Family

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple."

Hey family and friends! God is good over here and is continuing to show me things that I can share with you all. So, here we go.

First off, this weekend I witnessed an undeniable miracle. The Lions beat the Bengals 34-3 and Matthew Stafford wasn't injured. Hallelujah! The greatest part is that my housemates and I went in together to buy the NFL Gamepass for a total of $130. The gamepass records every single game this season, including preseason and playoffs, as well as all the games from the past two seasons. This means that for one payment of $30, I can be uplifted every weekend.

On a more serious note, I had a class this week called New Testament Tutorial. For an hour straight, we went around the room and read our favorite verses or chapters from the Bible with nil commentary. It was one of the most powerful classes that I've had here so far. It also prompted me to read the Book of Zephaniah, which contains a lot of imagery of the Lord's wrath. Whenever I read about God's wrath, I am always reminded that this awesome and terrible punishment for my sins was poured out on Jesus Christ so that I could be in relationship with Him. He not only suffered the physical pain of being crucified, but also suffered the wrath of God stored up because of my sins. Hallelujah, what a savior!

This week, I was also able to serve in my first service at the Macquarie extension service. The service takes place in a movie theater and requires about 2 hours worth of set-up time just to start practicing. After running an endless amount of cable, I started to learn how to run a light board. I've never really worked with lighting before, so it was difficult to really know what I was looking for with colors and everything. Next week I'll learn how to set up and connect the lights. This is a skill that I'm definitely looking forward to learning. God has also blessed me at Macquarie with a genius named Jared. Jared is the head sound guy at Macquarie and is a professional sound technician during the week. I've already learned an incredible amount about mixing and using a computer for effects. I can't wait to learn and practice from Jared in the next few months.

Tonight at Sunday Night Live, a message was preached about family and genealogy. The preacher took a look back through history for a couple hundred years and examined how the choices made by previous generations really affected the influences he had as a child. It really hit me how blessed I've been by previous generations of my family and the conscious decisions that my ancestors have made to live in God's will and be a blessing to their children. I was really convicted to realize that I don't know many of the stories and testimonies of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and various cousins. So thank you mom and pop, brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on for being an incredible blessing to me over the years. I love you all and hope that I can be as great of a blessing to my children and grand children as my family has been to me.