SandBlast 11

So going into this past weekend I didn't really know what to expect. I did things ranging from ordering pizza and delivering it to the production team to making sure 1000+ students had plenty of water so they wouldn't dehydrate in the 90 degree weather. I stayed up till 5:30 driving around on a golf cart making sure kids didn't sneak out and woke up at 7:00 to reset the auditorium seating chart for the day. It was a lot of fun and was exhausting. There were times were nothing needed to be done and I could worship and listen to the message and times where I was running around drenched in sweat. It was cool being able to serve in this way. From about 12:30-2:00 I walked around my dorm making sure that all of the students were accounted for. If kids were being to loud I would knock on there door and spend about 5min+ talking with them seeing how there weekend was kinda building repor then ask them to take there volume down a notch. Before I left I would tell them that they are awesome. I found it to work really well and It was a cool way to meet the students. The only down fall was that my rounds took from 12:30-2:00 as appose to the 15-25min rounds the other dorms experienced. My mindset is more geared toward building relationships and memories. I have been to camp and I know that "ta wee ours uf da nite" are where some of the best conversations happen. I was lax with them going to bed but strict with them being quite and staying in there rooms. I do understand the reasoning for them having a lights out and I see the effects of them staying up late. I see students sleeping during the sessions and see students showing up to the nurse during competition time feeling terrible then finding out that they only slept a few hours last night. But I feel that the students make memories, build real friendships, and experience an environment that allows them to dive deep into challenging questions. In other words, It's time well spent.
All of the things I got to do were physical and hands on, the only time I felt kinda annoyed was when I tried to nap and was asked to help. I stood around with nothing to do but about 30 min later I had something to do. It was a great experience getting to see some of the things that happen behind the scenes. And last night I got more sleep than I did all weekend.

Home Videos and Intro to Sandblast

Our video went really well last week and the kids really enjoyed it a lot, I posted it on facebook. The kids were all engaged and laughed throughout the video. I also referenced back to the video when I was teaching too. In the video I pied Eric every time he said something discouraging. This weekend is about telling the truth so we are going to shoot the video tomorrow. The theme will be every time you lie you get a bucket of water dumped on you. We are going to have a situation where something gets broken, a ball gets thrown into a window and lands on someone's dinner, and someone lies about doing their homework/chores and is playing outside.
I also have sandblast this weekend too. Sandblast is the high school fri-mon summer retreat. There are going to be over 1300 high school students from all of the willow campuses. I wanted to go and be a small group leader but they didn't need any help and even said that they had emergency people on call incase of cancelation. So I asked where I could help out at and they needed more people to help run operations. Then she said something like "would you mind staying up late walking around campus?" And I all I want to do is serve so I told her I wouldn't mind. So, this may be a long weekend. I have to be at the church at 6:15 am on friday ready to go and I'm excited to see how God moves this weekend.

My first Teach

So it was kinda stressful at first to think about memorizing my lesson. I though that I should memorize it word for word but and that was really hard. I learned that as long as I knew the key ideas and not transition until I hit those then I would be alright. The kids seemed really attentive and I think part of it was that they never herd me teach from stage before. Another thing that was cool was that after church sunday night I sat down with Kerri and Eric and we talked about the content and delivery. We changed some of the content so the kids would understand a little better. I used a different transition sentence and took out a whole section and replaced it with a new one. So the first service on Sunday was a lot different than Saturday and after I taught I sat down with Jeff and we did kind of the same thing and for the next service I added some more things. I reread through a verse to change the move and transition into a more reflective part of the lesson and I fleshed out a situation so the kids would relate to it more. Overall I was really pleased with my lessons. I started off by giving everything to God and trusting him, I felt very prepared and memorized up. It was cool being able to improve the teach as the weekend progressed. The size of Willow causes them to evaluate a lot. There are a lot of resources that move around and without reviews those resources can be used poorly.

4th of July!

One thing that is cool about willow is that instead of backing down from holiday weekends and being fine with low attendance they do something really cool so you miss out if your gone. For example on memorial weekend Rebecca St. James led worship and this past weekend David Crowder led an all worship service and the auditorium was packed out. It was difficult in some grades to get volunteers; in one room they only had 4 volunteers and about 100 kids. Last week I started to get ready for my teach next weekend and I'll continue to prepare for it this week, memorizing, practicing and revising. And the high school retreat is the next weekend. Students from all of the willow campuses coming; over 1200 students. I talked with someone in Impact and they said that they had plenty of small group leaders for the weekend so I'm going to be doing operational things, probably like staying up all night walking around campus or something. I also finished up my book review last week but didn't quite get to the verbatim.