Sand Blast day 1

I have to say I love planning and preparing for events in Student Life. But come the day of the event my shalom and patience get stretched to the max! So the week leading up to Sand Blast I gave the adult leaders the authority to hold me accountable to not losing my shalom and patience come the Friday morning we were scheduled to leave for Sand Blast. Well that Friday morning one of the adult leaders saw that some of my shalom was falling off my face, and simply reminded me to breathe.

It was the exact thing I needed to hear!

I took a minute, told myself about 30 times people first, then in my head regrouped and started to see things in a totally new perspective. Isn’t awesome when we allow people to point out things in our lives, then humbly go to God and ask for His help?

So we loaded the trailer and the buses and headed for Panama City Beach, Florida….and the anticipation started.

Do you remember the feeling you used to get on December 23^rd….2 days before Christmas? Remember wondering what gifts you were going to get? If you were going to get that one thing you have been asking for the last 6 months?

I had that feeling on the bus heading to Florida…the anticipation of students standing before God saying “I relent my life, future, dreams, worries….to you…I trust you”!!

We were making good progress until we hit Alabama. Traffic.

I dislike traffic….really, really dislike traffic!

After 25 minutes of stop and go traffic we were crossing the Mobile bay. We stopped for lunch shortly after Mobile Bay at our traditional stop…Wendys, and we were back on the road.

We arrived at Surfside Retreat Center around 4:30pm, unpacked Ms. Pam’s van, the trailer, and the buses like busy little ants and we started to enjoy the beautiful blue water of the Gulf, the view, and the community.

We got settled in, went over a few rules and expectations, ate dinner, then the gathering.

I have to say, it’s been a while since I saw over 50 students so ready to worship our Creator! During worship I could hear God talking to me like never before. I was like He was standing next to me, with his arm around me, directing my every thought and word and move. During the teaching I had stuff in my notes that I wanted to say and I could clearly hear God say skip over that, and move to this. After I was finished the teaching (which by the way was about the Kingdom of God: what it looks like and how it is relevant to us today) we started to worship again. Normally at this point students, student leaders, and adult leaders would start to move to pray for people. But this time nothing!

This was the 1^st of many times during Sand Blast I would have the decision to throw away my agenda and allow God to carry out His agenda. After about 45 seconds (which felt like 10 minutes) I asked God “what are you doing? Don’t You want to move in these students’ lives?” He simply told me to be patient….I was like right!!

He then told me that the students and leaders need to see me move and pray for people 1^st, and then they would follow. And as it turned out, God knew what He was doing, I just had to be obedient and wait on Him.

As it would turn out, there would be a lot of being still, being patient, obeying God, and waiting for Him to move….all of the stuff we love…right?

You will learn more about how all that played out in future blogs!