My Story: Part II

Every aspect of my life was changing and I didn’t even realize it. The group of friends I hung out with was changing without me even thinking about it. The activities I was participating in were completely different, and I didn’t care much that I was giving up the things from before. I’ve realized through time that I often separate myself from things when I know I’m going to have to leave them, and that’s exactly what happened as I went into my senior year of high school. This is a story about relationships.

Around the beginning of my senior year I got invited to go to a Bible study by a friend of mine. I knew of a few guys who went, but hadn’t hung out with them or really talked to them before. I had been involved in a co-ed Bible study before this, but this wasn’t just a Bible study. It was a support group. It was a group of guys who all wanted to do whatever we could to help the other guys understand God better and grow in a deeper relationship with Him.

I’ve realized that there are a lot of people in life who are going to be temporary friends. They’re people who you enjoy hanging out with and spending time with, but time apart leads to more and more separation until you no longer have anything in common. There are other people, who due to the amount of time you spend with them or the common interests that you have, who will stand the test of time and always be friends. They know you well enough and understand where you’re going enough that even in 20 years, they’ll still be a friend even if not currently present in your life. These are the kind of friendships I began to put my time into.

The friends I met through the Bible study are friends I’ll have for the rest of my life. They’re guys who wouldn’t let me mess up. Trying to hide things wasn’t an option. I fell into conviction every week. Every time I opened the Bible I was reading about the way God was hoping I would live my life. I began to want to live in a new way in order to honor Him for the sacrifice He made. I’ve recently heard some preaching about how heart-broken Jesus must’ve been about dying on the cross for Him to have started sweating blood while praying days before. He knowingly let people torture and kill Him. For the first time in His life, His Father couldn’t look at Him and turned His face away. He knew all that was coming, but still allowed Himself to be crucified because of His love for us and His love for God. The more I realized this, the more I wanted to repay Him with obedience.

I quickly learned and understood that “bad company corrupts good character” as 1 Corinthians 15:33 teaches. I was continually being held to a higher standard, and it helped me to escape areas of sin in my life that I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge previously. I was changing, and because of it, I was losing friends very quickly. Although, I was gaining friends that I’d have for a lifetime.

The time came for me to pick a college to attend. I didn’t want to go on college visits. It seemed like a huge waste of time. I just started praying about where God would lead me and that my mind would just be free to follow His will. I had gone to the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse to visit a friend once before and as the decision came to pick a school, La Crosse seemed like the only option. I had heard from multiple people that they had a really great Campus Crusade for Christ movement. They were also being labeled as a tougher school to get into than Madison, and I’ve always enjoyed a challenge. I hadn’t been too sure what I wanted to go to school for yet, but there was a passage of the Bible that was in my mind the entire time. In Matthew 19:16-30, a rich young man comes to Jesus and asks Him what he needs to do to go to Heaven. Jesus tells him some of the commandments and the man tells Jesus that he has followed those commandments. Then, Jesus tells him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor. At this point the man went away.

I’ve always gotten fairly good grades, and I have a mathematical mind that I knew could take me into professional fields where I would make a lot of money. But, I was scared. I didn’t want to gain the amount of possessions or have the kind of money that would keep me from fully following God, so I initially got scared away from scientific fields. I knew I wanted to spend my life telling people about Jesus, so I decided to go to La Crosse and get a Communication degree in preparation for going into full-time ministry.

I continued to get closer and closer to the guys in Bible study. I never would’ve become who I am without them. I had started getting really close with my friend Nick who ended up going to La Crosse with me the next year. I also was surprised at how much I could learn from two guys my own age: Mark and Chris. Both of these guys were teaching me something new every time I was with them. They were challenging me to be a new person and teaching me how to honor God with all of my actions. All of my life I thought if you were a Christian, you were good to go. The more I learned, the more I realized that the Christian life is an ever-growing relationship with God. A great analogy I was taught in Bible study was that the Christian faith is similar to walking up a down escalator. If we keep working hard and moving forward, we get closer and closer in our relationship with God, but as soon as we stop walking up, we start to go back down to where we came from. There is no stagnant area that I had previously believed in. My faith was becoming one of love and obedience.

