed description, I'll just write what I wrote in my journal after day 3:
"It's been a ton of fun. You never get overworked, because there's not enough work for everyone, so you can easily take breaks. But don't think it's easy! I wake up every day more tired, and super sore!
People are so helpful! Sammy spends the entire time giving herself to all the little Nicaraguan children, and also is constantly offering to bring people their waters bottles! Everyday, Tara goes out of her way to cover all of the backpacks, so the when it rains, (which it does everyday here) none of our stuff will be ruined! No other specifics, but everyone gets whatever you need, and if you need a break, they jump at the chance to get back to work!

Putting in the floor boards

At some points throughout the day, I just spend some time with the little boys. We just run, fight, growl, and tickle (Yes. I did say tickle.) Even though we aren't doing anything, they still have so much fun, and the glee on their faces is amazing to watch!
I also love watching the teenage Nicaraguans. I can't understand much of what they say, but i feel a connection. We're just a few teenage guys, out here building to help some people out!"

So there you have it. That was my play-by-play, in the midst of the action.

On Thursday night, we went to Church. The preacher was another visitor, and he had a ton of great stuff to say about worship.
Here's some of my notes:
Ephesians 2:10
       God designed us to worship Him through good works.EVERYONE WORSHIPS SOMETHING
       What do you worship?
What is worship?
       Singing?
       Praying?
       Praising?
             All three of these, but more! Worship is doing what the the Holy Spirit leads us to do, and its from
             your heart!
Whatever you do, do it for God!
Romans 3:23
Worshiping is reflecting the glory of the Master.
Love like He loved, Grace like He graced, and Forgive like He forgave.
God is most Glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him!
You have to KEEP your heart close to God.
You don't plan to fall out of love. It comes from not continually coming to Him.
Worship: an outward expression of your inner love.
Do you know Him? If not, you can't truly worship Him.
Psalm 139:14
       You will never be able to worship God if you think He made a mistake in you.


And that's the conclusion! Now on to post numero tres!

Nicaragua2012 (Part 1)

*Post one of my Nicaragua2012 Posts. For the rest of the story read the next few posts!*
*This is partially for you, and partially so I have a place to write it all so I remember it. So pardon all the horrific details.*

If you didn't know, I went to Nicaragua (in Central America) a few weeks ago!
It was an incredible experience, I learned a lot, and I will for sure be going next year!
We first got started back in January/February, when we got to know who all was going, and then we had 3 other meetings between that and the trip. I had so much help from people paying for the trip. I had to raise $2100 dollars (if you include my Chicago trip), and I got it completely paid for by peoples fabulous donations!

So the day of the trip arrives. We have our packing party, go over final details, and head home for a few hours before we leave. Some people slept, I on the other hand watch The Batman movies, and an episode of The Walking Dead. :D
Then we head back, take the 2 hour drive to Chicago, and fly from there to Miami, and then to Managua, Nicaragua. (That's fun to say!) We spend the night in a hotel there. It consists of tons of pizza, even more pool-dunking, an hour long talk with Riley and Jeffrey about awesome movies, and my headphones disappearing overnight. Then we take a smaller propeller plane (a 46-seater) to Puerta (Port) Cabezas. Surprisingly that was my favorite flight! I sat next to Austin, and played solitaire, war, and chess. And then we were there.

The night we got there, all we did was play with the kids. Me and Brennan were chasing around a little boy and girl, letting them go chasing them some more...and so on. We also sat around for a bit, and learned this weird hand pounding rhythm thingy. (I forgot that one, but I learned another one later which I remember!)

Day 2:
We went to Church this day! It was a flipping awesome experience! There were three different languages being sung, but even if they were singing in one of the other languages, I could still understand, and connect in my own. It just really showed how Jesus isn't American. He is universal. We so often think of Him as our own, and this was just awesome to see how much He did in the lives of people who wouldn't understand a word of our English bible, but have there own way of sharing the Good News. And then we got to hear a great message from our very own John Keim, in English, and translated to Spanish. Their services are long! Johny even had a short message, and the service was still two hours long! But I wouldn't have missed any of it for the world!
After church, we took all of the kids to the beach. It's Nicaragua, so of course it started raining as soon as we got there. But after the initial ten seconds of disappointment, (and after I covered Katie and I's bags with my poncho) everyone started having even more fun! Some people were playing beach-rain-soccer, others were building sand castles, and others (me) were having an all out war, dunking, throwing sand, etc. No casualties though! One little girl kept throwing sand at me, so i would scare her, or throw sand at her or something. At the end we shook hands, which I thought meant we were cool. But then she threw sand at me again!! What a jerk...haha
Gotta love those children...(but boy are they tiring!)


Well, I'd say thats a good place to end this one. You can find the next one here:

Horror Film

Everyone loves a good apocalypse movie! I mean natural disasters, alien invasions, zombies, that stuff is cool! It's so science fiction that almost no one imagines it actually happening. I mean really. A cure for cancer that turns 99% of the world into zombies? A meteo threatening to wipe out earth? Yeah right. But you know what i think the scariest movies are? Demon films. Especially for Christians. Because demons exist.
How many times have aliens fought against humanity? Or Cowboys? Or the Fantastic Four? Never, never, and....never. Jesus incountered at least 20, maybe 50 possessed people in his ministry. That's one person, three years, and that many Demons?

And it still happens today! Most people scoff at exorcisms and the like, but the fact is they are very real. The one thing that I take comfort in is that most theologins agree, Christians cannot be possessed. I believe this is because we already have Christ in us. "There ain't room for the both of us here."

Just something to think about, next time you watch a horror movie for fun.

(Yes, I know that none of the movies I referenced up there were horror movies...but they would be....if they were plausible...)