Ack! What am I getting myself into?

My youth group needs to grow! From the day I took over I decided I didn't care about the quantity as much as the quality. If I only have 5 kids, but they are solid God loving people then that's great!
For the past few weeks though we have been talking about witnessing to friends. This is one of the last things Jesus told the church to do before He went to Heaven. He told us to go make disciples who make disciples. It's so very important that we all do that, but I also know how terrifying that can be for not only an adult, but for an insecure teenager.
So I'm putting our lessons into action and we are having a "fun night". Not your typical Wednesday night youth group service, but a night to just play games and relax. This is also a super easy way for the teens to invite their friends to church. I hope it will all come together, we are suppose to have Wii's, Xbox's etc hooked up and ready to go as well as board games available.

Verbal Beating

I am currently reading a book called Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs. At times it can be a verbal beating, but the information in it is pretty amazing. Now, I think my husband and I have an amazing relationship. He was my best friend for 2 years before we decided to date, we dated for 4 years before we got married, and we are working on our 2nd year of marriage as we speak. I don't read these books so I can fix a strained marriage, but I read them to try and become the best wife I can be and to try and prevent anything major from happening.(This was on our way to Florida for our honeymoon!)

The book talks about how woman have this deep desire for love. If you are a woman reading that you are probably thinking, duh yeah... Well then it goes on to say how men have a deep desire for respect. When I started reading this book I thought to myself "well I want to be respected too." What women don't understand is that men need the respect like we need to be loved, it' s on another level for them.
I'm not able to explain as well as this author does, but I would encourage any wife to check it out. It has so much insight and I'm thankful to be reading it.

I'm melting

I discovered this website yesterday from a friend/co-worker Missy. She posted a fabulous recipe and I had to check it out. I've spent a good part of my day already just browsing the recipes and they are to-die-for. I want to make everything! I keep thinking to myself I can't wait until I'm a stay at home mom and can make homemade breads and other goodies. I've decided it's silly to wait! I want to bake more, this site has inspired me. Check it out if you get a chance.
Here are just a few of must tries!


Chicago style pizza....YUMHomemade wheat bread!Who doesn't just love this picture? Brownie Pudding!

Inspiration

There are a lot of things that inspire me. And they all inspire me in different ways, they are people, things, words etc. I was thinking about some of those things yesterday on my drive home.
I decided sunshine inspires me. We have gotten our fair share of snow these last few weeks and I'm begging for some sunshine. It puts me in a good mood and makes me cheery. I'm more motivated to do things and not just stay inside because of the weather. So sunshine, if you are out there, please come out soon!

It is Patient

Oh how I dread praying for patience. You just know something is bound to happen that will test you in some way! To start off my Love Challenge I am focusing on each one individually. The first one on the list is Love is Patient. Could we be off to a more difficult start here?

Here is how I see this Love Challenge working:
1) Focus on one part of 1 Corinthians 13 at a time. The list includes: is patient, is kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not proud, is not rude, is not self seeking, is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs.
2) Pray about it daily
3) Try to act this out, consciously working on this. My focus will be on one at a time, if I don't feel like I'm ready to move on from that one, I'll keep it for a while. My goal is to work on them for a week.

It may seem silly, but I really want to do this.

L-O-V-E

I'm not a Valentine fanatic at all, the day is cute and I love a reason to decorate in pink though! Our church service was all about the Love chapter in Corinthians today, it was a great chapter and had me convicted for sure. While at first I have to fight the pain of "oh crap God is totally talking to me today" I really enjoyed it and was able to laugh at myself.
This will not come as a shock to anyone that really knows me, but I struggle with this. For some people it comes so easily, for some reason it's different with me. I could go into sappy details about my childhood, but the bottom line is when I became saved Jesus gave me new life and I should be focused on that now.
I have been giving this a lot more thought lately, even before the sermon today. I know that Jesus was love, is love, shows us love. He showed the ultimate love for us, it's the least we could do to show love to others. It also says in the Bible that they will know we are Christians by our love. It's also not about loving those that are easy to love. Oh no way, if it were that easy I would be pretty decent at it. God wants us to love everyone, the people that hurt you, the people that are weird etc etc.
In our society we have no clue what love is. We think it's buying presents for someone, or being nice to their face but "venting" to someone else when they aren't looking. It's all very silly (And I'm pointing the fingers at myself here)
I thought about making a Love Challenge for myself. I need to think about how this will manifest it's self. You can read 1 Corinthians 13 here.

Here is a heart for you on Valentine's day.

