rivers of joy

Ok, I started this blog a few days ago and didn't finish because I was tired but I feel that the info is still good so here is a couple paragraphs from the other day...

You know how in the Gospels people were just amazed by Jesus? I mean he just spoke words and they were amazed. If you read my last post, you'll know that in Kenya we talked about being amazed by the work of Christ and how we don't give him enough credit for the work he does. And for some reason tonight I am about to go to bed with an overwhelming list in my head of ways I am amazed by Christ, or things that I'm just thankful for in life.

Jesus was a healer, no doubt about it. And while I maybe have never seen a physical healing, I have seen Jesus heal several broken relationships and stuff like that in my life. Sometimes it took years, but lately I feel like I've been seeing it happen in like super fast motion, like Wolverine healing fast, and it's amazing. Just stuff that has happened that I thought would take a really long time to move past, Jesus has just stitched up so quick so that I can just enjoy the people in my life and not hold on to stuff. I don't know how he does it. Good work Jesus.

And tonight, we had this All-Area worship thing where a bunch of churches got together and had one big worship service, and also took time to meet together in school groups to encourage kids to reach their schools for Christ. That picture is of a whole bunch of Ralston Valley kids praying for their school. It was so scattered and seemingly disorganized, but the youth pastors were able to cast the vision so well and so many kids left tonight pumped about living out their faith at school. Wow. Again, Jesus, mad props to you.

And that's about when I started falling asleep so I stopped writing. But the fact still remains true that I have been in awe of Jesus lately. I mean, I always have, but sometimes I think we really easily forget to give credit to God for what's going on in life, and lately I've been remembering and having my world rocked basically. It's cool. Try it. I dare you.

The past few days have been pretty sweet I must say. On Thursday I got to hang out with Kayanne again, she's pretty great.

That's us after we hiked a sand dune in Peru. No big deal, it's just on a long list of adventures we've had together, which, just as a review, include doing high ropes course things, hitchhiking, blowing out a tire on the highway at night, etc. She's in town for awhile, so hopefully something exciting enough will happen that we can add to the list.

Then Thursday night I relived NOLA days for a bit. My friend Tim bought a house in bad condition that he's gonna fix up and redo and stuff. Right now he's in the demo stage, during which he's essentially gutting the house. So on Thursday a few of us got to help by tearing wood paneling off the studs in the basement. It was funsies, and really took me back to the days of ripping out drywall in houses in New Orleans, as seen in that picture there. Man, I really miss those days.

Then Friday, Beth has 7th block off so she gets out of school early so we went swimming on what was one of the best weather days ever in life ever. That was probably the last summer-type thing I'll do. But then the next thing we did was even better...

See, Bethany borrowed this tandem bike from some people, and her and Bonnie rode it to school that morning. But Bonnie was not a fan so Beth and I went back to the school when it was over to get the bike and ride it home. I had never ridden a tandem bike, and I'm kindof scared of regular bikes as it is. But it was awesome, I must say. All the high school kids were like cheering for us and thought we were so cool for riding it through the school parking lot. Oh man, it was fun. I highly recommend trying one sometime in life. I'm sorry I don't have picture evidence.

Then the rest of the weekend since then has been filled with hanging out with people, including all the kids back in town for college, and it's way fun.

I'm just very thankful to God for all the people in my life. I feel so incredibly blessed. So many people to see this weekend, then my parents visit next weekend, then Jen visits the weekend after that!! Wow, so great.

Life's not perfect, but I'm loving it anyway. I love these rivers of joy...