I left high school with quite a few friends. Guys and girls I had met and hung out with through church and Bible study and a few guys and girls from high school. I don’t know what I would’ve done without any of these relationships. It taught me something that I think a lot of young Christians overlook; friendships outside of your church group are just as important as the friendships within the group. So many young people I’ve encountered leave all their friends behind when they start hanging out with young people involved in their church activities. Jesus taught us something different. Although the disciples were His closest group of friends, He often spent time with those people outside his group of disciples. He had dinner with them and spent time with them, even when His disciples weren’t present. I’m glad that my life has always left room for friends from all areas of my life, because I’ve learned a lot from all of them.

I got to UWL and got involved with Campus Crusade as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to leave any room for temptation and mistakes. I quickly met some great people and began to get involved with as many activities as I could. The greatest friendships were formed with the people who I knew would be around when I needed to escape. I always knew I could stop in my friend Nick’s room and hang out for a little while. It was also a much easier place to meet people due to his prime location near the exit door. I also had some friends I would hang out with off campus. I realized that there are times when the best way to think and listen to God is to remove yourself from everything you need to hear from God about. This is something I was able to begin learning during my time in high school with friends like Kristy, Elyse, Rem, and Dan, but I hadn’t completely understood it until I started hanging out by the exit door of Nick’s dorm room.

At the end of my freshman year I found out about an opportunity to go on a trip called a summer project. I ended up applying for a couple locations and praying that God would open the doors if He wanted me to go. Everything ended up working out. I wrote support letters and raised the necessary money to go on the trip, and ended up going to San Diego for three months and working at Sea World. I met a ton of awesome people during my time there, and learned a lot about different ways to share my faith with the people around me. It was an awesome experience.

Relationships continued to grow as I moved off campus sophomore year. I wouldn’t say that I was growing very much at this point. There were a lot of new people in my life, and I was so busy hanging out with them and getting to know them that I wasn’t spending time on my relationship with God. I’ve learned that even if I’m doing good things with my time, I still need to make time for my relationship with God. Our relationship with God is very similar to our relationship with each other. Time apart causes the relationship to dwindle. God wants to spend time with us just the same as we hope to spend time with our closest friends and family.

Midway through sophomore year I was challenged to pray about going on another summer project. I hadn’t had much desire to go again, but I thought it may be worth going if I were to go on an international one. I talked to my friend Will, who I had met in San Diego, about going to Australia, and we decided we would apply, pray about it, and see what happened. We both ended up getting accepted, but a couple months before the trip Will found out he had the opportunity to go to Airborne school and decided to go that route. I was excited for him and excited for Australia, even though he wasn’t able to come. Sometimes the only way to get us where God wants us to go is for Him to arrange things in a way that we see attractive, even if that’s not the way He eventually desires things to work out.

In Australia I was able to use all the things I had learned in San Diego. I met some great students from Australia and some students from India who had come to Brisbane for Uni (University). I was having a good time and forming some great relationships when Nick sent me an e-mail letting me know one of my really good friends from UWL had gotten in a car accident and passed away. It felt so surreal, and I felt completely helpless. It’s something I will never understand. It taught me more than I’ll ever be able to explain. I learned that God’s plan is bigger than mine and that I need to trust Him when I can’t make sense of things. There is a reason Sarah passed away at the age that she did, and all I can do is trust that God is in complete control and will use her death to further His kingdom. It also became very real to me that any moment can be my last, or the last of any of my friends. I want to cherish every moment I have with people, and never leave a word unsaid. I want everyone I encounter to know my story and how Jesus became the only way for me.

