"Airportant Thoughts," or just travel worthy

I am currently sitting in the Tampa International Airport at 9:03 AM Florida time. As I was sitting here, wondering what to do, I decided I would do a random blog about my observations here at TIA...and thoughts, too, maybe

• First, I think it genius that they have free wireless here. It's like when you have a lap-top, your brain is wired to here all the laptop jargon. I was being jumbled through security, being asked to take my coat, shoes, and about everything else off when I heard them say they have free wireless. Bingo.
• While going through security at the airport, the security gentleman asked me to take my laptop out of my SC carry on bag. Oh boy. I unzipped it and unstrapped and hooked every corner but ONE and the guy was like, "Oh, nevermind, just put it back." No comment.
• I do appreciate all the security at airports, to say the least...especially after all the incidents over the holidays! They are really good about buckling down and making things as safe as humanly possible.
• I heard onthe radio the other day that a fad of the 2000 decade has been the growth and obsession with Starbucks. Sure. Then I saw two old ladies in wheel chairs, like 80, with their Starbucks. Okay, I wholeheartedly agree.
• I love how every restaurant in an airport turns into a restaurant that serves breakfast. Quiznos, Chili's....etc.
• I love how the "Observation Deck" is code for "Smoke Deck" -- just call it what it is!
• They always have movies about falling in love in the airport, or living in the airport. Oh, how honestly boring! The airport is SO boring.
• TIA does play good music. They played "New Soul" by Yael Naim, most of you probably know it from the IPOD commercial. I watched my bro and sis sit listening and moving silently to their IPODs, it was like a live commercial. haha.
• Over the break, I found these PINK sunglasses. They were pink rimmed, with pink lenses. I've decided that I LOVE a pink world. Everywhere you look, it's pink. I LOVE pink. Haha, I may miss color sometimes, though.
• I think it's cool how, in three hours, I will be in KS
• I could never travel for a living. Traveling makes me have narcolepsy. I fall asleep everywhere, all the time...and I am still tired! I feel like my friend, Lauren.
• Finally, when it comes to breaks, and what-not, I've decided I like being the "Leaver" rather than the "Leavee." The "leavee" always get's screwed. You, know? Like when you're little and your parents leave you with grandma to go on a cruise. They're the leavers, and you're the leavee. Now when you're the leaver, you're busy, so it's quite naturally the better position to be in. Being the leavee, you have like 2498948782 more hours in a day because you are either bored, or you miss the person that left you. As they say, the length of a minute has always depended on what side of the bathroom door you're on.

Thanks for listeing to my very "airportant" thoughts. Until next year, blessings and peace.

Name Me!

I've been thinking a lot about how God re-names people in the Bible lately. Examples: Abram is re-named Abraham, Sarai into Sarah, Saul into Paul. If God re-named me who would I be? I'm thinking Holly is a good bet. Hehe :P.

A Glorious Awakening!

It's been awhile since I have posted. I just wanted to jot this down while it was still fresh in my mind. Things have been going amazingly well with the prayer room effort. God has continuously been providing in ways that are unfathomable! This past Sunday we started decorating the prayer room with the supplies we have had donated. Jessica's home church and her Grandma's church have been amazing supports! We are also gearing up for 46 Hours of unbroken prayer this weekend. Unfortunately, because of library policy, we couldn't do our 46 hours of prayer in the library where our new prayer room is going to be, so we decided to rent out another hall on campus called "Wroten." It's a much bigger room with a whiteboard and will still require some decorating, but that's the wonderful and fun part! We are so excited about what God's going to do through this prayer weekend. After the prayer weekend, the prayer room in the library will be open for good during library hours and will be available to all students and staff. Tonight, Jessica and I led prayer group and we decided that we would ask everyone in prayer group to come down and help us "consecrate" the room for about 45 minutes or so. Usually our group runs anywhere from 5 to 7 people. Tonight there were 11 there, including one person who we've been praying specifically for! He's a guy we know on our campus who is on the brink of really committing to Jesus. Jessica started out prayer group with the purple journal I've referred to in earlier posts about the prayer room, and she read some of the prayers from years past. We told them our story and how we felt called by the Lord to do this prayer room thing, then we went down and asked everyone to help us consecrate the room. Currently we have three walls -- the "Welcome Wall" which tells people what the prayer room is about and includes some prayers from the purple prayer journal, the "Word Wall," which is for bible verses and other things the Lord's been speaking to people, and last of all we have the "Wailing Wall," which is a wall dedicated to prayer requests. While we were all off praying, writing, painting and drawing everyone was so dedicated. People were crying and praying over one another and hugging. Students were hanging their prayers and art all over the new walls. Then, at the very end, we all huddled in a circle and put our arms around one another and three students -- Jessica, Derreck, and Mariam led us in corporate prayer. IT WAS AMAZING. The spirit was so alive in the room, people were still crying silent tears and voicing loud "Yes's" in agreement to prayer. Afterwards, we had students stay around to talk to one another while a couple of other students spent time writing and drawing. The whole thing, which started at 9:15 p.m. was officially over at 11:30p.m. God is already doing an amazing work and I cannot wait to see what He does as this weekend approaches, and as this year continues. Thank you for all of your prayers! They mean the world. Jesus is changing students around here, He's giving beauty for ashes and bringing fresh restoration to those who are broken and lost in this mediocre world. It's truly a blessing.

