My, oh my!

My goodness! Life has been good but very busy lately. I turned 15! So now I'm all old and wise and mature and all that - NOT! :-) God's been doing such amazing stuff in my life!

For my fifteenth birthday, I had 4 of my very close freinds over - Kyla, Emily, Kara, and Kelsea. Great girls! We stayed up til 5:00 AM (or later ;) ). We atched 4 episodes of my very favorite show ever - Sue Thomas F.B.Eye. It's about a deaf woman who's an F.B.I. agent and it's really awesome (minus a couple of moments in a couple of episodes, which I do not give my approval to.) Also, we did our nails, talked laughed, sat around the fire, and took a walk out to the beautiful field with the windmills, which I do believe I have mentioned before. It was asuch a wonderful time!

Cody is back from Circle C! I missed him SOSOSOSO much, as you know! He's such an amazingly awesome brother. :)

Erik is moving to Kentucky in less than a month!!! Wow... it seems so crazy. He will be 6 miles away from the Creation Museum, which is why he's moving there. That way, he will be able to work at the office. He's bought a little 2-bedroom house, and we're going down in a couple weeks to help him get it fixed up and ready to live in!

Our youth group went on a camping tip this past weekend. It was really neat! We stayed at the home of one of the guys in our youth group - they have a big yard and were very generous to let us all camp out there! We went rafting on the Genesee river at Letchworth, and we also went hiking and swimming there to. It's SUCH a beautiful place! For those of you who are reading this and are not from New York: Letchworth is a state park with a huge gorge and some spectacular views! God's creation truly is amazing. I grew a lot closer to God this weekend, too!

Today is my dad's birthday! We didn't do much for it though. :( We wanted to, but life's been so crazy that we didn't end up getting anything ready in time. So we will probably celebrate it more another day.

Cody, Erik and I went to my wonderful friend Abby's presentation about her missions trip to Mexico this evening. She went on a missions trip to Chiapas, Mexico this summer and tonight she told us all about it. Afterward we all stayer around for a while and had a TON of fun!!

All in all, God had been really, really amazing lately, and has been teaching me a lot about standing up for my faith - especially when it costs me something! I need Him so much... may He get all the glory in my life!

Old Testament, Camp, Wales, and Zach! :)

Guess what!?!

I have been reading through the Old Testament this year (which I have never completely done before) and I have stuck with it for 6 months! I'm half way through! Wow! There is so much to be learned from it, I'm totally loving it!

I got to visit Cody at camp today! I was at camp all afternoon. It was neat to see all of my friends and meet some new ones! I even convinced a couple of girls that I was from Wales (the country)! It was really funny. I kept messing up... I can't believe they still believed me! But don't worry, I told them the truth before the day was done ;)

Tomorrow (hopefully/most likely) I will be posting about My dear brother Zach! Stay tuned!

To God be the glory!
<3 Christy

My brother Cody!

So, I got an idea the other day. I was putting pictures up of my family, and I decided that I would like to do a blog post about each family member. So to start, I'm going to do Cody, my 17 year old brother.Cody is a really fun person. He always makes me laugh :)

We don't always get along, obviously, but we have gotten really close, especially this last year I think. Before he left for camp this summer we went a lot of places together and had a lot of fun. I really love going places with him, because usually it's just he and I in his truck, listening to music and talking. He's very sanguine and choleric, and if you don't know personality types, that means he's very fun, outgoing, and a strong personality. He's always been a really good worker. He'd usually rather be out working on cutting wood or mowing the lawn than washing dishes or something inside. He also snowboards and plays guitar, and is very good at both!!

He has mostly taught himself to do both, which is amazing because he's so good!! He also writes songs, and is quite good at that too. He's very protective of me, which I really appreciate. He's been a good listening ear throughout a lot of hard times for me, and I am SO thankful for him in so many ways!! Most of all, he is a strong Christian and lives to the glory of Jesus Christ alone.

He is such an awesome brother and such an encouragement to me! I have really missed him while he's been at camp.
If you want, you can go to his blog - livingextreme009.blogspot.com. He hasn't posted on it in a while because of camp, but there's still lots of great stuff on it!

A Quest for More

Well, the summer weather didn't seem to last very long. Recently it's been really chilly. That's good, though, because it rained a lot and we desperately needed rain. Because of the rain, the trees have gotten a lot greener.

