Flour Power

Hi this is Dan posting.


I know Hilary already posted about our adventure yesterday, but I thought I'd give you all a glimpse at just what flour can do to a person.

Oh and btw, Hilary "forgot" to mention to you all that she is evil and refused to participate in the snowball fight, but then decided it would be a good idea to play everyone against Pastor Dan. If you could see me better you would notice that I am completely covered in flour, head to toe, back and front. I had flour in my eyebrows even. Also one teen hit me right in the mouth with one and I was spitting flour for the next couple hours.

On a happier note *wink* the Ice rink was really fun and good times were had by all.

That's all for now, but with only a week and a half left out here I'll try to update more often. My goal for next week *kingdom bound* is to bring my laptop and make a blogpost every evening from the hotel. So we'll see.

Keep reading and praying!!!

We appreciate and love you all

Duck Duck Goose is a Dangerous Game

Hilary reporting...

Today was the youth group "Snow Day." The teens came over to the church for a snowball fight. The snowballs were really nylons filled with flour, so whenever they hit someone they made a huge POOF! Afterward, the plan was to go to the local ice skating rink. We finished the snowball fight early, however, and ended up playing duck duck goose while we were waiting to leave. When I was up, I was running away from the "goose" chasing me and tried to slide into my seat. BIG mistake! I ended up falling right on my outer hip and thigh. It hurt SOOO badly. As usual, I was laughing and crying at the same time.

Eventually we did end up at the ice skating rink. Since it was attached to the mall, and the kids don't get to go to the mall very often, not a lot of them skated for very long. That was okay though. They all stuck together and were good. Anyway, I skated for about an hour and a half of the two hours... and I'm exhausted! My legs are totally jelly; I think it's been three years or more since I've actually been ice skating.

It was a good time. Two days from now, Wednesday, is our last youth group meeting. Then it's Kingdom Bound, a pool party, and the end of the life and times of Hilary and Dan in Lisbon NY.

Love ya!
Hilary

Long Weekend

Dan here,

I'm going to tell you all of my journey home and back again (a hobbit's tale?).

Anyway when I left Friday morning everything seemed to go alright. I wasn't tired even though Hilary and I stayed up far to late the night before. However, as I got to the bridge in Ogdensburg (15min from here btw) I noticed something strange. The bridge was completely grated. There was no pavement whatsoever. Needless to say I was quite frightened. I'm glad I never have to cross that thing again.

Later in the day I came to Toronto. 2.5 million people live there. Crazy huh? Well for me the coolest thing was seeing all the cars. At one point there was 8 lanes of traffic on either side of the highway, for those of you with bad math skills *me too* that is 16 lanes of traffic in total. I've never seen that many cars before. It was fun.

When I got to Port Huron the border was fairly backed up, I spent about 45min waiting to get back into Michigan. Then when I finally got to Josh's house I ran out of gas about a block from his house. Right at the corner of Maple and Fenton road. I was disappointed but also pleased that it only took one tank to get from Lisbon all the way there. Anyway after I got to his house, he slept for the first four hours I was there. It was alright though because I talked with Lindsay and played with Logan a bit. Logan is the most adorable little boy in the whole world.

The rest of the night was fairly uneventful. Josh and I talked and watched CSI. That was neat. I've never seen it before.

On Saturday I got up and headed over to the church. The ride up was fun. Very stimulating conversation. I know my views tend to be different from more conservative Christians, but to be honest when it comes right down to it, I believe we both want the same thing; We want people to love Jesus and we want to love them like He loves them. We just go about this in two different ways.

The wedding itself was very difficult for me. I wanted to support my dad but so much of it was almost like a slap in the face to my mother. When the Pastor announced them as the "New" Mr. and Mrs. Robert Holtz my heart just broke. I know the Pastor didn't mean to say that like my mother was irrelevant or anything but it still hurt me. Also I'd never seen my dad kiss my mother like he kissed Karin that day. I couldn't even look at them when everyone was banging the table to get them to kiss.
On the plus side the cake was delicious, but being serious my dad did seem really happy to see us all there and I'm glad we came because he only had one other person from his family there. Rob and Dawn didn't even come which surprised me.

