Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

(read Justin's post first) haha you're welcome Justin....i was taking a quiz with French vocab on FreeRice.com - a game that quizzes you, and with each question right, it donates 10 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program to help end hunger! Ginger, Mike, and I together donated about 17,000 grains of rice! Hooray!!

Anyways, our last church, Tuckston UMC was awesome! We absolutely loved the kids and had SO much fun with them!!! They were so willing to play any of the games and do all of the activities we had for them! We played lots of messy and silly games and even played paintball! We had small groups, did the Lifehouse Everything skit for the youth, and blindfolded them during worship, among other things! We are all really excited to continue on these relationships since the church is in Athens! Jack helps out there during the year and 3 of his small group guys were there and is excited to see what the Lord does this year. Several of the girls also joined us at summer Wesley on Wednesday night and really want to join us sometime during the year!

One of the favorite games was a game Crossfire learned at St. James UMC - a friend of ours from UGA actually made it up! :0) You turn of all the lights in the whole church. One person goes and hides, and the 1st person to find them, becomes a Zombie with them. The 2 Zombies then go around the church to try to find everyone and tag them to make them Zombies. The Zombies are not allowed to run and they have to make growling Zombie noises. If you don't get tagged, you win!! It is so much fun and the kids LOVE it, so we have all decided to have Zombie nights throughout the year!! :D

We have one more church in Dublin that starts tomorrow. I am extremely sad that Crossfire is almost over. I love the team sooooo much and am so excited to have such an incredible new group of friends. Each person has taught me soooo much and encouraged me in different but incredible ways in my walk with the Lord. I know that the Lord has used both my teamates and people we've met a long the way to prepare me for what the Lord has for this year!

Pray that we give our everything to the Lord for this last church! It is going to be a retreat to encourage the kids in how to walk with the Lord during all the craziness of school. I think it will be great not only for the youth, but also for us as we prepare for the year! Thank you for all of your prayers this summer! We appreciate your prayers so much and are sooo thankful for all of the incredible ways that the Lord moved!

YAY Crossfire!!! One of the best summers of my life!!! :D
-paynt :0)

Bu means Drunk...

Ok so aparently bu/boo or some such word means drunk in French. I was going to post something deep and meaningful about our last stop coming up tomorrow night, but Payton's nonsense made me forget what I was going to write, so thanks, Payton. Anyway, if I remember I'll come back, but if not, then just know that I'm sad, but not depressed or anything. This has been an amazing summer, in a lot more ways than one.

Love ya'll,
Justin

Prayer Request :D

Be praying that we finish strong as a team! It is really easy, especially since we are in Athens for us to look ahead at what is coming this school year, but we still have a whole week! My desire is that we would be desperate as a team to see the Lord move in ways we haven't seen this summer, and that we would be absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the Lord this week. Pray against apathy and just getting through this week. I want us to live in the moment where the Lord has placed us and be ready and willing with our WHOLE hearts to be used by the Lord!!!! Fill our hearts with your desires, Jesus!!! May we be so overwhelmed by Your love, Jesus, that it overflows and changes lives!! Capture our hearts, Jesus!! :D

South Carolina!!!

So before we get going on our next church tomorrow, I thought I would share a little about South Carolina! We got to work with the Middle School group for their Mission camp. Their job for the week was to work on furniture, art pieces and curtains, etc. for the interior rooms of rooms in 2 habitat houses. In the mornings, we had worship and played games and in the afternoons, we worked on the projects! We had a great time at Advent UMC in South Carolina! The people were so much fun and there were several times were I don't know if I've ever laughed so hard! From Interpretive Dances to wearing scraps of the curtains on our heads, from the dart game every time I turned around to writing letters to our Best Friend, Jesus, we had an incredible time!

Check out our sweet tie dye shirts that we got to make with all the youth!!! (In the middle is the Leigh, the youth director!)

These kids know how to break it down!!! (If the links don't work, they are posted on my facebook wall): http://www.facebook.com/video/?of=4941103#/video/video.php?v=1109240135229&subj=4941103

http://www.facebook.com/video/?of=4941103#/video/video.php?v=1109266135879&subj=4941103

They even loved breaking it down during worship!!! http://www.facebook.com/video/?of=4941103#/video/video.php?v=1109228214931&subj=4941103


We LOVE Advent UMC!!!!!

