Crystal - Nerves probably got the best of me today. I said my testimonial during the middle service and I totally stuttered the entire time. After staying up until twelve thirty the previous night to write it, I still messed up. On the bright side, everyone elses were great. I guess it just goes to show that you the Holy Spirit talk through you instead of your earthly self. I actually sounded okay when I simply spoke from my heart rather than my paper. Later in the day we went white water rafting. It was thrilling and the sites were breathtaking. I couldnt believe that I almost chickened out because I didn't even fall out of the raft once. I wish I could say the same for some others in our group. Once I put my fears aside I was totally calm and collected which was surprising to me. Afterward we came back,ate dinner, had community life and "ask the pastor". Ask the Pastors was quite ibteresting to me and I felt that I learned a lot!
James - Going to keep it short for sake of uhhhhh....I like sleeping. There wasn't a whole lot that happened anyway, after singing and some of the youth gave testimonials at the services we had a short lunch of some prime pizza before rafting. Rafting was extremely fun this year because the water level was much higher than normal due to all the rain they have been getting down here in North Carolina all summer. Our rafting guide looked like Karl from Workaholics, and he had a polka-dotted painted helmet that he put duck tape dinosaur fin/scale/thingy's http://www.
JT - Today was a good day! I think I counted 2 1/2 church services. but at this rate that may be wrong because this far into the week my mind is scrambled! everyone did there testimonies today and they all did fantastic! I think they all had different opinions and different view points of how to look at this servant event. and just like last year after three people went up and did these I regret not wanting to do one because I feel as if I have a great opinion of how this whole thing comes into play! I feel very strongly about this servant event and exactly how it has helped me grow in Gods word. But I am a scarred cat when it comes to speeches! especially when I choke up in front of friends. that is even worse lol. but hey we will all learn! and then we went white water rafting today which was very different because you weren't worried about getting wet then dry and wet then dry..... because it rain pretty much the whole time we were out! :) and then we had a nice dinner and worship was great! like always! I love having time at the alter at night! it makes me feel complete when I can pray at an alter before bed! well talking about bed that sounds like a very peaceful place to go right now! night yall! peace
Trish
Waking up for early service on a Sunday morning; what a
great feeling. I can’t believe I have
been here for over a week.
Today for Service Pastor Jud gave the sermon while Pastor Kufaul
did the service. (These are two of the four pastors serving in our midst at ASE.) What a treat it was to
see the acting pastors that are serving ASE preach God’s word among us in our
hosting church. It was a little strange
to see them in their collars this morning as this was the first time I had seen
that all week because they have been in street clothes the whole time. It was a double blessing as the service
itself felt more like home, we followed the Hymnal and there was a lot more
singing. We sang our song at the three
services and at each service three of our youth gave testimonials. They did a great job.
We then were able to take group and state group photos. Hopefully we will see these up on another
side soon. We had a great lunch before
we left for white water rafting….pizza, which has been too long since I last
had it. It was SOOOO good.
After lunch we headed off to the French Broad River for
White Water Rafting. It was quite
interesting. I have never done this sort
of thing before; I always wanted to try but never really had the opportunity
to. They gave us instructions on how to
sit in the boat, what gear we would be wearing and using, and what we were to
do if someone fell in the water or you fell in the water yourself. After hearing about the bottom of the river I
was a little nervous, I didn’t want to fall in the river, I was afraid no one
would save me if I did. LOL. It
didn’t stop me from going rafting. Turns
out it was quite the adventure. It was a
pretty tame river compared to the ones that have apparently been visited by ASE
in the past and the scenery was just beautiful.
They like this river because it is easy on the beginners but gives the experienced
ones a little thrill. It was pretty cool
going down this river. The rapid areas
were pretty wild. We had to work
together to make this boat go where we wanted it to go. We did get caught by surprise by a few rocks,
a tree branch, and we did lose a passenger, it just wasn’t me (thank goodness),
but I was the one that kicked it to high gear to get Matt Q back in our boat;
he is a dad chaperone from Maryland, and not a small guy at all. He bopped right out the boat, I immediately
reached out with my paddle and pulled him back to the boat so he could grab the
rope on the side of the raft. Then I
grabbed his one hand and had the other couple of youth that were on Matt’s side
pull him into the boat by his life jacket like we were supposed to. It took all three of us. LOL It
was fun. I can’t believe we were
actually on the river for about an hour, several of us commented we could have
easily have gone for another hour. Turns
out four individuals made the French Broad Swim Team this year from the ASE
group, Matt Q., Nikki, Lisa S. and Betsy.
That’s a swim team I don’t necessarily want to be on. It was great fun. I wish the weather would have been a little
better for us but honestly I would much rather have it rainy on the river than
rainy at the dig sites because it would make moving that dirt extremely
difficult.
When we got back from rafting (and took advantage of the heat
in our vehicles to warm up) we were greeted here with a great cookout dinner, hamburger,
hotdogs and lots of great sides. Again,
I stuffed myself on this dinner. After
dinner the kids headed to the gym to play a game which I opted out of this time
because some supplies were needed from Kmart so I did a run to take care of the
last couple items. No more runs for me,
I’m out of money, LOL.
It was “Ask the Pastors” night tonight where the kids could
put a question in a bucket any time this week that they thought of to have the pastors’
answer. They came up with some very good
questions. Ones that a lot of us are
trying to deal with now. It was great to
see this interaction between the kids and pastors. I even learned a couple of new things
myself.
With the long day of activity on the river and activities
once we returned from the river, I’ve discussed with several of the youth what
our themes at our work sites should be for the last two days, so in the Larry
the Cable Guy voice GIT‘ER DUN! We are all very close to wrapping our project
sites up. I even had a short discussion with
PJ about the work tomorrow so we can get a jump on things and maybe get this
done a little on the early side. We
shall see, there is some “appointment people” who need to be at the site for us
to finish but I don’t imagine that will be very difficult.
With that, God Bless our last couple days and GIT‘ER DUN TEAMS!
Nikki - Kind of long day (writing this at 1:20 am) and I need to get to bed. May elaborate more tomorrow. Left my wallet in Pack Square downtown Asheville last night. Police have it, but it went into property so I can't get it until tomorrow. I joined the French Broad Swimming Club tomorrow. (That means I went for an unintentional swim by falling out of the boat.) The river ate my right shoe. At the end of the day all is well and I am off to bed. Wish me a restful night.