Later that night I went and saw Harry Potter with KC and his friend. I liked the movie a lot even though there were some obvious problems with it diverging from the book. But the cool thing about the night was the ride home from the theater. KC and I had a great talk and I really feel like he's starting to grow up. Some of the things he said to me really impressed me and I think he's heading in the right direction. I think that will only continue as he does the XD program at Bethany. I pray for him fairly regularly and I think God is working on him.

Sunday after church Josh and I visited my mom. I try to get out there every time I come back home. After that I headed back to Lisbon.

On the way back I encountered a lot of interesting things. First I hit Toronto at rush hour. Have you ever seen 16 lanes of traffic at a standstill. It was not fun. Also later I saw a lady drinking a Heineken while driving, and the reason I know that it was a Heineken was because I could read the label. Some people are so irresponsible. Also I may have met the dumbest gas station attendant in the history of time.

I got off the highway for the exit that said bridge to USA at Ogdensburg. I must have turned the wrong direction though because I remembered the bridge being right after the overpass. So I pulled into a gas station to ask for directions. The man at the counter tells me he has never heard of Ogdensburg and that he thinks the only bridge is at Prescott (which was about 5 miles back the other direction on the highway) or at Cornwall (which was about 30 miles up the highway). Well I know the bridge is here because the exit said so and I crossed at Ogdensburg on Friday. So I leave this extremely unhelpful man and head back toward the highway to find my mistake.

Well as soon as I get up onto the overpass I can see the bridge and then proceeded to cross back into NY. Now tell me how you work at a gas station that is not even 2000ft from viewing distance of the bridge and not know it exists? I wasted 15mins of my life talking to that man.

But to make a long story short (hehe) I made it home with only a few emotional scars, and I know God can and will heal those.

My Fingernails Look Awesome!

Hilary here...

So since Dan went back to Michigan this weekend to go to his dad's wedding, I'm here in Lisbon holding down the fort. I decided to have a girls day for the youth group girls... no boys allowed! We baked cookies, and then we watched Confessions of a Shopaholic and did manicures and pedicures. It was a blast.

Only three girls came, plus the Pastor's wife, but it was kind of nice to have such a small, intimate gathering. Most of our youth group is involved in marching band, and they had a parade this weekend, so that's where the rest of them were. It was nice to have individual time. They all seemed to enjoy it, and it turns out one of them is an aspiring nail artist. Not really, but she totally could be when she grows up... she's FANTASTIC. My nails look incredible. The only problem was, EVERYBODY wanted her to do their nails, so she did the most work.

We had one little mishap... Pastor's daughter (she's four) came over and wanted to "help." It was totally an accident, but a bottle of nail polish got knocked over, staining two blankets a (rather beautiful) shade of bright blue. Anybody know how to get nail polish out of fabric? We already tried nail polish remover...

Anyway, I'm glad the girls and I got to bond. It's so sad, they were all expressing how much they don't want me to leave at the end of the summer. Well... right back at ya girls... I'm in the same boat.

Love,
Hilary

It Makes You Feel Old When...

...it begins to be difficult to stay up all night for an event.

Well... Our last kid just got picked up from the lock in and we are exhausted, exhausted, and more exhausted.

Tonight was our youth lock-in and we had... dun dun dun... TWENTY teens! That's right, twenty of them. We were SO excited, because we've really been praying for all these new teens, and so many of them came! Everyone seemed to have a good time, and the new kids all got quite well integrated into the group as a whole. We played games like Psychiatrist, Moron, and Mafia, and fed them junk food (pizza rolls and chips.) Then we split up and some played video games, some played board games, some watched movies, and some got some sleep. We fed them MORE junk food at 4:00 am (pigs in a blanket this time.) Finally, we fed them breakfast (ice cream sandwiches) cleaned up, and sent them home.

We think the most encouraging thing was that nobody hung out with the same people all night. Everybody was in small groups doing their own things, but the groups were constantly in flux. Also, we got to spend some one on one time with a lot of the kids, getting to know them better. It is going to be SO hard to leave here at the end of the summer. We don't even know how we're going to be able to do it.

The night was great though, except for the fact that Hilary's voice is totally gone... oh, and the teens are already asking us when we can do it again. Did we mention we're EXHAUSTED?

Oh well, we'll take the exhaustion any day... it's totally worth it. What we're doing is so COOL!

Love,
Dan and Hilary

Holy Kids Batman!

Hilary speaking...

