The Rock Junior High

Prayer Requests

Allrighty...  you guys said you would comment with an update on your prayer requests so here they are...  let's see what God does this week!

Rob - His friend's grandpa committed suicide last week.  Asking God to comfort the family.

Maddie - Her sister's boyfriend is gone for two weeks and she's feeling alone.

Jacob - Asking God to make his grandpa stop smoking and help his grandma deal with her diabetes symptoms. Also - Kayla's having a hard time.

Hailey - Her baby cousin has cancer.  Asking God to heal the baby and give the family strength and comfort.  Also - her grandpa is sick and they are having trouble finding a house.

Everyone - Tori Gilge has cancer...  asking God to help him make good decisions on surgeons and stuff and to help his family (especially Sam) cope.

Laura - Work stuff!

Notes from Today's Discussion on How to Pray!

H – I Honor who you are (Praise God for something)

E – I Express who I’m not (Confess any known sin)

A – I Affirm who I am in you (How does God see you?)

R – I Request your will for me (Ask God for something) 

T – I Thank you for what you’ve done (Thank him for something)

(Stolen from Purpose Driven Group Resources)

Matthew 6:10-14   This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name,  Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.  For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Summer Camp 2007

Summer Camp 2007 - Daroga State Park - July 11-15

Water Baptisms

Summer Camp Pictures

Baptism Pictures

Summer Camp was amazing this year. Post a comment about your experience!

Note:High resolution pictures were uploaded to shutterfly so you can order prints of any of the pictures you see posted. They should come out great.

Want My Kit-Kat Wrapper? It's Crusty!

My birthday’s coming up! I turn 30 (yuck!) on June 17^th... You know what I would love for my birthday... If everybody who cares about me talked for days about the awesome presents they were going to get for me – and then my birthday came, and everybody gave me a bunch of left-over junk that they were too embarrassed to put in their garage sales.  That would be awesome! 

Have you detected my subtle, sarcastic tone?  Nobody wants to get handed a crusty, empty Kit-Kat wrapper and be told it’s a gift.  But sometimes I do that to Someone I claim to love more than anyone else… I don’t think God likes getting my leftovers.  It doesn’t seem right to me the only time I give God during the day is my half-conscious sleepy-time when I’m waking up in the morning.  It doesn’t seem right to me when I don’t thoroughly prepare for our get-togethers on Sunday mornings… I don’t like when I look back at a week and realize that I treated God like He’s not the most important Person I will ever know.  But I do it. Am I the only one? 

I’m teaching this Sunday, and instead of talking about not giving God your leftover junk, we’ll focus more on how to give God the best that you can!

The reading schedule for this week (1 day late due to the holiday) is: 

Monday: 1 Samuel 15:1-9 | Tuesday: 1 Samuel 15:10-23 | Wednesday: 1 Samuel 15:24-35 | Thursday: Mark 12:13-27 | Friday: Mark 12:28-40 | Saturday: Mark 12:41-44 

And the memory verse is: 

1 Samuel 15:22
But Samuel replied, "What is more pleasing to the LORD: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Obedience is far better than sacrifice. Listening to him is much better than offering the fat of rams.

Yodel-Dancing

You know what I like about my dogs: I can do whatever I want to do around them. My dogs couldn’t care less if I’m slumming around the house in yoga pants and a ratty sweatshirt. If I dance around while Gwen Stefani yodels in the background, they’ll watch adoringly like I’m a prima ballerina. If I’m feeling a little snippy and just want sit down and pout for a while – the dogs don’t care! As a matter of fact, they’ll come over and keep my feet warm as I sulk. 

People – now that’s a different story. Take my pouting example, if I come home and tell Charley that I’m feeling a little snippy and I just want to sit down and pout for a while, a cuddly foot-warming is the last thing I’m going to get. (As it should be!)

The way I act, like it or not, has an effect on the people around me, and in some cases, the way they choose to act. This isn’t as big of a deal when you’re talking about ratty sweatshirts, or an ill-choreographed yodel-dance, but it is a big deal when you start talking about people that are skeptical about Christ and God watching people who claim to be Christians. 

“The people who have been horribly mean to me or mistreated me the most have all been Christians.” Has that been your experience, it’s certainly been mine. As a believer, I’ve given up my “right” to be a butt-face. And as a believer, I have an incredible chance to be light instead of darkness (Matthew 5)!

Jesus spent His whole life being light. Over and over and over again the way He treated people, the words He said, the things He did – these things prompted people to seek God and His presence then (and now) is shaping lives 2,000 years later. He didn’t have Christian stickers on the back of His sandals, or “clever” Christian sayings on His favorite robe (can we please burn all of the “Eternity: Smoking or Non-Smoking?” t-shirts?!?) He didn’t need to. His life said what He believed.

OK – I’m done now. Our lesson this Sunday is: “Yes, I see that you’re drowning. I just don’t care.” (Ooh. Harsh!) Chandra will be giving her view on how our lives can be our greatest asset in helping the people we care about meet God.

Reading Schedule:
Monday: 1 Corinthians 11:1 | Tuesday: Romans 3:19-24 | Wednesday: Romans 5:1-10 | Thursday: Romans 6:1-11 | Friday: Romans 6:12-23 | Saturday: Romans 10:3-15

Memory Verse:
Romans 10:13-14
"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."  How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?
 
I’ll write about the zoo trip a little later… : )

30 Hour Famine – Not Sure How it Could Have Been Better!!!

I was absolutely inspired by our group this weekend.  We were all hungry and tired, but we spend all of our time working.  We exceeded our fundraising goal for World Vision (over $3,800), collected about 45 trash bag size bags of clothes for “Clothes for Kids” in Lynnwood, made 55 sack lunches that were distributed to Seattle/Capitol Hill area homeless people, completed our “Mercy Mile” on Alderwood Mall Parkway to raise awareness for World Vision, and learned a great deal about the world hunger crisis ourselves.

