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

Update from WY

Well, it sure has been a while since you last heard of me on this blog! So, all I will do right now is post a couple pictures from here in the North.

The mountains are beautiful here! We go skiing quite often, and see a ton of animals (I actually saw a moose on the ski resort!) It is hard to believe that people can say that this mountain range was created by random chance!!

We did a little research before we got here on the local churches so that we would hopefully not have to go through what we did in Arkansas, church searching for several months (there is not enough churches here to go too long but we thought it a good idea anyways)! We found a church called Jackson Hole Community Bible Church and tried to look it up, but we couldn't because they do not have a website that is operational. We did, however, find their statement of faith on a college's (Jackson Hole Bible College) website. Turns out, the students are required to go to this church. We thought that would be neat since we have gone to a church before that had a lot of college students coming to it. So, JHCBC (our church) was the first one we tried and we still have not left it! Our pastor, Pastor Landis, is a great pastor and is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Answers in Genesis.

Already I have gotten involved with the Youth Group, and we just had a guy's lock-in in which we played airsoft, Romans and Christians (that didn't turn out so well as one of the youth got his finger slammed in a door), we played an X-Box that someone brought, and we watched a movie. But before that, a group from church (called Right to Life), which is composed of some youth and adults, held a fund raiser dinner at a church called River Crossing. (sorry the picture turned out fuzzy)

But one thing that is really cool is the chairlifts at the Village (ski resort). If you go on a chairlift and have an extra space open for someone to sit they will let a single person ride with you (speeds up the lines). It is a great way to evangelize! I have met folks from Michigan, Louisianna, Kentucky, Tenessee, England, and more! I am going to have to carry tracts on me and talk with people about the Bible whenever I get on longer lifts (the one I am typically on is only 4 minutes long).

--Nick

While You Were Sleeping

Hello everyone!  Sorry for the procrastination on putting up the video for While You Were Sleeping.  But better late than never, right?  Here it is, just for you!

Note: I edited out our introduction as Life Savior because there was about 1 minute of getting set up after that.  Then, to make it worse, I started in the wrong key.  So, I cropped it to when we actually started, and I was actually in the right key.

Here's a link to the video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykfebamhtLQ

I will also be putting this up on the sidebar.

God bless you all,

Luke

The Man Who Was Thursday

Today I finished a book by G.K. Chesterson called "The Man Who Was Thursday" and I would encourage you to get a copy either from your dad (if he has a library :) That's how I got it!) or get it from the library. It's a little bit hard to understand it all, but I was able to learn a lot even though it's not strictly spiritual. Here are just a couple of things that I learned while reading the book. There is one part in the book, I don't want to give to much up, but all these men are discussing what they think about this certain person, and the main character gives this statement;

"When if first saw (blank) I only saw his back; and when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. His neck and shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. His head had a stoop of an ox. In fact, I had at once the revolting fancy that this was not a man at all, but a beast dressed up in men's clothes... And then a queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the street, as he sat on the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and coming around the other side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. His face frightened me, as is did everyone; but not because it was brutal, not because it was evil. On the contrary, it frightened me because it was so beautiful, because it was so good."

When I read this I thought about God. How people hate God or the idea of a God because of how things seem to be, not as they are. But those who see his face (those who are saved) really see who God is!

P.S. I read the afterward, and one thing that I thought was really cool was that when his wife was asked who had converted her to catholicism, she said, "the devil" . :)

P.P.S. We're going to try to get up the video this week of the performance! Be looking!

-Kole