VBS has been this week and it has been AWESOME!!! There've been over 70 kids each night and it is CRAZY around here! What an exhausting, thrilling, wonderful week. Dan's been spending all week as a crew leader for kindergarten and first graders, and I've been floating. I spent one night co-crew-leading with Dan, was the storyteller Tuesday night (the ten plagues,) spent Wednesday night as a crew leader for the 4th 5th and 6th graders, and then tonight was the storyteller again (crossing the Red Sea.)

In addition to VBS activities, this has been a busy busy week for youth group. Monday night we had an ice cream pig-out, and today we had a beach trip in the afternoon and a bonfire after VBS. It was a HUGE success. There were something like TWENTY teens! A lot of our regulars didn't even come... several of them were new... incoming seventh graders that were attending VBS that we invited. It was insane. We passed out information for our upcoming events... please pray that all these kids would come back! There are two in particular that I got to know during my night working with the 4th 5th and 6th graders at VBS that are just really on my heart, and I'm praying for them especially. But if these kids keep coming back... well, we'll have just EXPLODED!!! I am SO excited right now... it was truly a GREAT night!!!

Much Love!
Hilary

P.S. I am calling for a roll call. Dan told me he doesn't believe anybody but Steve-O and Aunt Marta are reading our blog anymore. So if you read this... comment, even if it's just to say you read it, so I can prove Dan wrong! Thanks!

God is Wonderful!

Dan here


So wow! That's pretty much all I have to say. I've been feeling really disconnected from God lately and distant, but guess what. Jesus still lives and still moves and still wants to be there for his children. Let me explain.

Last night I preached my very first authentic sermon. I wanted to preach about how God can always take bad situations and turn them to good. So I started out by talking about a sprint commercial that I love so very much. I'll post the link here...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kl1CNffn0M. The title of my sermon was "No Rain, No Rainbows." Anyway to make a long story short the sermon ended up being about 15 minutes. I had timed myself at 23 minutes and I thought that was a decent amount for a first sermon. However, when I actually got up to preach it I was incredibly nervous and spoke fairly fast, I also forgot a few illustrations, so that is how I lost time.

I was feeling ambivalent about my performance afterward. A lot of people praised my effort, but I kind of just felt like it was an A for effort kind of thing. I did however think it was the best sermon I've gave to date, which isn't saying much because my experience includes speaking once at Lennon when i was like 10, and three sermons I gave for my expository preaching class. Anyway, I felt alright about the sermon because I knew it was a message God had laid on my heart.

Well here comes the wow. Today I got an email from the parent of one of my teens. She told me about how my sermon had really touched her and especially about how my story about High School and my GED really related to her own son. She said that it gave her hope for him and that maybe he could follow in my footsteps. I guess he wants to be a minister and is considering Houghton.

I've never felt so good in my life. I feel like I'm finally doing what God has called me to do, to bring the hope and love of Jesus Christ into the lives of others. I may not have everything figured out yet and I may not be the most skilled orator, but I know what my calling is and God confirmed that in a big way last night.

Happy Fourth of July Everyone!!

So far we've had a pretty darn good holiday weekend. Of course we miss being in Kalamazoo but... we've had a nice time all on our own. We had a fantastic Fourth of July dinner of barbecue chicken, garlic herb mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, watermelon, and for dessert, lemon cake decorated like a flag, which we've kindly included a picture of so you all can be jealous. The longer we're married, the more of our "own" traditions we get to create. I think this cake is definitely going to make it on the traditions list... DELICIOUS!

We decided not to do fireworks this year, mainly cause there's not really anywhere we knew to go, so instead we cuddled on the couch and watched the NYC fireworks on TV. We never even knew before this year that they televised them! They were far more spectacular than any fireworks show we've seen in person, and for all that, it was missing something. There's really no comparison to fireworks in person. Still, we have to admit, there were some REALLY cool ones, the likes of which we'd never seen before. Giant cubes, rainbow circles... even a smiley face!

Fortunately Dan has gotten over his sickness, so instead of preaching last week he'll be preaching tomorrow night. Next week is VBS, so we'll be insanely busy. We've also got a beach trip scheduled for Tuesday... but the weather is threatening thunderstorms so... pray for nice weather!!!

We love and miss you all... enjoy your Independence Day!
Dan and Hilary