Thank you Matt Vaughn & James (what the heck is your last name, James?!) for spending so much time taking pictures and making the video in the post below. 

Cole & Derrick distributed our sack lunches for us, and Cole will be visiting G For Jesus this Sunday morning to let us know how that went! 

I’ll be in Tennessee over the weekend and then in Georgia for the Orange Conference.  Hopefully I’ll learn some cool stuff to make the time we have together even better.

Thank you, all of you who participated in the 30 Hour Famine. I am very proud of you guys. Next year, when you tell me you’re going to raise 8 billion dollars each… I’ll believe you. ;D 

PS – Not posting the reading schedule OR memory verse this week as I'd like to see if anyone is actually using it… if you’re here looking for it, send me an email at KeepItG@therockchurch.net and I’ll post it straight-away…

12 hours in...

12 hours in and we are having a great time. We played some games, let our creative juices flow with some great shirt designs and posters for the mercy mile tomorrow. Laura will be giving more details on our fund raisining efforts but I am blown away by what students raised. I way under estimated what impact a group of committed teenagers could do for a cause they are passionate about. Amazing!

I think its hard to really imagine what some of the kids in Uganda and other areas of the world have to deal with on a day to day basis. It makes me so thankful that I can raise my family in a safe enviroment. We are very blessed but I am getting the feeling that with great blessing comes great responsibility. What are we going to do to continue to make a difference after this year's famine is just good memories?

PS: The boys are going to totally win the bread bake off...

 

30 Hour Famine - Schedule Change

In light of services scheduled to celebrate the life of our friend Jim Sorenson on Saturday at 7pm, we are planning to end our 30 Hour Famine at 6 pm Saturday night.  This is a change from the previously scheduled end time of 7pm, but students can still be picked up from the Patton's at: 18031 48th Avenue West, in Lynnwood.

30 Hour Famine, Friday, 12:32 pm, It Has Begun...

The 30 Hour Famine has begun!!!

Participants all stopped eating at noon today (I admit, I was enjoying a very tasty Kit Kat bar at 11:59...)  We're 27 minutes into the 30 Hour Famine and things are already getting VERY EXCITING!

I just got off the phone with Nancy at Clothes for Kids.  Clothes for Kids provides clothing for students (and their families) in the Edmonds and Snohomish school districts.  Students who have a difficult time paying for school clothes or who have lost their clothing in a house fire, flood, or other disaster can be referred to Clothes for Kids to "shop" for free clothing in a retail environment.  Nancy is going to receive the clothing we collect in our clothing drive and is so excited to have it that she is going to open their doors just for us at 1pm on Sunday so that she can receive our donations!!!

On top of that - two other churches have called and want to participate with our group in our Mercy Mile... it sounds like we'll have about 75 students marching by Alderwood Mall tomorrow, shortly after 10:30 am.  We hope to raise awareness about the World Hunger Crisis and direct people to World Vision so they can help!

All for now - I'll have more later tonight!!!

30 Hour Famine - Subtitle: I HATE Comcast

I know I said I was going to post about the 30 Hour Famine last night but that was before Comcast (in it's all-knowing ISP customary level of excellence) decided that a light rain should completely prevent my access to the internet.  Now that that's out of the way...

We are joining thousands of students all over the world by participating in the 30 Hour Famine on April 27th and 28th.  Starting at noon on Friday the 27th, participants will stop eating for 30 hours and spend that time in praying, raising awareness, and fundraising for world hunger and serving our local community.   

$30 may be "almost enough for a good video game" to you and me, but to children in many countries, it's enough to eat for 30 days.  For that reason, in order to participate in the 30 Hour Famine, students and leaders must all raise at least $30.   Fundraising  materials will be available to all participants starting Sunday, March 24th.

I HATE fundraising even more than I hate Comcast... so do some of you and so you've asked for some ideas on how to raise money - here are five ideas from several places, including the official 30 Hour Famine website that has several other interesting tidbits!

1. Write letters...  Everybody gets too many emails.  Sit down and write a handwritten note to a few people who either really like to help with stuff like this, or really like you!  Tell them why your doing the famine, that you're trying to raise money, and that you wanted to say hey anyway.  At the very least, most people will think it was nice that you thought of them.

2. Hit up your relatives...  Depending on your age, you've got a small window of years left where certain relatives will think its "cute" that you care about world hunger. Make them pay for all those years of gratuitous cheek-pinching!!!

3. Sell something...  Sell some video games that you don't play anymore...  Drag some of your old clothes to Plato's closet...  Stand outside a gym and sell Snicker bars... Be creative!

4. Work.  Do extra chores at home. Do a little yard work for somebody.  Knock on a neighbors door and offer to pick up the 2 years worth of dog poop that's accumulated in the back yard.  Seriously... I'll pay somebody to come out and deal with that at my house!

5. Bug your entire neighborhood.  Grab your 30 Hour Famine fundraising pack and go to each door and ask if they'll contribute $1 to eradicate world hunger.  A lot of people will be happy to contribute that way!

Got any other ideas or know how your going to do it?  Post a comment here - maybe someone else can use your idea!

Finally, we discussed at length on Sunday, the merits and detriments of the official 30 Hour Famine "Hungry Child" logo.  Guest artist Andrew Brookhart contributed his revised version of the logo on Sunday and to be honest, I like it better.  The little abstract stick figure with the metaphorical void in his tummy is a lot easier to look at but the fact is: 29,000 children (CHILDREN)die each day from  hunger and other entirely preventable  causes. 

We can do something, so let's.