Please keep praying! We'd love for you to pray specifically for our campus, our students, and also a couple of specific guys on campus who are really searching and finding Jesus. Pray for a breakthrough this weekend. A glorious awakening is taking place, of this I AM confident. God's moving. It's not about us, but about Him alone.

Blessings!

Seasons

For those following,

Things have been going well around here. Life, like always, has been quite busy and we've seemed to completely by-pass fall, which I am rather bummed about. 45-50 degree weather shouldn't be allowed yet ;). I am, however, enjoying the beauty of fall--especially here in Winfield and at SC. It seems like God hand paints our campus every fall, and as a girl from Western Kansas where there's no tree in sight, I LOVE it! That's been great. Our campus, over the past week has had somewhat of a hard time. One of our fellow students and his family lost his parents in a tragic car accident last week, another student lost his brother to an illness, another his cousin in a car accident, and I had a friend that lost one of her high school classmates in a car accident.

Looking back, last week was a week of challenges. As things were happening, there would be so many times that I would be in prayer asking God "why!?" Sometimes we just don't understand--sometimes we will never fully understand purpose and tragedy until we see God face-to-face. Through it all, I felt God telling me, very clearly in fact, to hold on to the knowledge that "He is good." Grief is an interesting thing. It's something that is so difficult to see and even more difficult to go through. However, it has such a bonding quality. I've never seen our campus come together more than they have since last week.

Today, chapel was quite the blessing. The student whose parents passed last week was there to sing and help lead with all of his heart in worship--a very touching sight and a testimony of faith to many. Another couple of ours at SC also got engaged at chapel today! It was very sweet. Chapel was packed out with many SC students and staff to come together and celebrate--a very different feel and theme from last week's chapel. Last week, the SC family came to grieve and realize that in life, there is a time for sadness. This week, the SC family came together to celebrate, and realize that in life, there is also a time for joy!

At the end of chapel today, I yet again heard God's voice in my heart whisper "See, I am good...." and He didn't just say that to prove a point and I don't just say that because today was a day of joy. Without last weeks sorrow, this week would have been "joyful" in a very different way. I don't exactly understand the mystery of grief, but I know there are seasons of it and those seasons contribute to the joy factor that follows. SC had a valley last week--the lowest one at that, but our "mountain" was only as high as it was this week because of our sorrow last week. I am not sure if this exactly makes sense, but I sure hope it does. I think it's important to pick up on.

May I pass on the message again, and again, and again....

God is indeed good. He's good.

And may we believe it again, and again, and again

House of Prayer, anyone?

So awhile back at the end of August (I beleive), I posted a blog about how God had really been moving through my heart and my mind to start a prayer room on the SC campus. I had talked with my friend, Jessica about it and she had some of the same feelings over the summer, too. Eventually our Greek language class got cancelled and we needed an extra class to bump our schedules back up to 16 credit hours. On a long shot, we confronted our campus minister, Ashlee Alley and told her what God was doing in our hearts. We then asked her if she wouldn't mind overseeing a 3-hour Independent Study class on prayer. To say the least, God has really been exploding lately! Jessica and I are reading a book for our class called "Deep Unto Deep" by Dana Candler. It's a book about personal prayer. Dana Candler is a prayer leader at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. One of our assignments for our class is to interview prayer leaders. Because of that, Jessica and I decided it would be fun and beneficial to visit IHOP in Kansas City over Fall break in October and I also contacted Dana Candler to see if we could possibly meet with her. She ended up e-mailing me back saying that she would love to meet with us and if she couldn't she said she'd try to find someone else from the International House of Prayer to meet with us! Way cool or what?

