Winterfest, part 2

"And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him." Romans 12:1 (NLT)
On Saturday morning, we headed to the conference center for worship and a lesson. This missionary came and told us this amazing story that happened to him in New Zealand. He told us how to talk to people who don't believe in God. It was incredible!! I wish I could explain it all on here, but I can't.
At noon, the sessions break for lunch, so we went to a mall we always go to. My friends and I ate the Rainforest Cafe and then walked around. We left the mall at 3 and went back to the hotel for free time. The hotel we stay in has an atrium in the middle and all the rooms open to that. It's so much fun because the whole hotel is full of people at Winterfest, so there's so much entertainment! We like to just sit outside our room and people watch. We ate dinner, then went back to the conference center for the evening sessions.
Saturday night is always so great. The lessons are always so practical, but deep and challenging. We were shown how much time we spend doing things. We spend so much time watching tv, sleeping, facebooking, and even getting dressed and going to the bathroom. But how much time do we spend with the Creater of the earth? It's not very much. On stage, there was a huge container with pennies in it. There were 86,400 pennies. That represented how many seconds we have in each day. What would it cost us to follow Christ? Is it worth it? Yes, it is. On Friday night, we SAW that God is worth it. He is so mighty! The speaker took a handful of pennies and threw one by one on the floor as each second went by. That's how fast it goes. We never get that back. As we continued worshiping, we were asked to get out our pennies, quarters, dimes, or nickles, and take them to the stage. This represented us giving our time to God. It was so moving to see people with handfuls of change, trying to get through the crowds, bringing it all to God. There were groups of people praying with each other, people worshiping on their knees, and tears running down on everyone's faces.
One of the main points was that God is worthy of our praise, NOT just at church when we sing, but every second. You don't have to cancel everything in your life to worship God. You just have to put Him in everything, in every second of your life. That is what God calls us to.
At the hotel that night, 2 teens decided to accept Christ in baptism. One from our church, one from another. As we all gathered in the pool room, we sang praises as we saw our new sisters in Christ being baptized. It was so exciting and joyful!
Sunday morning was also very moving. All weekend we kept seeing the number 31,536,000 but we never knew what it was. They finally told us that that is how many seconds we have in a year. God is worthy of our praise 31,536,000 seconds a year. They pulled all the pennies out of the container on stage, and underneath was a cross.
"Worship is 31,536,000"
We repeated this phrase over and over.
"Worship is not how you sing, but how you obey"
Worship is not how you sing, but how you live your life. Yes, we can worship God at church when we sing, but we can also worship him in everything we do.
This was the main verse for the weekend. Here's 2 different translations.
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship." Romans 12:1 (NIV)
"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." Romans 12:1-2 (the Message)

Winterfest 2011, part 1

I had such a good weekend! Over the next few days, I will write about everything that happened at Winterfest. There's too much to write in one post!

The theme this year was Worthy. We left the church at 3pm and arrived in Arlington, Texas at 8pm. Winterfest is a youth conference held at the convention center in Arlington. I think there are around 6,000 people there.

On Friday night, we started with worship. Six thousand people lifting their voices without instruments is incredible. We then listened to James Waugh talk about how God is worthy of our praise. It was a great lesson! He showed us the stars and how far away they are. He showed us how our galaxy is just one of millions. He showed us how small we really are, and how big our God really is. We saw several videos that showed us again, how big everything is that God created.

We read this verse several times.

"The heavens delare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world." Psalm 19:1-4a

We talked about our DNA and how mind blowing that really is. We each have our own DNA. No one that has ever lived, or will live, has the same DNA as us. We each were given a thimble. We were then told how many people's DNA would actually fit in that thimble. I don't remember the number because it was such a big number. We were shown how tiny every red blood cell, platelet, and everything in our body is. It's so complex and amazing. We saw how small an embryo is, and the miracle of that.

We read verses about how special we are to God, because He created each of us unique, and knew us before we were even created.