A new task

I'm learning how to knit! It's pretty fun, and pretty funny to see how uncoordinated my hands can be. I've been wanting to learn for a while now. My good friend Corrie is teaching me! I'm still in the process of learning how to hold the needle and not letting it slip out of my hand when I'm concentrating on something else. I can cast on, and knit a few rows. It's not beautiful yet but I hope to make cute things like these someday:

I know I don't have any kids, but I think Caroline would look fabulous in them! And what about this fabulous piece of work?? I don't drink coffee, but my hot tea would appreciate this. Be prepared to receive fabulous homemade gifts next year family and friends!

Sometimes you feel like a nut

And sometimes you feel like a librarian... My schools were canceled today. I was all prepared to talk to 6th graders about the joy of abstinence when my plans were canceled by snow. I am wearing an over sized brown sweater and my hair is frizzy and dry because I wore a hat so it's pulled back in a low pony.
I'm a site for sore eyes, that's for sure! I am comfy and out of the snow though, so it's all good. I'm excited to get home and start cooking dinner. On the menu tonight is gumbo! It's only suppose to take 30 minutes, who can beat that?

The Bogart

This is called The Bogart.
It means you're really going places, Baby.
You'll still be blogging about your great adventures 10 years from now,
and I'll still be reading them.

The Rules:
Link back to the blogger who sent you the award.
Post where you would like to be in 10 years.
Pass this on to 10 other special bloggers.

I was tagged by my friend Elise! from Elise is...Content.

I think this is really fun to think about. There are so many changes I would like to see in my life and some of them are BIG and exciting to think about!

First and foremost would love to have our house built! We are saving saving saving right now in hopes to have a huge down payment.I would also like to start a family. I hope that will happen around the same time we start building. Anyone who's heard me talking about wanting kids would know that I desperately want a girl, but I don't know God's plan for my life.My hope is also that the youth group has grown tremendously. I don't mean in quantity as much as quality. I want the kids to have such a desire to seek God that it's contagious and they change their whole high school.

I want to find a passion. I have typically described myself as a person without a passion. I like a lot of things, but I'm not sure if I'm passionate about anything. I want a to find some secret talent to tap into.

College may also be in my future. For the moment I am an abstinence educator but I think this is only for a season. I feel like it's much more effective because I'm young, and students can easier relate to me, once I get older I don't see it having the same effect, I'll have to pass it on to someone much cooler and younger than my 10 years older self.

A visit to Hawaii is totally in my future. If in 10 years I have never been there will someone please take pity on me and fly me there?I can't even imagine what my marriage will look like in 10 years. I don't know how it can get any better but I know we will be even closer than we are today and I can't wait.I want to be even closer with God, my relationship with Him is always challenging and growing. I better not be in the same place 10 years from now!

Health, wellness, exercising. These are all things I want to get better at. To have those things come naturally would be amazing.

Last but not least I would love to have an opportunity to do some charity work, whether it be working with little kids, cleaning up a community. I want it to be something that will be very beneficial to someone else.

Here are the 10 people I tag:
Nicky (as always, even though you "hate" them)
Denise
Amanda
Missy

I know there are some others, but I don't want to tag them all, I'll leave them for someone else to tag since a lot of us have mutual friends :)

Habits

On my way to work I listen to a morning radio show. I probably look like a crazy woman in the car, just laughing away with no one sitting next to me. I don't care though, it really makes my morning. It's called Kidd Kraddick in The Morning, locally it's on 93.1 or 104.3. Well, they have this segment called Does That Make Me Crazy. They have listeners call in and talk about those cooky, silly habits people have. It always makes me think about those silly things I do.

I realized this summer that I have this habit of counting peoples toes to make sure they only have 5. For some reason at first glance I always think I see an extra toe! Is anyone else with me on this one??

How are you doing?

I want to stay on top of my goals this year. It was never my intention to make a New Year's resolution and then never stick to it. So far I think I'm doing really well! My goals were this:

1) To work out more. I want to be healthy and I don't want working out to be a chore. I want to enjoy it. It took me a little while to get this started and to get myself into a routine. I have an exercise ball and some 20 minute workouts I started with. Those are not very challenging though. I try to only do those as a last minute resort when I'm feeling lazy. I also have a Jillian Micheal's Shape Up Front workout DVD. It's about 30 minutes long and still kicks my butt. It's cardio and strength training combined and I feel like throwing up every time I'm finished. So my new workout goal is to get through that DVD without feeling sick!

2) I want to read the Bible everyday and get through it in a year. So far I'm doing really well with that. I'm so proud of myself for sticking with it. It's only 20 minutes out of the day and that is nothing really. I prayed about this one for a long time. I asked God for motivation and desire to read the Bible and I finally have that!

3) Not to focus on me. I knew this one would not happen over night. With any self changing desire, it's a process. I'm still working on it though.

Did anyone else set goals for themselves? How are they going?