Also, another organization called Campus America is headquartered in Kansas City. Campus America is simply an organization that promotes 24/7 prayer and seasons of 24/7 prayer on college campuses. I heard a man named Pete Greig speak at the June Desperation Conference over the summer in Colorado Springs about the 24/7 prayer movement. He is actually one of the founders of Campus America. I figured since they are headquartered in Kansas City, too it might be fun to try to meet with some people from the Campus America team. Just today I got an e-mail back from one of the girls on staff saying she would set up a meeting for us with some of their leaders! How exciting!

Also, today Jessica and I went to talk to Ashlee Alley about some things that had been going on in our "class time." About a week ago, Jessica and I went into the small chapel that is in the library and we found a book of prayers. The book is dated from 2000 up till now. We read the book and ended up taking to to read through the prayers. Many of the prayers ask God that He would show the chapel in the library to people and that people would use it. Also, many of the prayers ask God for a revival and revolution on the SC campus. When we found that book, we just knew that we should try to find out if we could make that small chapel into a prayer room. We asked Ashlee about it today and she was all for it. She told us to ask the library managers about it to see if we could possibly use it. Right after our meeting with Ashlee, we headed over to the SC library to meet with Veronica, the library manager. We told her about what we were wanting to do and she was all for it.

Throughout this whole process we've been asking God to make things smooth...we've been asking God to open up doors and told Him we'd accept challenges to make this prayer room a possibility on our campus. So today, when things went so smoothly...I don't know why we were surprised! We prayed.

I'd ask that all of you would continue to pray for this project and prayer room. Continue to pray for the students on the SC campus. God is doing amazing things through so many people. He is good! Very, very good.

We are shooting to open the prayer room on November 20 with a kick-off of worship, corporate prayer and then a season of continual 48 hour prayer on campus. We are REALLY excited for what God has in store. Keep praying!

Take Off Was Good

Yesterday, at 9:40 AM, Epic Church officially launched! Words cannot express how amazing it is to be sitting here right now writing this blog. I am honestly in awe of Epic's first "harvest." Over the summer, while working for Epic, I would pray continually for launch--launch was always "on the mind." There were times when, in prayer, I would feel so barren and honestly sometimes, I felt like things were never going to reach a harvest point. Launch was almost incomprehensible to me. I soon realized that, with churchplanting, you just never know. You do everything wandering if you're doing stuff right and then you realize that church planting is more a test of trust than anything else.

Yesterday morning while I was in my own little theatre waiting on my children, I was wondering how things were going, it was sooo hard for me not to leave my theatre and go into the big theatre at the Warren where the actual worship service was held. Even at 9:40 I had NO kids. I was really starting to freak-out a little bit. Then, at about 9:42 here come ten kids all at once into the elementary room. Nine boys and one girl. I was suuuuper excited to have ten kids--which was perfect for me. La Shawn, Da Shawn, La Shayla, Mason, Shay, Eli, Jacob, Ethan, Rylan, and Andrew--you're my first kids EVER. We worshipped and danced, then we watched our video curriculum "Kidmo" where we learned about how BIG God is. After that we talked about God and who He is...and then, my favorite part...we prayed together. I had one student volunteer to pray for us, listening to him almost made my cry just sitting there. He thanked God for Epic church and prayed for some other student's prayer requests and then he thanked God for freedom and our soldiers fighting overseas (where this came from, I don't know, I'm guessing home!). We ended our time with a game of Simon says, which actually turned into "Mason says, La Shawn says, Da Shawn says, La Shayla says..."

So, officially, Epic launched out with 180 people total. I'm guessing the rough break down of that is 30 volunteers, about 20 children in the children's ministry, and 130 people at service. What a GREAT day! Not to mention there were about 15 more kids in the actual service that didn't participate in the children's ministry...that's exciting for me!

We ended the day with a Brisket feed at the Smokes house...yummy!! I can't wait to see how God is going to provide in the coming months--even this morning I was looking at a bulletin from the main service that one of my friends brought home and I just couldn't believe it...we are actually a church! It's such a surreal feeling. God is good--I don't say that casually, He really is good. I'd ask that you'd continue to pray for the development of the Epic community God has formulated and still is formulating. For those who have been a part of Epic Church in prayer--thank you, seriously prayer has been the driving force. Now I'm just rambling...but I am SOOO very excited. These are exciting days indeed!

La-La-La-La LAUNCH!!! Prayer.

This Sunday, September 13, 2009 the church plant I work with, Epic, will be launching out for the first time in Andover. Now's the time to assemble, prayer warriors! I want to ask that you'd PRAY, PRAY, PRAY like crazy for launch this Sunday!! I am so excited to see how God is going to work in and through Epic Church and this Sunday is the official start of it all. Would you pray with me!!!!!??

I'll update after Sunday, until then...cheers to prayer!