Nothings Like Fireworks

Happy Fourth of July everybody! :) I'll tell ya, nothing like fireworks for my wisdom teeth to come out with a bang. Stacey's too, actually, as well as Amanda's! It's almost like everyone is celebrating us being rid of them. Sadly, that's not quite the case, as there was that old victory about 200 years ago that they were really celebrating. Either way, it's nice to have them out, and it was a fun day of celebration, even though for me, it was quite chill.

I think my favourite part about fourth of July was not necessarily seeing the fireworks(although they are magnificent, and I love them to death) but just hearing them. They're so awe inspiring. Especially when you can't see them. We didn't actually end up going somewhere, so we just had to take what we could get around our neighborhood. And those weren't too bad, actually! There also happened to be some on tv, so we caught a few of those too! Why do we play country music to fireworks? I'll never know...

Anyway. SOS was last week! For those of you who don't know, that's Summer Of Service, a little conference type thing that we host at our church. And it was SO awesome! Basically, the rundown of what we do is thus:
Meet at the church at about 9 am for worship, some games, and a little sermon of sorts.
At about 11, we head out to do outreaches for oh, five hours or so!
These outreaches included:
e2 project(which was complicated, I'll explain in the coming paragraphs)
Water Bottle Outreach and building walls for Habitat for Humanity
Bloc Party(having parties in the somewhat questionable neighborhoods for people who don't normally have these kinds of parties)
Be the Difference(awesome, which I will also talk about in another paragraph!)
Afterwards, there was free time and dinner for about two hours, followed by more worship and an exiting sermon, and then off to home for bed!
Oh, and did I forget to mention we hosted a luau for 'Special Needs' folks?? :D

e2 project:
What this basically is was thus. We gathered into our little small groups, and prayed for about five minutes, asking God for specific signs or whatnot of things that we might see later in the day. We then wrote all these down, and headed out into the city to search for them! We went out with about 80 bucks, some Tide, some waterbottles, and high spirits! We ended up spending about 120 bucks, giving out two cartons of water, and cleaning several bathrooms. It was awesome :)

Water Bottle Outreach:
What we basically did was grab several buckets full of water bottles, and handed them out at busy intersections(when the cars were stopped at red lights of course :O), just to show people God's love on that oh so hot day :)

Habitat for Humanity:
All our groups got together and built a bunch of walls to be shipped down to New Orleans and made into houses for people in need!

Bloc Party:
I missed out on this one, because I came down with strepp :( Basically though, we went to some sort of run down neighborhoods with a bunch of games and food and music and whatnot, and hosted a party for several hours for all the people in the neighborhood!

Be the Difference:
Hoah man. This was intense. This was something our church had done recently for some middle schools around our area. IT was by far the most intense part of SOS, and I'm not gonna lie to you when I say I bawled my eyes out. Since it's late however, I will cut it a bit short and say that the bottom line was to teach us how to be the difference in our communities. It showed us the inhuman things some people do, or even the things they say, whether on purpose or accident, and how much it can hurt people. It also just helped us get to know eachother better. All in all, it was a wonderful(yet heartbreaking) experience.

And those were just the outreaches! During the week we had talks from people who ran Destiny Rescue, and TOMS One for One organization, as well as talks from our pastors. It was a wonderful week, basically encouraging the student body to go out and be the difference in our world. That we can change the world, no matter how small we are. One person CAN make a difference. Small things done with great love WILL change the world.

Now, what was that I said about a LUAU? OH YEAH :) Thursday night, after we got home from the outreach (which I didn't attend, because I was sick, but I managed to make it to the luau(the doctor said it was okay, it wasn't bad strepp, so no worries)), one of our leaders informed us all that we were going to be holding a luau for 'Special Needs' folks all around the City. Earlier in the year, we had done a Prom for these people, and they were eager to come back and party with us! It was such an amazing night, and we truly blessed so many souls. More than anything though, they blessed us, with their carefree spirits, their loving hearts, and their general desire to just have a great time! You couldn't help but have a good time with these people. They were true down to Earth, amazing people. It was beautiful.


Anyway, happy Fourth of July to you all! Have a blessed day(even though it's really over), and have a beautiful Sabbath! :)