So this weekend is Fall Festival at church. I really would rather go to the band competition in Atlanta with D this weekend. But I doubt that will happen. We officially have their costumes for this weekend though. Emma is Stephanie from Lazy Town. Pink wig and everything. Lexi will be Snow White. But I don’t know if she’ll actually wear the dress for very long. She can be kind of picky about fluffy stuff. Sometimes she’ll wear it for a long time and sometimes she has it on for a minute and wants it off. Hopefully it will work out. I also have our 3rd meeting with the girl from my bible study and a counselor. So my weekend is already getting full.
Archives for October 2006
Lock-in & Accident
So the lock-in. We showed up around 4:30-5 just to drop some stuff off and ended up never leaving. The printer to print the pictures of the kids gave us troubles. Not really troubles, but the second one that someone brought of theirs was like two-three times as slow as the new one we had and we were printing pictures all the way up until 11 that night, right before he needed them during the service. There was about 115 youth there which is about twice as many as we have on a normal Wednesday night. Everything went really well. The service was awesome. He had a tough time getting started because of technical difficulties but once he got into it, it was very powerful. I think 16 youth got saved and many more made other decisions.
We left around 12:15 for Zuma (place with video games/go-carts/batting cages/putt-putt). I could not decide whether to go or not. I even said to S that I wasn’t sure I’d be safe driving by myself that late at night. But I reasoned it was 99% interstate on the way home and I’d be fine. Not a lot of oncoming traffic. Everyone was having such a good time and I didn’t want to disappear and the girls were spending the night at Mom’s so I wanted to make the most of it. Anyway, I only stayed until about 1:45am and decided I had had enough and was going to go get some sleep. I remember being on top of one of our interstates and I think I might have even prayed out loud that God would keep me safe on the way home. Not two minutes later, I was in Lane 2 of 4 and the left front of my mom’s SUV struck a car in Lane 1. The left front swiped the car and it damaged the side mirror. I stopped about half a mile down the road. There were two other 18 wheelers pulled off the side of the road and I parked in between them. I didn’t attempt to get back up where that car was. I immediately called *HP and then Scott. I saw that another trooper was north bound “across the street” and was heading our way. So I stayed put in my car. Scott talked to one of the sergeants and he said he’d come talk to me. Another truck hit this car right after me and his tire went flat and air bag came out. Neither of us were hurt. A security guard from the welcome center came to talk to me. He said there was a car that had wrecked and was sitting in the lane and that’s what I hit. I later found out that it was unoccupied. The security guard ended up going back up there and sitting his car behind the car with lights because the wrecked car had none. There was not good lighting on that stretch of the interstate and I didn’t see a thing. I also saw a third car jerk very hard to not hit the car. I called Mom and let her know I had wrecked the car. She of course was just happy that I was ok and ended up staying on the phone with me until I got home. The wreck report shows that the other guy was at fault for the wreck but Mom’s insurance seems to think they may argue and basically say I hit a parked car. Um, no, I hit a wrecked car that was in the middle of the interstate unmanned. Not good. Anyway. that was my first wreck ever. Hopefully I won’t lose any insurance points, discounts or whatever. I´m just going to get young drivers car insurance to make sure I´m covered.
Surprisingly I learned something from this wreck. I knew in my heart that I shouldn’t have gone to Zuma with the rest of the youth group. I NEVER worry about driving at night or any time. But I paused and knew I shouldn’t have. I really felt God telling me that if I don’t learn to obey his voice, it’s just as well that I never heard it to begin with. Learning to hear the Holy Spirit speak is one thing but it’s a whole other ballgame to try to obey what He says. But if you don’t obey, He may as well not speak to you. It doesn’t do you any good not to do what He says. I could have avoided that accident had I not gone but I certainly believed He protected me from any further harm. I was literally inches away from head-on collision at 70 mph that could have killed me and taken me from my family. I’m just thankful that even though I didn’t obey that God’s mercy was big enough to protect me.
Lexi’s words, etc.
