Great end to summer!

We ended summer in a great way yesterday, wrapping up our Jesus by the Water series and our Hot August Nights. Wednesday night we welcomed the Waldo and Cascade Fire Departments, who led us in some great fire fighter games. You can see about 30 pics in the gallery to the right. Although it was not a "Hot" August night, we still had a lot of fun.

We ventured to the "Jordan River" in the afternoon, learning a little about baptism and pooped out coffee. You see, in Asia they produce the greatest coffee on Earth, called Kupi luwak. In Europe it goes for about $30 a cup, and in the US you can pick some up for somewhere between $100-$600 per pound (and you thought Starbucks was bad!). What makes this coffee so great and so expensive? Well, it's because it the coffee cherry, containing the little bean that is used to make coffee, is first eaten by a little cat called a Kopi or Civet. The digestive juices in this cat bring about out some amazing flavors in the coffee bean. The coffee bean then "exits" the cat (I don't need to say any more do I?), and is then collected by farmers (a job I would NEVER want). Despite tons of attempts to bring out these amazing flavors in a laboratory the only way to truly get the best coffee remains through this interesting feline process. So why, other then the fact that I'm strange, do I bring up this story? Well, because just like this process is the only way to make this coffee the best possible, so only through God can we be the best possible. Although baptism is not itself the process by which we are saved, it represents that process. When we ask for forgiveness God cleans us up, removing the bad stuff from our life and keeping the good there. God makes us the best possible. Our challenge then is to live that out, allowing others to benefit from the life God has changed.

New stuff on site

Just wanted to point out that we've just updated our schedules for both groups for fall and added the first batch of pictures from the high school Dolfin's Cabin Retreat. Everyone who has been involved with our ministry in the past should be receiving a packet of info about the year in the mail sometime this week. As a reminder, we look forward to see our middle schoolers this Wednesday at both 1pm and 6:30-8pm. We will be at my house at 1 and then enjoying fire fighter night at 6:30. I've posted some pictures from when we held this event last year. Bring your friends and see you Wednesday! I've also added another 30 or so pictures to the high school Dolfin's Cabin gallery, so make sure to check that out as well.

Ending summer in a big way

It has been a huge summer around here for our ministry. We've been up north twice, as well as all the way to So. Cal. We've had a lot of fun, some great worship, learned a lot, and hopefully drawn closer to God. It's been a blast of a summer for me, but now it's time to start thinking about fall. Last night our High School Ministry wrapped up their summer with a bigger and better hunt. We did this two years ago, and it was massive fun. That year we gave 3 groups a paper clip and told them to trade it for bigger and better things. The groups came back with a refrigerator, a motorcycle, and an entertainment center. This year we ended up with a live goat, a fridge, and a snow blower. On Wednesday we have two great opportunities for middle schoolers. We will be wrapping up our Jesus on the Water program at my house from 1-2:30 and everyone is invited. We hangout, play some games, and have a short Bible lesson. Then Wednesday night from 6:30-8:00 we will have a couple of local fire departments helping us out for our annual Fire Fighter night. The students get a chance to compete in fire fighter games using the big hoses. It is a huge amount of fun, so bring a friend and come on over.
Alright, everyone enjoy your last moments of freedom and the great weather we're having!

The week ahead

Hey all
I PROMISE I will start getting some HS Dolfin Cabin stuff up sometime this week. Its just been busy with everything we've got going on plus our family vacation to Lake Geneva. We have some great stuff coming up for both groups this week. Tomorrow is our MS Mission Day. We will be working on a house as well as doing some work around the church. Our MS summer Bible study will also be meeting Tuesday, from 2-3 at Diane's. Wednesday we will be doing the giant slip and slide with our MS group, so make sure you're at that. We'll meet at church at 6:30 and return at 8:00.
Our HS group will close their Summer schedule with a bigger and better hunt on Sunday. Please make sure you're on time so we can get the game going right at 5:30. We will end at 7:00.

Alright, I am off to Milwaukee for Abby's knee surgery. Please keep her in your prayers as the doctors work to repair her knee and she starts the recovery process. Have a great and blessed week everyone!

Random Stuff

US lost to Mexico in soccer last night 2-1, which somewhat bums me out because we actually could have won in Mexico City for once. Oh well, at least the Cubs are still way better then the Brewers...
We had a great retreat last weekend with our high schoolers up at Dolfin's Cabin. We were able to do a lot of very fun stuff as well as spending some time talking about how we can connect to God in powerful ways throughout our life. We'll get more details about the trip up soon, but big thanks again to Todd and Laura for the use of their cabin for yet another retreat. They have such loving and servant driven hearts that's is really humbling to me sometimes. Having them in this church is definitely a huge blessing to our ministry.