My last two years at La Crosse were awesome. I got to live with Mark and Joel, two guys I knew from Bible study and church in Racine, along with Andy who I had yet to get to know. We all enjoyed playing sports and doing things outside, so we stayed very active together. This also allowed us to find things to do with other guys on campus. We were also able to host Bible study in our house for some time and had an open door policy for whatever friends wanted to come and hang out. It will definitely be two of the most memorable years of my life. We had a ton of fun together and built into each other based on what God was teaching us individually. I was also able to form close relationships with Taryn, Kelsey, and Jamie (Mark’s wife now!); three girls who, through their friendships, began to teach me the difference between the way guys and girls think and act on things. Fortunately, all six of these people will be in my life for a long time and I’m sure will continue to teach me new things every time we talk.

As graduation was coming, I needed to decide what to do when school was over. Two friends from high school had a serious conversation with me one night after a couple hours of video games. Dan and Rem told me that they had always felt I was ignoring some of my God-given gifts by pursuing the degree that I did. They knew I had strengths in math and science and brainstormed with me about different paths I could’ve taken. I remember Dan telling me that God gives us gifts to use for Him, and that God will give certain people the mission of going to tell others about Jesus, while giving others the mission of sending those people. Dan helped me realize that I have the gifts to be a sender. I can still talk to others about Jesus and share my faith with everyone around me, but with the gifts I have I can help send multiple people into their “mission field”.

I don’t know why I chose MSOE over any other engineering schools. I guess I didn’t want to give God very many options. I hadn’t enjoyed college very much and wasn’t very excited about the idea of going back. But, I decided to apply to Milwaukee School of Engineering and see what God would do with it. I prayed and told God that I would be happy to attend if I got accepted, otherwise I would pursue a career utilizing my communication degree. I ended up finding out a few months later that I was accepted into the architectural engineering program at MSOE, and enrolled to start school the following fall, when I quickly realized how unique it was to have the core group of friends that I had established.

I’ve decided to stop here for the day. I hope to keep these short enough that you can finish them without getting too bored or distracted. I’m hoping that Part III will finish it off with a little bit about my time at MSOE and the way God has been teaching me through the separation from all the friends that built into my so much through the last 10 years.

Why Jesus? - My Story

PREFACE

As I was studying at the University of Wisconsin- LaCrosse for my communication degree we did a lot of self-reflection and self-realization tests. The more you know about yourself, the easier it is to understand your faults and weaknesses, and the easier it is to understand your strengths. During those years, I started to learn about myself, and really learned about why other people act the way that they do.

Personally, I realized that I learn the most from experience. It bothers me that our society has moved so far away from the idea of apprenticeships, when you can learn more about almost anything by doing it than you can by merely talking about it. I travel because everywhere I go, I see new things and meet new people. allowing me to learn something new every time. I can learn by just observing something, or I can learn by experiencing something or being a part of something. Regardless of when and where I learn things, I know one thing for sure - I learn the most from the things around me. I could sit in seclusion all day, every day, and learn some stuff, but not nearly as much as I can learn by just experiencing the things around me.

During all the time I've spent traveling, living in different areas, and meeting new people, I've learned a ton from the people I've encountered. Everyone has a story, and the awesome things is, every story is different! I learn about why people react the way they do when certain things happen in life. I learn about what makes people happy and sad. I learn about what in people's pasts may've caused them to become who they are now. Learning doesn't end after school. The reason I write these blogs is for two reasons. Firstly, so that those people who are in my life who I love dearly, but don't have the time to talk to very often can be a part of my life without needing direct communication. Secondly, I'm often told that I'm a very unique individual, and I hope that the experiences I have had in the past and continue to have now can encourage you, and also give you the opportunity to learn, whether it's about me or something you can bring into your own life.

Everyone that reads my blog posts knows where I'm at now and that my heart is on God, but very few probably know why I made that choice. This is going to be an extended background of why I chose Jesus and how I know I'm going to Heaven. Hopefully you can relate, or even find a place in the story where you played a role!

