To-day's your birthday wish ya' many more...

Who's birthday is it?... It's Luke's! Yeah! Wow! Awesome! Yes! Boo-yeah! Party on! Where's the cake?! Exciting! Amazing! Unbelievable! He's seventeen! Remarkable! Inconceivable! Astounding! It's Phenomenal!

Well actually, it was last Friday. You missed it. But we didn't! We went to Mad Pizza to celebrate. It was a lot of fun and I think Luke enjoyed it. We put up a couple of pictures here so you could be part of the celebration. The day before the party Luke and Kole went out shopping for clothes. So as you can see Luke looked very studish. Is that a word, studish? Anyways, have fun with the pictures!

Dance Luke, dance! (That's DDR)And what-der yer know, Nick flew all the way out from Wy just for Luke's birthday, how sweet!

-Kade and Life savior, happy birthday Luke!

Stay tuned, we might get up a video of Luke doing DDR!

(You know Nick didn't fly all the way out here, right? It's a joke. We just wanted to include Nick in Luke's party, so we photo-shopped him in there.)

30 Hour Famine

Hey guys!

During Friday and Saturday (12:00 p.m. Friday, to 6:00 p.m. Saturday) I participated in the 30 Hour Famine with my Youth Group here in Jackson, WY. What is the 30 Hour Famine (30HF)? It is where youth all around the US raise money and fast for 30 hours! The money that we raised will be sent to World Vision, which is an organization who feeds children in 3rd world countries and right here in the USA. But, why raising money to help feed children, and be ignorant of what they have to go through day after day? That is why we fast, so that we actually feel what the kids we are helping go through. Now, we didn't 'hard core' fast, that is fast on just water. We did have juice, which helped some. :) We started not eating at 12:00 in the afternoon on Friday, and ate dinner at church on Saturday around 6:15. (Actually we had a joke going around: The kids in the youth group who go to the Acadamy didn't get Lunch Break until 12:00, so they started at 12:15. The joke is, the Homeschoolers fasted for not only 30 hours, but 15 MORE minutes!! :D ha) At 7ish Friday night we all met up at church where we staid for 24 hours. All night we were playing Dodgeball (that one took more than 3 hours), and Romans and Christians, which is kind of like tag in the dark. We all got to bed around 3 in the morning, and I only got 3 hours of sleep... Most everyone else (three other youth and I were up earlier so we played Settlers of Catan) slept until 11:30 or 12:00!

It was a lot of fun, but only a very small taste of what kids in Africa and other places go through EVERY DAY.

Nick

Strong Tower

"The name of the Lord is a Strong Tower; The righteous run to it and are safe." Proverbs 18:10

"For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe." Psalm 61

In the Bible it says that Christ is our Strong Tower. When I think of a 'Strong Tower'
I would probably think about Minas Tirith (see below). But in the movie it is broken and beaten. God's tower can never be broken. If the Bible says that Christ is our Strong Tower, what do you think his tower would look like? Amazing! Completely ridiculous! The walls would be a hundred feet thick with guns all around it, booby traps and all... You get the point. The righteous who flee to him, God will protect.

But sometimes -strike that- a lot of times we will stray from that Strong Tower; from God's loving arms. And that is where we meet the foe and worldly influences.

Kade

Anniversary of the Blog!

Sometime ago, at the beginning of this month, was the one year anniversary of this blog! I want to say that it's sad that I am posting about it so late, but I want to start posting more regularly. But for now I just want to post up one on the great quotes that we have talked about before and some of the other quotes from the same book.

"Only one life,

'Twill soon be passed;

Only what's done

for Christ will Last."

"He is most Glorified in us

When we are most satisfied

in Him."

"(But) Suffering with Jesus on the Calvary road

of love is not merely the result of magnifying Christ;

It is also the Means."

"What you love determines what you feel shame about.

If you love for men to make much of you, you will

feel shame when they don't. But if you love for men

to make much of Christ, then you will feel shame

if he is belittled on your account."

"Death is a threat to the degree that it frustrates

your main goals... Paul treasured Christ most, and his goal

was to magnify Christ. And he saw death not as a frustration

of that goal but as an occasion for its fulfillment"

"The way we die reveals the worth of Christ on our hearts."

And Last "The world is not impressed when Christians get rich

and say thanks to God. They are impressed when God is so satisfying

that we give our riches away for Christ's sake and count is gain."

P.S. The book these quotes come from is a book by John Piper called "Don't Waste Your Life"

Read it!

All For His Son's Glory,

-Kole