Our MS ministry has been super busy this week. We had our MS Bible Study on Tuesday, which is involving a lot of different student's in God's word this summer. I am so thankful to Diane for leading this group so well. It's awesome to have powerful ministry going on where I don't have to do anything about it, and that's a great testament to Diane's abilities. Wednesday we had 20 students at our house for our Jesus on the Water program. We played Mario Kart, some outdoor games, and talked about letting Jesus serve as the fuel for our life. It was fun to meet some new students as well. Then Wednesday night we had a MS pool party at Mike and Diane's. I got a thousand balls thrown at my head, had half the group try to dunk me at some point (they all failed too I might add), and had a blast making some great whirlpools (not quite as crazy as some of the HS ones though). It was just a fun day of connecting with a bunch of great Middle Schoolers.

Well, I'm off for a few days of relaxation at Lake Geneva before everything gets to crazy around here. High Schoolers, we will see you on Sunday from 5-8 for our special Beach Party to honor our seniors. We will be meeting and returning to the church.
Have a great and blessed week in which you find time to connect to God everyone!

HS Dolfin's Cabin is here!

Tomorrow it is back up north for our ministry as our HS group heads for their retreat at the Dolfin Cabin. The bus will be leaving HRC at 6pm (please be there by 5:45), and we will be returning to church at 8pm Sunday night. Our theme for this weekend is ReFuel. We will be studying Doug Field's ReFuel book, learning how we can stay connected to God day in and day out so that our life is live on full, not E. Doug's book is wonderful, and I look forward to walking through it together this weekend. Of course, we have a lot of other fun stuff planned, including rafting, tubing, jet skiing, swimming, war games, and some energy filled worship times. I'm excited, and I hope all our students are too. I will see you up there as I am heading with our "worship team" up Thursday morning, but the leaders will be there with smiles on their faces to greet you at 5:45 (and if they're not smiling hit them for me). Ok, see you soon!

MS Dolfin Cabin: Part 4

This is the last in our four part series on the happenings of our Middle School retreat July 24th-26th. Checkout the previous posts below to learn even more. For you visual types there is a photo gallery of the trip to the right with over 100 pics of our exciting weekend. Enjoy.

Sunday Morning
Well, we finally tired the students out so Sunday morning actually started somewhat according to plan. After breakfast our students split into their small groups to discuss the material from the Saturday night worship session. After that we all headed into the worship center for our final worship time together.

We opened worship with our high schooler "performing" Let's see How Far We've Come with Guitar Hero guitars and fairly crazy costumes. If I had a dollar for every laugh that group got this weekend I'd be doing pretty good. The theme for our third worship time was Made to be Salt and Light. The high schoolers did two "dramas" for us, entitled Voices of Need. The first one focused on the physical needs so many people have and the great amount of poverty that exists throughout our world. Each student read the real words of someone in the world suffer from poverty, poor health conditions, war, famine, etc. The second drama focused on spiritual needs. Each high schooler read the real story of a teen in our country struggling without Christ in their life, or simply struggling with their faith. The message then focused on what it means to be salt and light, which Jesus tells us we're meant to be. Salt makes things better, which we all know from how often we put it on foods or choose salted peanuts, chips, etc. over the non-salted version. The point is that God wants us to make this world, with his hunger, poverty, poor health, wars, violence, etc. a better place. God wants us to be part of the solution. God also wants us to be light. Light makes even the darkest and scariest spaces seem not so bad, because it shows the way. In the same way we are supposed to be a light shining people towards God. This happens not only when we tell someone about God, but also when we live our life according to God's word, loving everyone we encounter as we love ourselves.
Worship 3 Set-list:
Let's See How Far We've Come: Matchbox 20
Take It All: Hillsong United
Automatic: Stellar Kart
The Stand: Hillsong United
With Everything: Hillsong United
Shine: Fee

After worship our students headed for their final small groups. The session was focused on serving others with a sense of humility. Students looked at the story of Jesus humbling himself by washing the disciples feet, and then headed into the worship center for our own footwashing experience. We treated this as a commissioning to head back home and meet the needs of others with the love of Christ, being God's salt and light. After a time of prayer everyone headed to lunch and their lake activities. By this second day on the lake tubing slowly turns into scenes from Ben-Hur, with students jumping onto other's tubes, kicking them off, etc. Fun to watch, but I was glad not to be in there. They sure had a blast out there though.

Finally, following a beautiful day on the lake it was time to clean-up and head home. What a blessing it is that Todd and Laura allow us to use this amazing place every year. It's really like having our own private retreat center, and we are all EXTREMELY thankful. Thanks also to all of our leaders and high schoolers for giving their time to make this a successful weekend. It takes a ton of work over several months, but it's so worth it when you see the student's passionately worshiping, getting into the word, getting the points of messages, and loving each other. Thanks again to everyone for a great retreat.