THE STORY

The Beginning

One of the earlier things I can remember in life are times where I'd be lying in my bed at night thinking about Heaven and Hell. I have no idea how old I was, but I know that I was scared. I had just started to understand the idea of eternity, and it freaked me out. Somewhere along the line I had heard that I was going to either live forever in Hell or live forever in Heaven. I didn't want to live forever, but then I would think of the ultimatum... dying forever, and that seemed like a pretty horrible option as well. The idea of forever completely freaked me out, and I'd be in tears every time I thought about it. I knew I didn't want to be in the Hell that I had been taught about in my private school (which I'll talk about shortly), but even living forever in Heaven was a scary thought. It took me a couple years to grow out of this, but I'll come back to that in a little while.

My dad was raised in a Christian home and attended church with my grandparents for the beginning of his life. My mom was raised in a strong Catholic home and attended church with my other grandparents for the beginning of her life. When they got married, they had to make the decision of which church to be a part of, so they compared their beliefs to what they knew the Bible taught. There were certain things the Catholic Church teaches and believes in that my parents found to be unBiblical, so they decided to be a part of Racine Christian Reformed Church - the church my dad had grown up in, which was started in the basement of my Great Great Uncle. The church was "connected" to a private school which my dad had attended for 1st-9th grade. The same school that my sister and I would attend for K-8th - Racine Christian School.

I remember be confused by the troublesome students and why they would want to act in the way that they did... until 4th grade. In 4th grade, I became that student. I was a smart kid and I often got bored in school, so I resorted to messing around and getting in trouble. At first, it was just little things here and there, but by the time I reached middle school I was hanging out with the wrong crowd. I WAS the wrong crowd. The things we were doing weren't horrible, but they were things that weren't okay, such as throwing snowballs at recess, throwing our extra lunch food at the playground equipment to watch it explode, and playing pranks on each other during class. We'd sneak out of class and see how long it took the teacher to notice we were gone, just for the thrill of it. I guess I must not have been one of the worst, since I stayed out of trouble for the most part, but I definitely remember that I wasn't one of the best.

The whole time I was attending this school, I was also attending the same church. I was baptized there as a baby. I went to church every week with my family, and usually Sunday school the morning of church. Starting in 2nd or 3rd grade I was involved with a group of boys called Cadets, which I attended weekly. We went through Bible studies, but other than that it was very similar to Boy Scouts. We earned badges and had outings for camping, bowling, pinewood derbies, etc. I was hearing a lot about God and a lot about the Bible, but all I was doing was hearing it.

In 8th grade I attended a middle school day camp put on by a few churches in Racine. At the camp, I had seen people talk about Jesus in a way I had never seen before. The leaders were open and honest with us. I had enough time to gather that something was different, but not enough time to understand what it was. I told my dad I wanted to go to a different church: a church where I could hear people talking about Jesus the way they did at this camp. He told me that once I was old enough to drive, he would give me the freedom to go to church wherever I wanted to go.

Back to my fear of eternity. Eventually, after what seems like forever, I finally understood Heaven enough that I could calm myself down. I had to repeatedly remind myself that if God tells me Heaven is perfect, then it is. And, if Heaven is perfect, then spending eternity there can't be bad. I'd still get scared pretty often, but I just always reminded me of that truth. If our great, loving God created it, then I would just have to believe that I would enjoy it... for eternity. The idea of forever is still scaring me a little even as I type this right now, but I just hold fast to the promise God has given me that I'll be with Him some day in a perfect Heaven.

Freedom, and its Choices

High school. I had hoped to go to high school to a private school most of my friends were going to be going to - Racine Lutheran High, but, my parents wanted me to go to a public school closer to where we lived. I had been playing soccer since I could run, and I had really hoped to play in high school. Lutheran had a decent team, and the school I was going to - Union Grove High School, was launching their first year as a club team. I wanted to play real soccer, and from what I had gathered, a club team sounded like recess-type soccer. Nevertheless, my parents made the decision to send me to Union Grove High School (UG).