Lexi has really opened up with her words lately. In the past few weeks, we have all caught her saying or trying to say new words. She is now saying PawPaw very clearly. Daddy is Dah-he. She says Sissy and maw for Grandma. She says “mine”. “Where’s [fill in the blank with my baby, my socks, my shoes]” Everything starts with “my”. When we are in a store and I’m pointing to things and tell her the word, she tries to imitate me. And although her words are still not spoken correctly, she is saying more of them and even in little sentences. I think one day in the van she said, “Emma, look, there’s Belle.” She knows Belle, Cinderella, Arial and all of the Dora characters (hmm, wonder why). When she wants to leave, she says “keys” which she says pretty clearly actually. She waves and blows kisses and says bye. MawMaw is teaching her to say I love you by pointing to her eye, crossing her arms and throwing out her arms for you. It’s really cute. She loves dancing and gets excited when she sees people dancing on Dancing with the Stars. She laughs at a commercial that has lots of puppies in it. She still sleeps (usually 8:30/9pm-7:30/8am) and eats well. Normally takes a nap from 1-4 or 2-4:30, something like that. I can’t believe she’ll be 2 in just a couple weeks. I think she is bigger than Emma was at this age. Some of Emma’s clothes from two years ago are already fitting or getting too small. Last night was so cute. Lexi usually goes to sleep before Emma but Emma was really tired last night and Lexi was not. So I took Emma back to her room and Lexi was peeking in the room. I told Lexi to come in and tell Emma good night. So she came in laid on Emma and patted her to try to give her a hug. Then she waved bye to her. I told her to go back in the living room with Daddy and she trotted right out. It was so cute. The girls are really good together. Emma hugs Lexi any time she cries and if Emma cries, Lexi always wants to pat her on the back. Lexi yells at Mattie, go! go! if she gets to close to her food. I don’t know why I’m thinking of all this random stuff. Sometimes it seems I will forget all the little things.
Week 6
I can’t believe we only have 2 more weeks of Bible Study. Last night went really well. I enjoyed teaching the lesson and a couple people commented that they thought it went well. So yay. We talked about moving slowly through the steps of Attention, Attraction, Affection and Attachment and then the dangers of Affairs and Addictions. I had a movie clip, a little crafty demonstration and a bookmark I had made them to hand out. This next week is NOT going to be fun to teach. S T Ds, o r a l s e x, friends with benefits and lzbian experimentation do not mix well for a fun lesson to teach. Good news is we get our t-shirts this week. We had 20 t-shirt orders which I think is pretty cool for the first round of a brand new bible study group.
Drama, drama, drama
There is so much going on in our youth group. It’s kind of ridiculous. We’ve got one girl pregnant by another young guy in our youth group, who currently has no home. Two more girls want to leave the youth group for a catfight. Another one is going through counseling. Another NEEDS counseling for things we’ve found out recently. Another is depressed. We are all overwhelmed by trying to even emotionally handling these things much less dealing with the students and parents. Our youth pastor is on his last leg. The youth group was/is doing so well and I think we are just getting bombarded from Satan. This week is our big yearly lock-in. I hope this can provide a new start for a lot of the students and maybe an energizer for the other leaders. Emma and Lexi will be staying with my mom so we can go. I won’t be going to the go-cart/video game place with them from midnight to 6am but we will be hanging out with them until then. So let’s hope it turns out good!
Collarbone update
Scott is getting better. He even went half a day yesterday without taking his pain pills. It only seems to hurt when he moves it by accident unlike at the beginning where he could not find a place to sit, stand or lay that did not hurt. He has learned to dress himself if he has to and even got the kids ready for school on Wednesday. He also watched them by himself on Friday and got Lexi down for her nap. The only thing he has not done is drive yet. But that’s mainly because of the medication. We go to an orthopedic this afternoon to see what he says. We had a good x-ray technician friend look at his x-rays last night and she said she agreed with the 2nd dr that either he broke 2 different bones or has a chip floating in there. So we’ll see.
I must be insane
As part of our bible study, the book gave us a challenge to get rid of all media for 30 days that has any sexual messages. I told the girls I would participate but I practically swore I wouldn’t give up Grey’s Anatomy. Now it seems since it is such a struggle, it is the only right thing to give up. So I am. One of the older girls (who is as addicted as I am) is not going to watch it for 30 days either. We may be insane, but I’m hoping it jumpstarts some of the girls into getting rid of some stuff that they don’t really need to begin with and then they won’t miss when it’s gone. I don’t see it so much of an issue with the sexual content, but that I sent the message that I wouldn’t let it go because I was holding so tight to it. Too much of anything is bad and I want to practically send that message to them. I don’t think I’d be much of a leader if I didn’t. So here we go, 4 episodes to go.
8 months and counting
So we have a “situation” with one of the girls in bible study. This is not the same girl as I have talked about in the past. This one has gotten herself pregnant with a one-time thing with another guy in youth group. This girl I would already consider high-risk. She lives with only her mom and brother who aren’t very supportive of her anyway. I don’t know how she will deal with bringing a child into the situation. The father originally wanted nothing to do with the baby. The girl has a lot of tough decisions ahead of her. I feel so heartbroken for her.
The “other” girl looks like we will be setting up some counseling sessions for with a local dr counselor person. Hopefully that will turn out well. That girl has a rough family life to but I can see a lot of potential for her. Smart, independent girl who really wants to do that right thing.
I had no idea I would be getting into all this by taking on a small bible study with a few teenage girls.