youth group

Mostly a quiet weekend.  Spent lots of time with the family–going out to eat, to the park, Wal-Mart trips, church.  Emma is gone to SIL’s now to “help paint” her cousin’s room pink.  Lexi supposedly took a nap but it wasn’t long.  I have been cleaning up the house today and guess what??  I got our Podcasts up and running for our youth group!!  I am so excited about this!  I have no clue if people will actually use it, but I think it’s cool!  I’m a podcaster!

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.