UG is on the country side of the interstate from Racine. The high school is comprised of 3 main middle schools. My middle school was not one of those 3, and I only knew a handful of people at the school. My neighbor Rem, and my friend Tyler who had gone to the same middle school as me, were the only two people I had any sort of relationship with. I was the new kid to everyone else. Even though they had gone to different middle schools, lots of the students knew each other from playing sports together or against each other growing up. Although I had been shy until now, I had to do something different, or I knew I was never going to have any friends.

Soccer season started before school, so I quickly got to know some of the guys on the team. Only myself and a couple other players had ever played before, and with my experience, I stood out from all but a couple guys. I was one of the best on the team, and I had a lot of the girls attention, because I was the new kid. I took advantage of this situation in as many ways as I could. I became a huge flirt, and tried to be as cool as I could figure how to be. It may've just been a skewed view of myself, but I recall being a little more mature than those people around me, so rather than finding friends my own age, I started hanging out with an older crowd. Lots of my friends at school were seniors and juniors. I quickly went downhill. I was attracted to the party scene. I was attracted to all the things I was hearing about high school girls. I was attracted to whatever fame I could get on the soccer field. I was attracted to the good grades I could easily pull off in my classes. Everything seemed like it was going great, but my life was becoming quite different than it had ever been before.

The things I'm about to write I am in no way proud of. I hope for forgiveness from everyone that was negatively effected by my actions. I ask forgiveness from those people in my life who were close to me at this time but may not have known my actions, especially my family. Also, some details will remain untold for the privacy of the other people involved.

Girls are attractive. God gave us women for companionship, and I wanted any, and all the companions I could get. It's pretty easy to kiss a high school girl. I was the new kid, remember? They were intrigued by what they didn't know. Fairly quickly that intrigue wore off, but I took full advantage of it while it was there. I dated girls for the first time. My older friends convinced me that although kissing was cool, there was a whole box of options that I hadn't even opened up yet. I started trying them out. Originally, just with girls I had a "romantic" relationship with, then quickly realized that I didn't need to be in a relationship with a girl to do some of the things I wanted to do. I went to parties, hoping to hook up with girls, and it worked. I would sneak out of my house and go to parties, or spend the night at the location of a party so that I wouldn't have to tell my parents what I was doing. Other parents didn't care if their kids were out partying and drinking, so my friends and I would just lie as to where we were staying or who we were hanging out with, then go to the other kid's houses.

Somehow, through all of these activities, I stayed true to three morals. I never got drunk. I never tried drugs. And I never had sex. I have no idea what kept me from doing those things, but I'm so glad that I was able to abstain from them!

Slowly, I began to realize that the party scene wasn't it. The alcohol wasn't it. The fame wasn't it. The girls, well... they were still an option for now. I like to think of this part of my life as the book of Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon, the richest man to ever live (even with the conversion factor!), tells us over and over that everything under the sun is a waste. He had the money. He had the power. He had more concubines than there are days in the year. If he lived today, he'd probably own a state. He'd have multiple luxury car lots on his land. The people living on his land with him would be mostly family, and any others would be personal slaves. He could buy anything he wanted to buy and he would have anything anyone could ever dream of having. Bill Gates has nothing on Solomon. Although I didn't have everything, I did experience things, and everything I experienced seemed to be missing something. Nothing satisfied.

During my junior year of high school a lot started to change. The friends I had hung out with for the first two years had all graduated, so I started forming better relationships with people my own age. Instead of going to parties to partake in the festivities, I was going and telling myself I was doing it to share Jesus with the people there. I'm pretty sure I was lying to myself and I just wanted to spend time with whatever girls were there. Regardless, I did actually have a few conversations about Jesus during that time. I was starting to act like the guy I was raised to be, rather than who I had been trying to pretend to be.

