Peace and Love?????

I heard two people arguing to one another over a girl they both liked. One of these two highly intellegent candidates was a redneck with a hand full of tobacco in his mouth, the other a 105 lb. 15 year old scene kid with a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. The scene kid had always been against violence and lived a typically hippie lifestyle. But this guy said to the redneck that he was going mess him up(Their vocabulary was a little bit more vulgar than my own).

Shortly after this incident I thought to myself “CAN PEACE AND LOVE EXIST IN HARMONY IF LOVE IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR?” The scene kid was for anti-violence! Some things people do just doesn’t  make any since to me. What do you think?

How to almost get arrested at Bruster’s on a Saturday night

Ok, well this past weekend I performed in a review of several different musicals over the years. Of these were “Sideshow”, “Spring Awakening”, “Sweeney Todd” and “RENT”. After our performance Saturday night, a group of people and myself went to Bruster’s to get some ice cream. Everyone got their ice cream decently fast, but unfortunately for my friend Michael they stopped serving as soon as he got to the window. My friends and I had gotten semi-excited due to our recent ice cream sugar rush and thought to ourselves “Hey, we should sing the song “La Vie Boheme” from RENT”. This was the outcome……

This was possibly one of the best nights of my life. But, unfortunately the employees at Bruster’s were saying that we were “Holding them hostage as an act of retaliation for not giving Michael any ice cream”. So they called the cops! If you listen closely you can hear the lady telling me to get off the table and the girl in the background telling her to get back inside! Good times…….

Talk about Turning 180 Degrees

When I first started going to Oak Leaf in Fall of 2006, I was rather surprised at the type of attire needed to be worn at the church. The attire being…….get this……WHATEVER YOU WANTED. I was astonished that I was attending a church that people didnt frown upon you if you wanted to wear a t-shirt, jeans with holes, and flip flops to church! Some people thought it was completely unbelievable.

Along with the citizens that believed that the dress code for the church was’nt true just so happened to be my father. I remember waking up, getting dressed, and walking out the door only to be stopped by my dad so just I could be ordered to change into nice jeans, nice shoes, and a Polo shirt. Apparently I was “disrepecting” God with my satanic New Balances and American Eagle jeans sent from Hell. Haha! But after a few weeks I was able to nudge it through his head that it didnt matter what you wore, so he finally, even though he didnt want to, backed off the subject.

As if the way I dress to The LKeaf wasnt bothering my parents enough they thought the only reason I began to go was for the groups that led worship for the church. Can you say MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT! I began to think that there was no hope of my parents fully approving of my church.

My parents visitied Oak leaf a few times, but were never regular attenders of it or any church at all. But once we bagan holding the services at Woodland High School things started to turn around. I started playing in the praise band and my parents wanted to come see me play. So one thing led to another and after 2 straight months of me playing guitar at church my mom and dad realized all the things that I saw. All the potential, love for God, and the mission within the church. So the officially became regular attenders.

This was the first major mile stone, the second had yet to come.

My Aunt Sherry is head of the security team at the Leaf, so we had made a mind set to get my parents in the game of volunteering. after about 6 months, they gave it a try. Needless to say the now volunteer every week and I’ve never felt so humbled. And it’s also some much need help the security team needed.

I never knew my parents would be assisting of the movement of leading people from where they are to where God wants them to be.

Limelight Re-Cap

Yesterday Oak Leaf had another Limelight at Club 104, and I must say that it went fairly well. I got to play guitar for the youth for the first time in what feels like forever. Matt Lead worship, and even though we learned two of the songs an our before the thing started we still managed to pull it off. I feel extremely blessed that God has given me the opportunity to play music with a bunch of guys that want to help lead other closer to Him. And the fact that He is doing so much within our church is a great morale boost.

Jake gave the message at Limelight for the first time and he did an EXCELLENT job. His has a certain quality that makes it easy for all of the students to connect with him. He talked about Peter, and how even Biblical figures have made mistakes. Jake made an AWESOME reference to “Transformers” about how in 40 years we’ll be able to say that we “got in the car”. All in all Jake was great and I cant wait to hear him teach the youth again.

After Limelight we all went to get some ice cream to Brewsters. The entire youth was invited, but only Kaela, Jake, his chik-fil-a friends, and myself showed up.Who would of thought Kids don’t like ice cream? So once I finished my double scoop of Oreo, I went and picked up church signs for about an hour. It was a rather satisfying weekend.