Wild Weekend

Ok, so yeah. I slacked off. Have't updated this thing in 3-4 days. My bad.

Let's see if I can catch up:

Oh, last Thur, Luke Penner and I were assigned to give the message Sunday morning at the Merrilville COC. Given topic was humility.

Friday:
Staff Meeting with the leaders of the Chicago COC. Great talks on why we need to be active in sharing our faith and even planting churches. That night we had a barbecue and campus devo at the Zillman's. Tried to start my message with Luke for Sunday, but we didn't get anywhere. We did recognize the problem of people not being open with others, and considered that a good direction.

Saturday:
Morning, we drove to Merrilville, right over the Indiana/Illinois state line. There we met Aaron Breford and his house church, and began inviting people to a church service they would have the next day at a Holiday In.. I think the idea is to plant a church here soon. My team was assigned an area of stores ith some pretty closed people, which was discouraging. We even got kicked out of Target! I gave the suggestion of going outside the area Aaron had given us, and we found a yard sale/school expo for Kaplan College. We found several open/interested folks there and invited them out. Then we had barbecue at Aaron's and headed back to IL. While most of the others went on dates, Luke and I buckled down at the Zillman's and worked on the message. Several hours later, not much progress. Finally we asked Chris for input, and he helped us to see that we had most of it already. I waited for Janus to pick me up.

Sunday:

Woke up bright and early, feeling energized and even had a new story to tell to go with the message that was better than the one I had picked the night before. I really feel that God was working through me. We headed back to Indiana, where Garrett and Brittany gave the Communion Message then Luke and I gave the main Message. Our lesson was on how people should be humble and open to one another, or there can be consequences. I spoke about the dangers, citing Anninias and Saphria and a time when I lied to my parents. Luke followed with a hopeful message of the benefits of being open, citing David and Nathan and some stories from his own life. Overall I think it went well, and was alot easier than we had anticipated.
In the afternoon we attended the local staff/family house leaders' meeting at the Southland COC. Then I went home for a much-needed nap. At 7 we reached out in a nearby parking lot, then headed home.

Now this crazy train for Christ is getting going again! I have no idea what to expect for today. I think my future posts will be more retrospectives, written each evening or next morning.