8.10.2008

The ASi chapter has closed...

The summer went so fast! I can't believe its over already... It was extremely challenging and a huge growing experience all wrapped up in one. Not only have I never been to YFJ before, I've never deaned before, so I was learning both on the go. Talk about stress. I enjoyed it though. I love my girls... It was an adventure having all those personalities in one room for that amount of time.
The last Sunday of the program, we got to go on another beach outing. We went to a different beach than the one that was at Clearwater. We drove for almost two hours to get to this beach... and on the way there encountered one of the worst rain storms I've ever had to drive though. It was so bad, I could hardly see the road in front of me. I had all the students in the car pray that the rain would stop so we could have a wonderful day at the beach... it wasn't looking to promising with the sky looking so black, but we kept driving. When we finally arrived at the beach, there was no trace of the blackness we had just passed through. Praise God! One of the students said the weather in Florida is Bipolar...
In all my travels around the world, I've never seen such beautiful white sand. It was nearly as white as the snow on the mountain tops back home, and so smooth you could hardly feel it with your toes. We played in the waves for a while, and then decided to try some pictures...

Olivia was nervous shooting on my film... not sure why though... she's amazing! She has the same taste and style as we do, so we had a ton of fun shooting with her!


Tuesday we gathered all five of our sites together and had big baptismal service at the Tampa First church, since it was the largest. Mark Finley had the sermon, and it was so powerful! He spoke on all the evidence there is to prove that the Seventh Day Adventist church is the true church... that these people being baptized were being welcomed into a huge family the reaches to all ends of the world. But as he was there making his appeal at the end, we're all standing in a circle around the candidates and he's going at it with everything he's got. We stood there being showered by his presence... and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word. Like Dan says "The news, not the weather bro..." When you see him on TV, you never see the huge spray that follows his powerful words.
Its fun being at ASi getting to see all the big wigs, and Adventist superstars... Like Sabbath in the lunch line, there was Kenneth Cox and the Mitchiff sisters behind me having a super animated conversation about the experiences they've had while filming for 3ABN.

The convention is over... everyone has gone home, and here I am, starting the newest chapter of my life. It feels weird to be moving to another country... even though most of my life I never thought of the States as being a different country... separate from Canada, but I'm realizing more and more that it really is. Weird eh? What's going to happen? Where will I be a year from now? Guess we're about to find out...