Winding Down

The summer is winding down, coming to an end, whathaveyou. Two more stops for Crossfire. Tucston UMC in Athens on Sunday, and then Dublin a few days after that... Then intern training for Mike and myself.

Right now we're just chilling at Liz's place/Wesley in Athens and enjoying one of our last days on break together for the summer. I'm actually making myself kind of sad writing about this. It's been one of the best times of my life, and I'm going to miss it so incredibly much.

Anyway, that's it for now. Hope everyone has had a great summer, and I love you all.

Peace,
Justin

Hey all! I just wanted to give a post about Americus a few weeks back, I haven't had a lot of opportunities to type on here lately, so I actually should have done this a few weeks ago but w/e...

Hi, my name is Mr. Fluffy. I was born only to die. You see, I had a great life, living in the hills of North Georgia until one day I went on a trip down to a little place known as Camp Dooly. I discovered a horrible and dark secret that day... small children have the secret power of ants: useless by themselves, but ridiculously powerful when combined. These small children have the power to bring down and destroy not only fully grown men, but also elephants, buildings and the great redwoods of California, truly fearsome. This is the end of me my friends, perhaps I will resurrect once more again in some bright and beautiful day.

Edit: just to let ya'll know, I'm perfectly fine. Mike made realize that this post sounded kinda weird... so yeah... Love ya'll

July 8! Liz's birthday!

though only there for one day, we had an awesome time with st james youth last night! we played lots of games, had a really good q&a, and played zombies in the dark church afterward. today we head for milledgeville to be a part of another river of life, doing service projects and hopefully more roofing and construction, though we'll be happy to serve however they have for us.

today is liz's birthday, so tell her happy birthday in some way! we surprised her this morning and we all had ice cream cake for breakfast!

please pray for us to have energy and strength to not just get through the week but to thrive and really be able to minister, the last river of life we went to was very physically draining, and please just pray in whatever way you feel led as well!

mike

we're back in athens from the orchard church in loganville, and it was a good day. we've been hanging out at wesley where we played some sardines. its been an amazing day. it was too bad we could only spend one day at the orchard.

mike

Crossfire Back in Action!

So we just had our break and are starting back up tomorrow!! I'm super pumped! I didn't have as much time as I thought, so I didn't get a chance to update the blog about the last two churches. Both were awesome though! Hopefully one of us will get around to updating soon! The break was a great time with my family and seeing high school friends, but I'm ready to get back on the road!! Thanks so much for your prayers and love!

Happy 4th of July!!

Father, I Want to Be Close to You!

So we start our 4th church, as Mike said, in Ringgold. We are all so thankful for what the Lord did in Richmond Hill. The relationships we formed were incredible!! The kids are so hungry for the Lord!!! One of the girls just texted me yesterday and told me that we had no idea what kind of impact we were making and she was closer to the Lord than she has ever been!! I am just amazed by the Lord and the way He is choosing to use us! My favorite part about Richmond Hill was when we took communion with the kids and then blindfolded them. We played some "soaking" music to allow them to just rest in the Lord's presence. We told them that if they needed prayer, to give a thumbs up. We got to pray for a bunch of the kids, and then I had the opportunity to dance up and down the asiles as I prayed over them and proclaimed truth over that place and those kids. We then moved into a time of praise and worship. Mike and I lead worship the whole time we were there. Mike had never done that before where he could hear himself through a monitor. For me, it was the first time, I was really bold in singing and giving it all without being worried of being perfect. I was amazed by the things coming out of my mouth...the holy spirit was definitely singing through me!

As the kids were blindfolded, it really allowed them to let go and worship the Lord in incredible ways. They worshipped with their whole heart and it was absolutely beautiful!! There was one time that I looked at the youth and just started crying because I could tell that thier hearts were so engaged and that the Lord was capturing their hearts.

The next day we took a day trip to St. Simons where we had a great day of fellowship. Before we left, we got to worship on the beach! It was absolutely incredible!! One of the girls and I started dancing and spinning around. It took a great deal of boldness to do that in such a public place, but it was so cool when I looked up and saw a bunch of people watching us worship and wondering what we were doing, and apparently they had been there for a while. Apparently they came up right after Mike prayed that we would touch the people on the beach and it did without some of us even realizing!

Well it's time to go prep and pray for River of Life! I love you all so much and hope that the Lord is blessing your summer!! Thank you SO much for your prayers!!!