I finally had my license! That means, I was finally able to explore different churches. I'm pretty sure I started looking as soon as I got my license. My friend Rem came with me, and we checked out any church we had heard of. We visited almost every church that any of our friends had attended, and finally found separate church homes a few months after the initial visit. I found my home at Grace Church, one of the main churches involved with putting on Middle School Madness, the group I had opened my eyes a few years earlier. At first, I was just going by myself. I was trying to get friends to come with, but if they came, they'd only come once or twice. After a while my mom came and checked it out. I think she must've noticed something different with the way I talked about it. She started coming with as my dad and sister continued to go to our old church. After a little longer, they started coming as well. My whole family was being changed by the truth that was being preached in this church. It wasn't that our old church hadn't spoke the truth, but they weren't preaching it in a way that we could easily understand. Grace frequently preached a Gospel message, which was something we had heard, but not something that had ever been given as much importance as it was receiving at Grace. The Gospel message is pretty much part of the sermon devoted to explaining that we all sin and do things God has asked us not to, which according to the Bible is deserving of Hell, we are saved from Hell by God sending His Son to die on a cross in our place. The fact that Jesus died so that we didn't have to is the Gospel message.

Everything I had been hearing and learning took a little time to grow on me, but the summer before my junior year I spent three weeks straight in ministry positions. First, I had volunteered to be a leader at the middle school camp that had opened my eyes a few years before. The week after I had been asked to lead a group of students at vacation Bible school. Then, for week number three I went down to Mexico with some other high school students on a mission's trip. I had never really read the Bible much, but I was in it for three weeks straight, and God showed me during that three weeks who He truly was.

This is the "point of salvation". I was "saved". I became "born again". I had realized how much God loved me. I had realized how sinful I was as a person. I had read about who I was created to be, and realized I was nothing close to it. I prayed to God and told Him that I had messed up. I knew I wanted to go to Heaven, but I didn't understand what that meant. I didn't understand that that meant I had to reach out my hand and accept some of the blood that Jesus bled out while He was dying for my sins. I understood now, and I was overjoyed about what Jesus had done for me, but deeply saddened by the fact that my sins had to be paid for by someone else because I was inadequate. My biggest fear all of my life has been being inadequate, and I finally found an area where it was the only option. I prayed and told God that He gave His Son for me, so I would give my life for Him. I'd be willing to go anywhere. I'd be willing to do anything. My life was no longer my own, but I laid it out before God and told Him that I'm rightfully His, and that I want Him to use me in any way He desires. Death doesn't scare me, because I know that if it comes, it comes because my time here was done. God is in full control, and it is a daily prayer of mine that if there is anything in my life that is keeping me from fully serving God, that He would rid me of those things so I can clearly see His will and be fully utilized by Him. I'm His vessel, nothing more.

If you read this far, I hope that God is speaking to your heart through my story. I will post Part 2 in a day or two. Thank you to those people who have stuck by through all the battles of life. Thank you mom and dad for giving me the freedom to make mistakes, and I'm sorry that you may've learned some new things about me through this. Thank you all for the love and support you give me. Love you all!

Life's New Look

It's been a while since I've written anything to update everyone on how things are going. I shot out a could quick Facebook status updates as things were happening, but haven't really told the story for you guys to read. I haven't sat still in months, but I felt like I needed to share what's going on with my life right now.

My contract position ended on January 18th. The position had gone fairly well. I felt that I was doing a good job, and a couple employees had approached me and told me the same. The company was also very busy, so I knew that they needed as much help as they could get. A couple days before my contract ended I was invited into the conference room, and received a full-time offer as a Junior Mechanical Engineer. I took the position and I'm DWG Consulting's newest employee. It's been a great job, and I work with a ton of awesome people. Most of the people I'm working with are at similar places in life as myself. They're buying their first homes, having their first kids, getting married, paying off debt, and all the other fun things young people do. We put together a basketball team for a church league and we've been having a ton of fun getting our butts kicked every week! I've been putting in a ton of hours, usually 45-55 a week, but it isn't nearly as bad as it seems due to the people that I get to work with.