Youth group with Circle C is mostly over for the summer; the camp has staff training week starting Sunday, and then a whole summer of camp. My brother, Cody, is working there this summer, so I'll miss him.

I've been reading a book called "A Quest for More" by Paul David Tripp. It is SUCH a good book!! I've really enjoyed reading it; it has opened my eyes to a lot of things. It has really helped me understand what a life of purpose is and looks like. Instead of the typical "Christian" book, it shows that serving Christ is SO important, and what we are really fighting against. I highly recommended it to any Christian of any age.

I have been absolutely loving serving God. It is so fulfilling and He brings so much joy. Keep fighting the fight, everyone!!

An AMAZING weekend!!

So, this past weekend I went to snow camp and it was amazing!! We got there Friday at 7 PM for registration, then after some games and unpacking and stuff we went roller skating. It was super fun... tons of people, friends, and fun. There were lots of "special skates," like limbo, couples' skates, backwards skate, all girls skate, etc. that were lots of fun. We got back from roller skating at about 2 AM and we were all sooo tired! The next day there was lots of fun stuff like laser tron, rock wall climbing, karaoke, games, dodge ball, and (my favorite) free time! I loved free time because we would just sit around and talk, or play ping pong, or something else like that. The chapel sessions excellent. During the first chapel session a lot of people made professions of faith. One of them was my friend Lynne! I had just met her at that point, but we got to be really good friends by the end of the weekend! I'm so thankful for her! My favorite chapel session was on Sunday morning. They gave us 15 minutes of just being still and being with God. I read some scripture from 1 John, and prayed, and it was extraordinarily good. They gave us a few minutes to go around the chapel and pray with people - even people we've never met. That was really cool... realizing that even though we don't even know each other, we have something in common - our love for Christ. I think I prayed with 3 or 4 people, and it was a huge blessing to me. Sunday was fun - we had the "Donut Classic," which is a race that involves a lot of people and obstacles and a tray of donuts. It was so fun! The goal was to be the first team to go through the race ad eat all of your donuts, which were shot out into the mob by 3-man slingshots. We didn't win, but it was really fun. :) Lunch was pretty fun that day... we were all SO overtired and crazy - especially our youth leaders! We kind of had a food fight... it was so funny! Everyone in the dining hall was staring at our table. :) After all of that we had to clean our cabins and say goodbye. :'( I miss everyone so much already! All in all it was an AMAZING weekend! I hope I get to back next year! :)

My birthday! :)

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't written in so long. It's been busy! Let's see... on Friday we headed to my Grandparents' house, and we spent the day with them. We watched TV for a long time and talked. Then we had supper and they made me a cake for my birthday! :) It was nice. I got a present which was jewelry, nail polish, and lip gloss. AND GUMMY BEARS!! I love those things - lol :).

On Saturday it was my birthday!!! YAY! We headed toward home at 8 AM and Mom said she was planning something special but wouldn't tell me what. After about 2 hours of driving, we showed up at Camp Lamoka, where my brothers work! See, I worked there for one week on a Ministry Team last year and I LOVED it, and my brothers always tell me how much fun they have working there, so I wanted to go there again and meet all their new friends! I met some friends, and enjoyed a couple of hours there, and I found out I was going to my brothers' friends' house with them to spend the afternoon there! I was nervous at first, but it turned out to be an AWESOME day!!

On Sunday, I had 2 friends over and we did a photo-shoot in a beautiful field. It was so pretty! We all wore coordinating colored dresses and the pictures turned out so nicely! Later, I opened my presents from my parents. I got: an AMAZING black hat with studs on it. (That sounds punk-ish but it's actually really cute) and I got very pretty earrings, and a big purple plaid pillow, and an awesome little purple plush doggy. The 2 friends I had over, Danna and Glory, gave me $14 and one cent! The one cent was because it was a day late. :) All in all, I had an awesome birthday and awesome weekend!

I have also been learning a lot about sin. I often feel like I'm a slave to sins that I keep doing over and over, but then I realized, I am NOT a slave! I have been freed by the blood of the Lamb! I don't EVER have to sin again!! I won't be perfect, of course, but it is very relieving to know that sin has no grip on me, and I never have to sin again. It's a battle though, and it has to be fought! It's guerrilla warfare. The enemy has been defeated, but refuses to give up, so he sneaks in and tries to cause as much trouble as possible. Therefore, we must watch and pray!! God has taught me so much. Please pray for me, that I will fight the battle and not give up.

That's all I have to say now, so toodles! :) :)