Abide in His Love,
Payton :0)

6/16/09

well, we head out in about an hour to head up to ringgold for the river of life we get to serve as a part of there. we're all really excited to have jack back with us, as we stayed at his house last night and will be leaving from there in about an hour. we stayed up til 3 last night watching indiana jones: last crusade, because ginger had never seen it and we all just felt like chilling and resting. from about 215 onward ginger and i were the only ones awake, and she actually fell asleep around 230. it was the rest we needed after such an amazing, intense, spiritually and emotionally charged week at richmond hill (all in a good way). this week should also be very physically draining with all the outside work we'll be doing, though in a different way than the lock in from last week. in either case, though we barely had 24 hours to rest between richmon hill and ringgold, the Lord has provided good rest, and we even got to stop by riverstone church where a bunch of their staff prayed over us. God is good!
<><
mike

Well, we leave Richmond Hill tomorrow afternoon and head for Kennesaw to stay at Jack's for a night, then on to Ringgold the next day. I forgot my pillow in Cordele... probably the saddest thing ever. Much love all

Justin

2 Down

Two down, some more to go... I can't wait for the next one! So many good times have been had, and it's only been a week and a half. God has done some amazing things. Just finished Cordele, tomorrow starts Richmond Hill. Sweet Jesus time for all! Yay!

Much love,
Justin

One of my Favorite Stories!!

So I was super pumped because the Lord really wanted dance to be a big part of Blakely. It amazed me because the Lord provided so many times for us to lead dance with the older girls, younger girls, and even the boys! It brought me soooo much joy! We taught them dances to worship songs, line dances and dances from Restoration (our praise and worship dance performance in April). In my cabin alone, there were several girls who were dancers. I had such cool opportunities to teach these girls about God's heart for dance and His purposes for dancers! We also had the opportunity with all the girls to talk about God's desire to worship Him with our passions. It was absolutely wonderful and one of the girls, Maggy, sent me a text yesterday telling me that she danced all day to praise and worship music!!!! She told me she didn't want to leave the music, so she turned on the Christian music channel on all of the TVs in the house! It was so wonderful to hear that the Lord made a huge impact in her heart. My heart was to teach these dancers and all of the campers that God created them to expereince intimacy with Him through dance and through their passions They seemed to really soak it in!!

On the last full day, a little 8 year old girl came up to me and I asked her if she wanted to dance for Jesus with me. She shook her head. I then asked her: "Do you know why we dance for Jesus?" She didn't know and so I told her about some of the things I had just learned. In Zephaniah 3:17, it says "The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." The hebrew word used for this rejoice, is the word giyl. Giyl means "to spin violently under the influence of a wild emotion." When I told Samantha that Jesus spins violently under the influence of a wild emotion over her, her eyes got HUGE! I then asked her if she wanted to go spin for Jesus, just like He spins over us and she got really, really excited!

Several of the younger girls! Samantha is on the top left!! :0)

We went and danced around the outside Chapel and I have never heard a more joyful laugh! I asked her if she could see Jesus dancing over her and she said yes with a big smile on her face!! We danced around for a long time, spinning and jumping and skipping. Later on, I got a picture of us walking down the aisle in wedding dresses. I asked her if she had ever imagined herself in a princess dress or a wedding dress and she said yes. I told her to picture herself in a dress like that now and that we were going to walk down the aisle and Jesus was at the end. When we got to the end, I was in my own world and lifted up my hands to Jesus and when I looked down, Samantha was doing the same thing. I told her, Jesus is reaching out his hand to you and is asking you to dance. We both took His hand and danced. My iPod was on random, and this whole time the song "Beloved" by Tenth Avenue North was playing. This song is essentially Christ's wedding vows to us! It was absolutely beautiful!

After we were done dancing, I asked Samantha what her dress looked like. She said "It was white with pink hearts! :0)" I then asked her what Jesus did when we got to the end of the aisle. She said "He put His soul in me and He put His heart in me!" Trying to hold back tears in my eyes, I asked her, did Jesus say anything to you? She said, "Yes! He said thank you for praying to me and loving me." My heart absolutely melted! I was absolutely amazed by the Lord and the intimacy that He just allowed this 8 year old to have with Him through dance!! WOW!!!!!!!!!

We love Lindsay, Daniel and Katie!