"For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you." Psalm 139:13-18

During the lesson, we heard the story of this man's twin daughters. He and his wife had twin baby girls who were healthy. They took them home from the hospital, and 10 days later, the babies got very sick. They were admitted to the hospital and MRIs and CAT scans showed that both of the babies had brain damage. We were shown their scans of their brains and everywhere was white. White represented brain damage. They were told to cherish the time they had with babies in the hospital because they would never bring them home. Everyone they knew started praying for healing. 

The dad was at Winterfest, and reenacted a conversation that he had with the speaker at the hospital, shortly after they were told the news. They pretended like they were in the waiting room at the hospital. They went back and forth, saying they don't understand. The dad was angry. How could this happen to his innocent daughters? They prayed together. We saw the raw emotion of that time.

Everyone had tears in the eyes. It was so sad. The speaker finished telling the story. The family was told to prepare for the worst. The dad wanted just one more MRI. The doctors finally agreed. On the screen, we saw the MRIs that the dad pushed for. There was no white anywhere, there was no brain damage. The doctors were shocked, this was medically impossible. They got to leave the hospital with their girls shortly after! How does brain damage just disappear? The only way is that our God healed them. We then saw pictures of the girls today, as healthy as can be. It was so incredible! Our God is a God who heals.

So on Friday night, we SAW that God is worthy of our praise!

We got to the hotel at 11pm and had a short devo. We all finally quiteted down, and everyone went to bed around 2am. I of course could not sleep. I slept from 4-5 so that's better than nothing!

Here are a few pictures. These were actually taken at the mall we went to on Saturday afternoon.

Rachel, Alex, me, Natalie

Dustee and I with Rachel and Alex creeping in the back ground! Haha

Alex and I

Rachel and I

To be continued...

1.6, Winterfest, Steroids

This post is so random, just so you know.
As you know, I started a steroid pack to clear up my hives around my incisions. That didn't go so well. All weekend, I was angry and upset with everything and everyone. But I honestly couldn't control it. Saturday night I broke down because I was so frustrated that I was so angry and I couldn't control it. I also couldn't handle pain. I have a very high pain tolerance, so even though my abdomen where I had surgery still hurts, I'm mostly off pain medicine. I do have to take Ibuprofen and Tramadol sometimes. But on Saturday, I could not handle it. So I took some medicine and that helped. My mom told me to stop taking the steroids.  Thankfully, my rash is mostly better, and I can continue using the steroid cream. I continued to have the steroid side effects Sunday, but I think now they have stopped. My body just can't handle steroids for whatever reason.
I just walked 1.6 miles in 10 minutes! Yesterday I walked 1.7 miles. Have you all used the Wii Fit? It's really fun and helpful! Everyday, it weighs you, tells you your BMI, and shows you how your balance is. Then, you can do exercises to help accomplish different things.
I've lost a lot of strength during recovery from surgery, and from the past 2-3 years since I got sick. I really need to build it back up. For such a long time, I wasn't allowed to do any physical activity because of my heart problems. I haven't done anything since then.
I'm starting slow, since I am still recovering from surgery. I've been working on my balance, and walking everyday. I didn't do anything on Saturday and Sunday because my abdomen, where I had surgery, was hurting a lot.
One of the reasons I started building up my strength this week is because Winterfest is this weekend! If you don't know what that is, you can read my post about last years Winterfest here. I am planning to go, and can't wait!!
This weekend I got to sleep in my room again!! Although the stairs are still a mountain that stabs me with knives in my stomach, it's been great.
I also got to go to church on Sunday! I didn't go to class Sunday morning, just worship, but I did get to go to our prayer meeting and church Sunday night!
This week I am going to rest and not really go anywhere so that I can be ready for Winterfest!
Tonight, we have a phone conference with my Lyme doctor. We have lots of things to discuss. I'll update tonight or tomorrow with everything we talk about and find out.
Hope you are having a great day!

Biggest Loser+Veils+Worship+5000 Teens+Earthquake+Loritab=Winterfest Weekend!

Wow what a crazy and great weekend!

