I just needed to say this b/c I'm really pumped about it and felt like sharing it.  I just got out of teaching a class on how to prepare and give a sermon!!  It was so much fun to be able to do, I really enjoy preaching and preparing sermons so it was so much fun to pass that on to our students.  Gary, our base leader, and I ran them through how to pick a passage and then how to build a talk out of that.  They were really intersted in it and really got involved.  You see to explain how to do it we picked a passage and then walked them through it, with their help of course.  So we were able to show them what it takes to build a good sermon as we went through building this one - so much fun!!  Any way I was just really pumped by that so I thought that I would share that with you!!

Phil

Isn't it interesting how life so often seems to work?  Isn't it interesting that so often we can not see the end of the road for all the looking we do?  How life seems rather upside down at times?  And how through it all, all that we can do is trust God and know that He is looking out for us and is going to do the best for us?  It's a place that I have been brought to, and I am not complaining about it, that has once again shown me how very little of the future I know or can predict.  In fact the only thing that I can be sure about my future is that some day I will die, but even then there were some in the bible who God spared from death; so even that I can not say with certainty!  We think we can plan our whole lives when we can't even say what will happen in the next two minutes with complete confidence.  Then we try to say we know what's best for our lives, trust me I do this as well.  We think that we know what's best when we have no idea what is coming.  How foolish am I!!!!!  I know what I think would be best for my life, and then I know what God is asking me to do - and unfortunately they are not the same things.  Though, at the same time they are the same - it's kind of hard to explain....it's like b/c I know what he wants for me then it becomes what I want for myself b/c I know he knows whats best for me.  I'm in this place of just trusting in Him and knowing that his love for me and for Joy, my girlfriend, has no limit and that he always does the best for us.  But it's just funny b/c every once and awhile I start to feel like maybe i know better, and that's when I need to stop and laugh at my foolishness - I know nothing, he knows everything; until I sit on that truth my life will never be the best it can be!  It's not that this means that times won't be hard or really suck, but through all that there is a sence of joy b/c I know that I am doing God's will and good will come out of it.  So that's my ramblings, I would just say make sure you search for God's will and follow it in everything, b/c if you don't you are missing out on the best life you can have.

Phil

Just so you know, I enjoy flying!!  Especially off of boulders on the sides of mountians!!!

So I'm finally back to do this kick off thing right!  Late as I suppose I am.  It's funny, I'm sitting here thinking to myself 'what should I say?'  I mean, I feel like I'm trying to make a good first impression or something.  Oh and by the way, so horrible at first impressions.  But really, who am I trying to impress?  I've got a God who cares for me and loves me so much that I could never find that in any person, ever.  Though I may search forever and a day to find that one girl to spend my life fighting for and protecting and loving, I am who I am and I live firstly for God.  If he is pleased with me then I am making the impression that I wanted to.  Don't take me the wrong way though, I am not some man of steel from which all comments bounce harmlessly off.  It is more that I just care more what God thinks of me then others; again, I am not perfect in this and to think so would be most foolish.  Wow have I been talking about impressions a long time....haha...the king of tangents strikes again! 

Have you ever seen the wind blow through the trees and just sat there and listened?  Listened to the sound of God's creation singing his praises!  Close your eyes and listen hard at sunset, when the air is cooling the sun scorched earth and the birds seem to hold there breath in expectancy.  Things seem to stand still for but a moment, the silence before the storm.  And in that moment you can almost hear it, the chorus of Angels, singing, 'holy holy holy is the Lord God almighty, who was and is and is to come!'  And it's not something so audible as something you hear  in your spirit, it's a small peice of the beauty of who God is, captured in that moment - and all heaven sings.  Any way I've been talking for far to long, so thanks for barring with this incradibly long first post! 

Cheers, Phil