By: Sarah, Megan, Garrett, and Meredith
This morning we woke up and had an amazing breakfast. Afterward we took a stress test that allowed us to identify our stresses that we needed to turn around to "desserts". We picked one of our main stresses and wrote it on a piece of cardboard. We peeled off the layer that we'd written on to uncover the rigid middle part of the cardboard. Becky taught us"if it's this hard with God in our lives, then we don't even want to consider what it'd be like without Him". Tying this lesson in with a craft, we made knotted blankets to remember that although the many knots represented our problems, we could still wrap up in God's love. We listened to a new song called "Cast Your Cares", based on Psalm 55:22 while everyone was working on their blankets, and four people at a time went to go pray alone with a counselor at different stations. Doing that helped us to remember that we are not alone, no matter what we're going through. After lunch, we went and shopped in Boone. Unfortunately, many of our alumni youth were tailgating for the Appalachian football game and we did not get to meet up with them. Even though that was disappointing, we still managed to have a good time. When we got back, we were joined by the four seniors who had been taking the SAT. During the free time, the reunited senior group planned their senior skit while everyone else worked on their blankets. When we all met back up in the big room soon after dinner, the seniors performed their skit, which was the best skit ever performed by the Valle Crucis seniors. Ever. The skit was about us deciding on our skit. We each gave an idea, and each idea was shot down by the rest of the seniors. The best "mini-skit" of the skit was the Crazy Train portion, where Garrett starred as the lead dancer. After that, we played a round of the classic Valle Crucis game "Broom Hockey", and some Bible trivia. Becky also gave us certain scenarios that we decided whether or not we agreed or disagreed with and stood on the number line in accordance to how related they were to our "Sticky Faith(s)". . Then we watched a Jeff Foxworthy video clip where he told a story about a man from his Bible study group."This man's mother had passed away and he received $70,000 in insurance money. Having never had that much money at one time before in his life, he began spending it wildly. He gained a couple girlfriends, and began partying with them, and never stopping. They smoked crack and he stopped going to work, so he lost his job, and was evicted from his apartment. This man and his girlfriends moved around from hotel to hotel with his stuff just smoking crack and partying all the time, and very time they moved, he lost one of his possessions. The man had this special Bible that his mother had written a love letter to him in the front cover when he was a child, and eventually he realized he had lost that too. But he kept partying and smoking crack and eventually the money ran out. The girls left him, he had no home, no possessions, and he was a crack addict. He begged for money on the streets just so he could get enough money to pay for crack to get high for a year or so. One day, a man came to him and told him he had a job for him. The man took our man and another homeless man to an old apartment 100 miles away from where they had been begging and asked them to clean it out. The second man worked upstairs, while the first man worked downstairs and threw away the second man's trash. When the first man went upstairs he saw a big pile of stuff that the second man had found while he was cleaning out the apartment. At the bottom of the boiled was this book, and the first man pulled it out and opened it up to find his mother's love letter in the cover. The book was his childhood bible that he had lost while he had been so preoccupied with his party life. That man decided that day that 'If God is chasing me that hard, then I'm just gonna stop running'." At the point that Jeff Foxworthy was telling this story, the man had been crack-free for 3 years and had a full-time job working to help homeless people get off the streets and back into a healthy lifestyle. After we watched this video, we broke up into groups of two and discussed it and decorated washers to represent our faith(s). And then... After a small snack break and the Zilch Prayer... It was time for what all the seniors had been looking forward to, but also dreading.... The Senior Spotlight!!! It was a very touching and moving experience, and definitely not as long as everyone feared it would be. All of the seniors were recognized, not only by the underclassmen but also in a letter from Jimbo. We received our sweatshirts after the spotlight, which creatively say: "CH__CH What's missing?" So now, mostly everybody has gone to bed. The guys are all down in their little house in the valley, and the girls are all in the big room chatting, and I, Sarah, am sitting out here blogging. It's a beautiful, clear night, the crickets are chirping and the stars are shining, and I cannot be anything but grateful to be here in Valle Crucis, and on God's great earth. I am so thankful to be here with all these awesome people in my youth group, both youth and counselors. Those of you who are reading this that would otherwise be here; you are greatly missed. And those of you who may be reading this blog for the first time, or even have read it multiple times, I have something for you... CH__CH What's missing? UR. It's your life, whatcha gonna do? The world is watching you. If God is chasing you this hard, then just stop running. Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken (Psalm 55:22 NIV). Do you know why this is? Because as David Christy says, God loves you, and there isn't a doggone thing you can do about it! Good night!
