The Time Has Come

So here it is. Time for me to man up and take on the challenges that kids will bring me. Sure, it's going to be rewarding and all but I'm scared. I have 2 major fears. One is that I'm going to sleep in and miss stuff and the other is not giving my all to my future campers and they will come out of the week not having much fun. I know that I have my fun moments but I'm not sure that I can dish out ultimate fun-ness 24-7.

The more and more that I try to do it on my own, I fail. How many times does it take me to realize that I can't do it all on my own, I need to rely on the big man upstairs. At this moment in my life, I feel like I need some sort of goal to reach within the next few years, mainly pertaining to my college career. Honestly, I have no clue what to study for. As a kid I always wanted to be in the military doing special ops stuff or a fighter pilot. Then it moved onto an auto technician, turning wrenches my whole life. And then the idea of Engineering seemed so great, the hands on wrenching turning stuff plus some math. Well, it turned out to be more math than hands on. So thats what I started with and after one semester I felt like I was a fish in the wrong tank. I evaluated my strengths and came out with maybe some sort of teacher or something. Bam, social sciences. And that is where I currently stand, taking all social science courses in the fall. But honestly, I am totally lost. What am I going to do with a Social science degree? Yes, I'm looking at education but I'm still unsure of that. And if social sciences doesn't work, right now, I don't know what I'd do. 

I know you're thinking, Devin, what about youth ministry stuff? I'm thinking the same thing. I don't especially feel called to be a pastor but I do feel like I need to have some anchor in some sort of youth ministry field. Maybe God is just using this to make me more dependent on him, I'm not surprised because I've been praying for him to use me in some way. But, it just sucks right now...

Anywho, this summer is going to be life changing. I'm going to be pushed to so many limits. I would describe it as driving your car fast on a curvy road. So pumped yet, scared out of your mind. 

Thats where I'm at and where I'm going. I may or may not get a chance to update this, facebook or upload some pics, but I will try. PLEASE PRAY FOR ME!!! Enjoy the summer!

Struggle

Yo,

I'm out of school, finally and overall, it was a decent year. I did amazing my first semester but then then second semester, my grades plummeted. The reason, because I was too committed to Campus Crusade for Christ. Now, Cru (as we call it) has been truly amazing and through it I have been challenged to always further my faith in God. But, Cru was my life, not school. Right now, I'm going to school, not Cru and I didn't follow through with that this semester. So, I'm definitely going to have to take some steps back, and yes, it is going to be hard. The thing that really sucks, is that is also where the majority of my friends are. When I look back, I pretty much only hung out with that group and hardly anyone else. And as great as they are, I feel like I need to get to know some other people. One outlet of that is going to be through upcoming skate nights that I'm going to start. Here in VA, almost every Friday and Saturday a group of guys (and sometimes gals) meet up and go skate into the wee hours. I want to create that atmosphere up at Tech (Michigan Tech, not Virginia). Also, I love to go four-wheeling and sometimes I ditched one friend who wanted to go out and I hung out with Cru. I'm not going to stop going Cru, I just need to step back and handle what I'm called to be and that is a student.

So tonight I scraped some lady's car with my dad's truck. Nothing major, just scraped some paint off her rear bumper and scratched the front bumper of the truck. Now, I love and hate driving the truck. It's a manual which is cool and crappy. So for parking it, I absolutely hate it. I pulled in and then I pulled out and swung it around thinking I had at least a foot of clearance, nope, scrape.... Man, there goes the money I'm making right now. Now, I'm bummed.  I'm in a depressed mood. Not only because of this but some other things have been on my mind. I'm going to be at camp in 2 weeks and when I'm going to screw up how am I going to handle it? With my record, I'm going to get down and want to get away from everything. Now, I can't do that at camp. I've got responsibilities and most importantly I've got be that great guy counselor to my kids this summer. We'll see, time to cool down and get ready for tomorrow. 

Blah

I don't know what to write but I thought that I needed to write something since it's been over a week. Maybe after finals are done and I'm not doing anything I'll have something to talk about. Sorry...

2 Weeks Left

Hey guys and gals,

Sorry I haven't updated in about 2 weeks, it's been pretty busy, I haven't had time or I just don't have much to talk about, or when something does come to mind, I don't have time to blog it out. But, I really don't have much to bring to the table right now other than talking about some things here and there, pretty much whatever pops into my head. 

Like I said, I've been busy. I do only have 2 weeks left, 1 week of class and then some finals. Oh man, my grades will not be that great this semester but still not horribly bad, hopefully around a 3.0. Which brings me to my first thought, this semester has been pretty crazy. I'll admit I have not put forth 100% effort in classes, probably not even 75%. It's really hard on me when I have so little free time and when I do get a free chance I waste on Facebook or catching up on some TV shows, which is fine until that's all I focus on. A big reason why my grades are slacking is because I don't study often or I just do the minimal amount of work to get it done and not focus on understanding. Which sucks, because I get to exams like today's where I'm mostly clueless on what's going on or I cram for the 3 hours before and half the time I'm soooo distracted. It's like I don't even care. I think that I've been brainwashed to this attitude since I've had it for the past three years of school. I want to do good in school, understand it but whenever I get stuck, I get that "I don't get it! This sucks..." attitude and then nothing gets accomplished. It's rare that I even get a productive mindset to do things sometimes. Next semester is going to be a challenge because I'm going to be off-campus, taking 17 credits, being involved in Cru pretty heavily, got 8ams 3 days a week and I'm myself. My biggest struggle is getting myself motivated to do something. We'll see what happens.....

