weather, oob, amazing love - in that order

the weather. Its fabulous! I love this time of the year and hope that from this day onward it only gets better and better.

went to OOB yesterday. Again, the weather was great - a little windy, but great none the less. We went down there for a Leadership seminar that gets put on by the division yearly. I'll be honest in telling you that I didn't learn much about leadership. I don't feel as though I got much of anything out of it, sadly. This really makes me sad. They tried so hard to pull off this big thing and in the end it fell short for many, I believe. Don't get me wrong, there are some who probably loved it and had never heard anything the speaker had to say before...it would be a great new converts class.....so we went to the beach! You can't go to an ocean front town and not go to the ocean. It was beautiful.

Church this morning was amazing. Mary spoke on Amazing Love and used a great video about Jesus' life, miracles and death(images of Jesus) as well as the 4 stations of the cross to illustrate. I sat glued to my seat watching the screen for the first few minutes, until they started beating my Lord. At that moment I needed to feel it too. I rose from my seat and went to the station with the ice. You are meant to hold an ice cube in your hand for as long as you can. the cold starts to settle in and your hand goes numb, feeling as though frost bite could actually take place at any given moment. I took my ice and moved off into the corner. Standing there, one by one, many of the teens came over, took their piece of ice and came and stood with me, us ending up standing in a sort of circle. Even though we weren't supposed to talk, they were kinda stunned at how one little piece of ice could hurt so much. I took the time to remind them that this pain was nothing to the pain Jesus felt - and yet, he went as far through the pain to save the man next to him! If we were being persecuted would we be willing to do the same? Looking into one of the boys eyes I saw the pain. Not his, but my Lords. Intensity at its best.


Blessings.