Friday morning I had planned to sleep in since I was going to Winterfest Friday afternoon. At 9:28am I was delightfully awakened to my house swaying and a loud rumbling. I really thought Jesus was coming back. But after a few minutes of this going on, I realized that I was still on earth and He didn't come back...bummer. So I ran downstairs and my mom and I decided it was an earthquake.

We knew it was an earthquake because we were in the big Hawaii earthquake a few years ago. We were asleep on the fourth floor of our hotel and the first earthquake was at 7am. We couldn't even walk because it was swaying so bad and the power was out. Finally it stopped a little so we ran out of the room and found everyone racing down the stairs. As we left the room, every towel was swaying on the towel rack. It is still so weird to think about. When we got out of the hotel everyone was so worried about a tsunami coming. We called our family and told them that they will be showing the earthquake on the news so not to worry because we were okay. The earthquake was a 6.8. There were lots of aftershocks all day. It was Sunday so once it was "safe" to go back to our room we got ready to go to church. I remember taking a shower in the dark and still watching the towels sway from aftershocks. The hallways were dark and everything was eerie. On our way to church we listened to the radio and heard about the damage. We had church in the dark and everyone was still shook up. On our way back to the hotel we realized that we had no cash and the power was out so there were no ATMs open. It was a very weird and scary feeling knowing that you are on an island in the middle of nowhere and we still weren't sure about the possibility of the tsunami. Thankfully everything was fine and we had a great trip.

Random note...in Hawaii after the earthquake it rained for a few days straight starting right after the earthquake. On Friday here after the earthquake it was SO foggy and rained too. Does that always happen?

So Friday afternoon we left for Dallas. Worship started at 7 followed with a lesson. Now, worship at Winterfest doesn't mean worship like we normally think of. Also, a lesson doesn't mean a normal type of lesson. I can't even explain it but it is amazing and so powerful. There are 5000 teens, parents, elders, and sponsors worshiping together. Wow.

Phil Brookman, one of my youth ministers, was the speaker on Friday. He did such a great job!!
The theme this year was The Veil. We talked about the veil in the Tabernacle. We were separated from God because of our sin. We could not be in the presence of God because He is pure and we are not. No one could enter His presence except the High Priest once a year with sacrifice.

We saw a reenactment of when the veil in the tabernacle was torn when Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross for us. We could then see God. His presence was now open to all. Before we took communion, we were reminded that for the same reason the veil was broken, Jesus' body was broken for us. We were eating the bread, His body, and drinking the wine(or grape juice), His blood. He was the sacrifice for us to see God.

Through out the weekend we were challenged to remove whatever veil we have that is separating us from truly following and knowing God. We need to remove our veil and show the world the real us. We need to stop being fake and we need to be real with people and the world. We talked about that we need to know what we believe so that when we remove our Veil, we can share why.

The weekend was so uplifting. We also had a few Christian comedians come. They explained that they don't make fun of Christians, like their title sounds. But they want to spread laughter and happiness because that is what God blessed them with. One of the best was Bob Smiley. He was great!

Before we left on Sunday, we heard the testimony from Sean from last seasons Biggest Loser. It was amazing!! He is a youth minister in Tulsa and was apart of an acapella singing group. When he came out he got a standing ovation. It was so neat.

Physically it was a very hard weekend. I couldn't have made it without my pain medicine. I had to take it as often as I could(every 6 hours) which means I was very drugged the whole trip. I hate taking it. Hate hate hate. The side effects are annoying and everything seems like a blur. But I guess I'll take the side effects if the pain gets a little better. I got around 3 hours of sleep a night which didn't help anything. We didn't stay up too late, I just couldn't sleep (surprise I know)

Tacy, Megan, me, Sean from Biggest Loser, Sadie, Natalie

Tacy and I

Great roommates :)

When we got back to church on Sunday afternoon I was reading the bulletin and this was the first verse on the outline for the lesson Sunday morning.

"But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." 2 Corinthians 3:16-18

Is it a coincidence that our church was learning about that the same time Winterfest was? I think not.