Look Up... I Dare You To.

It has been two weeks now that I've been working for the church and a good two weeks it has been. The first week I was thrown into leading Ngage fully on my own, meaning myself and Ariel led worship and I also led the discussion for the youth. It was great. The Holy Spirit showed up at one point - which always rocks and we had some awesome discussion go on with the youth about grace and unfairness. At the end we had the youth fill out 'I Dare You' cards, which was an exercise for them to challenge one another to offer love to people through actions of grace. Each morning I have been sending the youth FB messages, emails and text messages with a dare, a scripture and the prayer to focus on for the Global event. I found out this week that many of them have been very diligent in reading the messages and doing the dares. If you pass by one of the youth, ask them if they have any neat stories to share.

On the other side of my job, mowing the lawn has allowed me to discover how truly beautiful this property is and how blessed as a church community we are to call this place our home. The coolest thing I discovered last week was that the tree beside the cottage is a HUGE oak tree!! I had no idea. To be honest I have not ever looked up (we miss so much by not raising our chins every-so-often), to view the whole tree. I've always just stared at its trunk and thought... "That's a big tree." By driving around on the lawn mower and cutting the grass in that area I suddenly had this opportunity to look at the tree at all angles... my goodness is it ever beautiful!! And BIG. The branches that extend from the trunk are gynormous. I think it's definitely worthwhile to take a walk back there and look up... especially while the tree is not in full bloom because you can see the amazing trunk. Oak trees are special trees. The seed they come from is an acorn... I'll tell you more about them sometime. . . :)