"My grace is sufficient for you..."

Since arriving in Greenville, I've taught three Sunday school lessons, three Sunday night lessons, a week's worth of VBS to 4th-6th graders, and led numerous discussion/devotional times during RYM. This has been a difficult transition for me, because I am not a gifted nor well-trained teacher.

On more than one occasion, I've been tempted to become frustrated with my inability. My lessons are too long, too boring, too short, lack application, or are just hard to follow in general. But, in all of this, my encouragement comes from Paul's words to the Corinthian church in I Corinthians 2:1-5

And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

I don't always do a good job of this, but I do feel like I am learning and that God is teaching me. My goal is to endeavor to present Christ in all of my lessons. I want to show them how much I need Jesus so God will use the testimony of His grace in my life to work in their hearts.

RYM in Review

Last week Nicole and I traveled to Panama City Beach, FL with 4 students from the church for RYM Jr. High camp (www.rymonline.org). We had a great time, and it was fun to start building relationships with some of the youth and to be back at the place where we have fond memories of RUF Summer Conference(s). I was very impressed by the main speaker and seminar teachers and felt that they did an excellent job of relating well to the Jr. High students and also presenting solid, Biblical teaching.

Here are a few pictures from the week:


Myself with our four students plus one other guy (the one in the blue shirt was from another group). Every afternoon, instead of just having free time, all of the students were split into teams of 10-15 people led by different youth leaders and competed in MegaRec: various competitive events which went on all week. At the end of the week the top 2 teams played each other in a all-out-night-sand-dodgeball-match. Our team did really well, but we managed to only place 3rd and missed the dodgeball game by a few scavenger hunt items and one lost game (we went 5-1 for the week).

One of the games we played for MegaRec. Think of it like half-court water polo with a giant beach ball. We beat the team that ended up placing 2nd overall in this game with a literal last-second goal.

On Thursday, most of the groups went to Shipwreck Island, a waterpark in Panama City Beach just down the road from where we stayed. Nicole and I relaxed at the wave-pool and floated around on the lazy river while the youth waited in long lines and got even more burnt. We had a great time.

This a shot of the meeting room where we had our large group every night.

Just War Theory

I love our new home. I love the cute paint, the plantation shutters, the deck, the floors, the kitchen... I love everything about it- and apparently I'm not the only one. Three weeks ago we were attacked. It started out small- an ant here, an ant there, two ants here, three ants there- but it was a big deal to me. I can get along with bugs just great- if they are outside. But bugs in the house had to go. So acting upon the just war theory, my understanding husband accompanied me on a friendly Wal-Mart trip, and we came back with ant bait and spray... and the war began. The next day as I was modeling the good "wifely" practice of doing the laundry, I reached into my tub to pick up my dryer sheets and let out a scream. A HUGE spider was in the tub, wedged in the corner where it would be difficult to kill without it escaping. I panicked and calmed down enough to call Eric at work, who once again with much understanding told me to try and kill it with the spray. This only infuriated the HUGE spider, however, which started running around the tub. I have to admit I was pretty hysterical. A long story short, he came home and killed it (did I mention it was a HUGE spider????). But the final straw came when we got home from RYM- ants had invaded our cereal box in the cupboard. So we made the call. The bugs have invaded, but we will conquer. Terminix is coming tomorrow :)

A New Beginning

Welcome to Eric and Nicole's new blog. Here, you'll be able to read all about our adventures in Alabama. This coming week we'll be taking some youth down to the beach for summer camp, so it might be a quiet start to things, but look for some more informative posts regarding our past three weeks shortly thereafter. God has been good to us and has been blessing us in many ways.