Retreats, Daniel Study, and other things!

Hello all you people who are reading my blog,

I promised my Great-Grandparents that I would update by blog because I haven't updated in a long time. The reason is that I really haven't had anything to say. There is stuff going on with church and work, but it wouldn't be worth a post. I have a good amount of material to work with now, so it is a pretty good time to start posting again. Here it goes...

First off, I want to talk about the Fall Retreat we had a couple of weeks ago. I think this was a very different retreat. The theme was "Downpour" and we focused on the passage Isaiah 55 (mostly 1-11 with our theme being 10 & 11). I liked the curriculum better this year, but there were times when it was hard to find the flow. That could just have been from me personally. I did prepare for it, but it seemed like I was just all over the place. It threw me off a little bit that it was more girls than guys (I had 9 girls and 2 guys in my group). I am very thankful though that I had Eve Sarrett as the other leader for this group. She works with High School students all the time and she is such a fun and deep person. She really knew how to communicate with them, and it was great learning from her. The retreat was very good in pointing people to Jesus. The speaker was very dynamic. He could tell you a story that would make you laugh off your seat, and then he would bring the word making you look deep inside and ask the tough questions that you are afraid to ask yourself. It seems like at church, there is a fear of sharing the hard truths of the Bible. It reminds me of when Jesus started getting into his ministry and he spoke of repentance and sacrifice. The "religious" people started to leave, but then the sinners started drawing closer to him. I think we can learn something from that.

On a related note, I FINALLY finished my study on the book of Daniel! It was meant to be 13 weeks but it ended up turning into 20. Hey, it's a something! I really enjoyed studying the book of Daniel. To be honest, I was kind of scared to get into it after a certain point because of all the prophesies. I was thinking that I wouldn't understand it, it would hurt my head, and I would quit the study. I learned so much from the prophesy sections though! It really showed me how God has moved throughout history and how he keeps moving. There were some prophesies in there that were revealed to Daniel that didn't come to fruition for hundreds of years! Some haven't even happened yet! I would be so confused if I were him. I'm glad God didn't reveal that stuff to me. I would probably be in a corner crying because my brain would be hurting. Daniel was also a good character to study. He was unlike a lot of people in the Bible. He wasn't very confrontational, he tried to find sensible solutions to problems with those in authority, he didn't have any controversies - he was faithful to God throughout. One of my favorite parts in Daniel was that he was getting high in position and in favor with the King, and the others were taking notice. They said to each other that they had to get rid of Daniel. They tried to dig up some dirt on him, but couldn't find anything. So they said, "The only way to get rid of Daniel is force him to do something that is against his God." They then made it illegal to pray, and he prayed anyway. That alone is a testimony to me. Would you or I be arrested for praying? To be honest, I probably wouldn't make it past their first test. There is a bunch of stuff I could say about this study and a lot that I learned from it. I am thankful for the study, and I look forward to doing more from this author (Kay Arthur - New Inductive Study Series). I'm going to start the study of the gospel of Luke next. Let's hope it only takes 13 weeks this time!

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun! The whole family went down to Indianapolis to visit my Great-Grandparents and my Aunt Sue and Cousin Julia (Shout-out to my family who is reading this!) It was a time of good food, good conversation, and fun. The only bad part was that it rained on the way up, on the way back, and in-between as well! It seems to always rain when we travel there. I don't know why, it just does. If Indiana is ever in a drought, they need to call our house :-)

We had to cut our trip short because we had a concert to sing at with Michael W. Smith and friends. It was a very long day, but it was fun. I haven't sung that much in a long time, so my voice was going out on me. I need to rebuild my stamina if I'm going to do that again. If you are reading this and have some time, there are a couple of songs on his new album that he sung that are great (Welcome Home and You Belong to Me).

That's about it. I will blog again soon if something happens. Have a great rest of the day and a great Holiday weekend!