And so it Begins.....

We love Lindsay, Daniel and Katie! They did an incredible job getting us ready for the summer!!!

Click here to view these pictures larger

This link will take you to our new SHUTTERFLY account! This is where we'll be posting all of our pictures from the summer. So far, we've been to one camp and we took 428 pictures. WOO! So go check them out and see what Crossfire is all about. :]

Back at Mike's

Today we got back to Mike's from our first stop of the summer Kolomoki Camp in Blakely, GA. It was a ton of fun, and somebody else will probably post more about it. I just put this here to give ya'll the schedule update. Next up is Cordele, GA. We've got a couple days to just chill here at Mike's before we move on, so we're gonna be resting up. Actually right now we're watching Star Wars because Ginger has never seen them. Much love all.

Justin

Camp Kolomoki, We Miss You Already!!!!

So we finished our first church and we were sad to leave, but thankful to get some rest! The church camp was in Blakely - a small town in south Georgia (not too far from Albany). Many of us were excited to be at this camp because it reminded us of camps we've been to in the past. We played lots and lots of games, taught lots of dances and songs, held Bible studies, and hung out and poured into the kids. Many of the things we taught were also things we needed to hear and learn. We had incredible opportunities to teach the kids

• about being fully present in where God has you
• that it is our job to BE LOVED by God
• that God doesn't choose the prepared, but He prepares the chosen
• what Godly relationships look like
• about different ways to worship God
  
• about being the light of the world when we leave camp

The kids, the counselors, and the adults seemed to get a ton out of how the Lord used us at camp and didn't want us to leave. Many of the campers asked if we would come back next year!

Our team had an incredible time working with all of the kids and it was incredible to see each team member's strengths as they spent time with the kids and led in their prospective areas! :0) Our team has had lots of laughs and a few struggles already and Jesus is teaching us SO much! I know we are all so incredibly thankful that we get to spend our summer this way!

We will post pictures a little bit later and maybe a few specific stories! Love love love!!!! :0)

Sayonara Athens (emal draobyek sdrawkcab)

(This is the corrected version of the backwards post)
First of all this keyboard types backwards for some reason. Well we're about to go eat lunch with Daniel and Katie. All we have to do after that is head down to Mike's. That's all I'm typing now because typing backwards is too annoying. Much love all.
Justin

Justin Much love all. That's all I'm typing now because typing backwards is too annoying. All we have to do after that is head down to Mike's. Well we're about to go eat lunch with Daniel and Katie .nosaer emos rof sdrawkcab sepyt draobyek siht lla fo tsriF

Weeeeeeeell, we should post the video from the retreat night on here. I miss it. I want to watch it and laugh and laugh and laugh. Oh well, see ya'll in a month or so. Peace

Make a Joyful Noise in this Place!!

On Friday night was our retreat. We were under the impression that we were leaving Athens for the night, but when we got there, our leaders told us we weren't going very far. We were given 4 tasks and couldn't read each one until the one before it was completed.

Task #1: Go to Walmart and buy our bins/closets for the summer

Task #2: Make a Mexican Fiesta together!!!! So much fun and yummy!Task #3: Listen to the Lord for His Desires for the summer and share them with each other. (This was such an awesome time!) mmmmmm
Task #4: Have fun! play games, make our video, decorate our bins, dance party....yesssss!

For our Video, we are doing a Power Rangers Theme. Here is a little preview of our battle gear:


It was a great time for us to get to know each other better. Long story short, there was a ridiculous amount of laughter and not very much sleep! haha We are in for a ridiculous summer!

How to pray for us:
-Pray that we have an effective May. Mike is going to Montenegro, so pray the Lord uses that to do incredible things in his life and also to prepare him for Crossfire. Everyone else is going home. At home, away from the community we have in Athens, it can be distracting, and so pray that we will be encouraged by the Lord. I know we all really desire to spend lots of rich time with the Lord to allow Him to prepare our hearts! We all have a jam packed summer, so pray the Lord continues to provide energy and continues to fill us up as we will be pouring out so much!
-Pray the Lord gives us the strength and desire to selflessly serve our families and friends while we are home.
-Pray against apathy. May our faith rapidly grow while we are home and may our hunger and boldness for the Lord increase.
-Pray for the Churches - that the Lord will start preparing their hearts now for what He wants to do in their lives and what He want to teach them.