Birthday parties, bike trip, and other summer happenings

Hello all, I'm sorry, i've been somewhat absent from the land of blogging for some while. :) And yes, i am fully aware of the fact that a few videos and song lyrics do not count as a true post. 5 could perhaps equal about one real post, but at that point you're already pretty tired of the shallowness, and the purpose is rather defeated. Anyway, i digress.

Our church has an overflow of toddlers who all seem to have turned 1,2,3 or something in the month-point-five that i've been back. I love candid photos of kids, and i got some good shots of TJ and one of Luke at one party.

Another thing i've been doing is coaching Volleyball for our youth group summer ministry. Basically in the summer, instead of normal youth group meetings, we have a volleyball tournament put on by our church. It's about half kids from our church and half kids who come out from the community, and friends of the church kids from school. They have one practice a week and the tournament night on Friday. I played as a student for the last 4 years and it's very exciting to be on the coaching end of it now. It is a very Gospel oriented ministry, with a Bible study every practice and a very clear presentation of the Gospel through the word for about 45 minutes between matches on Tournament nights. God has used it greatly in the past 20 something years we've had it, many of those who now serve in our church and even in the actual ministry were saved through coming out to the volleyball ministry and summer camp. So I'm really looking forward to all that, and the culmination of the entire thing in SUMMER CAMP, which will be completely awesome. :D
I'm helping coach my siblings' team, Supersonic, which was my team under several names for the last 4 years. Here's a few pictures of our practice times.

I've been hanging out with my friends from the college group here at my church, COV (Christ Our Vision). Saturday we caravaned down to Monterey and those of us who didn't bring bikes rented them there. It was so much fun, we biked part of the 17 mile drive, stopped for lunch on a lovely beach, walked around a bit, and then biked back to Cannery row ad spent the afternoon walking around a bit. Click on the below picture to go to an album of pictures from the day.

And thus ends my tale (for today) of the college student and the summer...
Tune in again soon for new stories, and please pray for my summer ministry and for my continued growth. :)
<3 you all.

I'm voting for Batman. :D

I'm a big Batman Fan...:D I'm voting for Batman.

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Beautiful Song

If you've been reading my blog long, you've probably noticed that I love poetry and song lyrics. Especially the ones that have great meaning but are still very much poetic. Here's a beautiful one for ya of the Celtic Worship cd. I love Celtic music too . :D

Stones and Sea lyrics

In the beginning,
I was counting the stones on the seashore,
Looking for the precious ones.
Among the stones, I found many pretty things
While the sea rolled on beside me all the time.

Time moved on.
I had collected many stones 'til I tired of them,
And I think they tired of me.
Some were lovely, but I was never satisfied,
And the sea rolled on beside me all the time.

And the wind rose, east and cold.
Whisp'ring sweetly to my soul.
And it said "Look you fool,
You are missing precious things:
Raise your eyes and look towards the sea."

So I looked:
It was as if I saw the sea for the first time,
And it's power captured me.
All the time I had wasted seeking stones,
I had missed the rolling glory of the sea.

And the sea
Devoured a mighty swathe of heart, overwhelmed me
In a way I couldn't know,
And the price for the love of greater things
Was surrender to the great and cruel sea.

And it stole me, and I feared the aching sea,
It consumed me, drowned my mind.
The wind said "Look, you fool,
No matter what you do,
You can't contain the ocean like a stone."