JOB DESCRIPTION

I'll just give a short description of the company and my job. Architecture firms design new buildings or renovate old ones, then send us a digital model of the space they've created. Everything you can see in a building is usually in their drawings. Then, once we get the model, we conduct calculations to determine the amount of air, lighting, electricity, and water needed for the building. Once the calculations are completed we can choose most of the equipment that we'll use: air handling units, water pumps, light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, and that type of thing. The final thing is to place the equipment and associated ducts, pipes, and light switch/ outlets into the model before sending it back to the architect for approval.

Personally, I've been conducting a lot of the calculations and doing a lot of the drawing. I have also been going on site visits to determine what the pre-existing conditions are for the buildings that we're renovating. We need to determine if we can re-use any equipment, and also have to develop demolition drawings at times. There are also some background tasks necessary such as writing narratives for what we plan to do with the space, and developing specifications, neither of which I've done very much of yet. I was recently approached about traveling to do site visits for one of our national clients, so some time in the near future I'll start flying around the country to look at renovating specific buildings to be plasma donation centers.

I do enjoy the job, and I hope to be at this company for a while, but I feel like I'm missing something. I have been trying to determine what else I can be doing during this time, but haven't made a concrete decision. I'll be moving into a new house sometime in March, and I'm hoping that once I get settled in it'll be much easier for me to make other decisions. I've been living out of boxes again for the last month waiting to find out where I was going to be living, so this will make it much more comfortable. Plus, I get to go back to Wisconsin and get some of my stuff and I get to move within walking distance of work! No more having to borrow things from other people all the time, and no more tourism traffic!

PLANS FOR THE NEAR FUTURE

After moving, I hope to start A Helping Hand up in the Charleston area. I want to find a hard-working young adult with construction experience to look over things while I'm at work, so that I can continue to fully commit to my engineering job, being able to delegate certain things to that person and others every evening after work. I have a business plan in place that I am sure will be successful, but I'm waiting on God to provide the right person for the job.

I also hope to start a city-wide worship night that would bring all the churches together for a night of worship completely separate from any individual congregation. It's difficult for me to see so many people working toward a common goal, but ignoring each other's existence. I haven't made much headway, but I have some ideas that I would like to look into to see if this is something that I could possibly put together for the Charleston area. I know people would come, but I need to find the appropriate band and the appropriate venue.

REGULAR, PRAYER REQUESTS

Please be praying that God would direct me in how to serve Him most effectively during this time. I don't have much time outside of work, so I can't spread myself as wide as I had been. I need to determine one or two areas that I can concentrate my efforts.

Pray for a band and a venue for what I hope to call Praise Jam. Pray for open doors so that this thing can really happen.

Pray that if God wants A Helping Hand to happen that the right person would cross my path.

Pray that God would bring a couple close friends into my life, whether it's friends who are already close moving here or developing deeper friendships with some people here.

BIG PRAYER REQUESTS

Our pastor challenged us at the beginning of the year to pray for some big things, because God tells us that He'll give us above and beyond anything we can ask or imagine. So, please, if you're called to, join me in prayer for the following things in my life.

Please pray that God would restore my health and take away my diabetes. I have been having a lot of problems with my blood sugars lately. Please pray that whatever areas of my life have been affected by the diabetes would be restored as well. I know through Christ that full healing can happen, so please help by digging a hole in the roof and lowering me into the house. (Mark 2:1-5).

Along with good friends, I'd love to start a family. Mom and Dad want to be able to play with their grandkids before they get weak and frail, and if I'm blessed with children I'd like them to know two very mobile grandparents as well. Please pray that God would bring a companion to the well (Genesis 24:42-45).



Thank you guys. Love you all!