Next on the agenda of Devin is my family situation. My family is moving back to the "homeland" so I call it since both of my parents are from Michigan. Although, Virginia will always be where I'm from cause I like being a southern boy! My wittle sister is all grown up now and going to college. Scaaary. Central Michigan to be exact. On top of that, my parents are buying a house in Harbor Springs right on Lake Michigan, although no beach property, but right next to the lake. It will be nice being closer to family and I might go and visit more often although it's gonna suck not going back to VA. No doubt, I'm going to visit if an opportunity presents itself.

Summer is really close, and summer means 12 weeks of awesome, exhausting, frustrating, rewarding fun-ness. I'm pretty stoked although I haven't because, yea I've been busy. It gets more real as time gets closer. I guess I'll see exactly what Christian and Paolo (my old youth leaders) go through.

So, I think that may be all for now, kind of tired and I have stuff going on tomorrow all day. 

So it's 3 am....(probably 4 by the time I finish this)

So it's 3 a.m. and I just finished my Engineering hw, hooray! An interesting couple of weeks it has been since I last posted, which I 'm sorry for such a delayed response. Life has been very eventful with school, campus crusade and all the other things life consists of. I've actually had a lot of different things on my mind that I've wanted to blog about, but I just haven't had a good chunk of time or I use that time to relax and sometimes gain consciousness. 

One AWESOMELY AMAZING thing that has happened in my life is the sharing of my faith to my Chem. lab partner, Jeff. This is actually the first time that I've explained the gospel to anyone before. It's pretty sweet because I have been praying for God to use me in some way or form and also that I would suck it up, and share my faith with someone (cause it's something that I lack). Well, opportunity arose and I took it head on. 

A little background on Jeff. Jeff is a first year (freshman but sounds more sophisticated) mechanical engineering student from China. He is a pretty quiet guy and mostly keeps to himself and doesn't initiate conversation often. So, here's how it went down. 

One day after class Jeff and I were walking back from lab to go eat. God was tuggin' at me to talk to him so, I did. I asked him if he had a religion, thinking that he might be Buddhist. He said no. I asked if he believed in God and he said yes, but wasn't really sure who he was. "Would you like to know more about him?" "Yea! That sounds good."

The next night I stopped by his room to meet with him and talk more about who God is. I was pretty scared and nervous to say the least. Since it's Friday we met in a study lounge (who studies on Fridays?) to talk. One of the guys in Cru, Ben, who is disciple-ing me, was going to be there also, was running late. So, I'm on my own with my Bible and our Cru "Knowing God Personally" booklet ( a basic 4 point accepting Christ booklet). I decided to go through the booklet with him, making sure that he understands everything that I'm saying and it was definitely God speaking through me. Ben makes it and long story short, we go through it again and ask him what he thinks. Now, it is reallllly hard to read him, to see if he is taking it all in and understands it. I think that he doesn't get it, but I could be wrong. I ask him if having a relationship with God is something that he wants, "yes, but I don't know what to say?". We show him the prayer in the booklet and he reads it with us, and again, I'm not sure if he means it or understands it. 

The next week Jeff and I meet to read through Matthew. I was thinking of just reading through some chapters, not getting too far. Nope, I read the first 14 chapters. And not just reading them, I stopped at everything that was confusing to him or me. For example, we would come across something referenced in the the Old Test. and go through that. We talked for at least 2 hours. Again, God was giving me the correct words to say. I look back and half the time I don't know how I explained things the way I did. Pretty crazy...

The next week arrives and wow, we have Crusade spring retreat. So I get to thinking, maybe I should invite Jeff. I invite him and he is able to come. I'll tell you what, it is hard to stick with the "boring non-social kid" in a group of people who want to do a lot of fun stuff. But, that's only some evil thoughts trying to bring me down. I was really hoping that something would really impact him this weekend. Something that would really stick out to him and would make him ask questions and dig deeper into this relationship he was building. One night we go through Matthew some more and I really just want to cut to the chase but, I really want to make sure that he understands what is going on because he has no background of God or Jesus or anything other than hearing them. Well, the weekend turned out to be pretty amazing. The speaker that was there was a youth pastor that went to Northern Michigan which is 2 hours from here and both Crusades get together for the retreats, so that's why he was there. The theme was "Still Walking" and was about coming out of a comfortable lifestyle, and get out there on campus and "get you boots on". He reminded me of Christian, my youth pastor back home. But, on the way back home Jeff and I were talking about retreat and I asked him if he was confused about anything. He had a few things that he didn't understand such as who Satan is, what is God's grace and what is guilt. Again, I answered them so that he could understand and again, God was most definitely talking through me. 

And now, I still have yet to meet up with him and go through some Matthew and talk to him. Hooray busy college schedules! But, please be praying for Jeff! What an amazing story it has been, but an even more amazing story of his life to come.

Bedtime, hopefully more constant blogs to be written, take it easy

Devo

Quickie

Just finished reading The Shack and if you have never heard of it or read it, you should. Here's their site if you want some background info: http://theshackbook.com/ . I highly recommend reading it. I don't want to give away much info, but I know that the beginning is a bit slow, but stick with it, it gets a lot more eventful. One more note, if you go to the site, you can read the foreword and first chapter online. It's not the most exciting chapter like I said before, but it gives you an idea of what's going on.

Day.... (So much for that idea)

Hey ya'll, (oops, my redneck is showing)

     Well, to say the least it has been a interesting couple of days. In my last post, I said that I was visiting a camp that I was planning on working at this summer. Well, I had the interview (more like a friendly conversation, no pressure) and it was great. I really feel like that is where God wants me this summer (unless he has some other plans). So, I will be in-charge of 8 or so kids for 6 days a week for 12 weeks. It will be one roller coaster of a ride.

Along with having my interview, I worked at the camp helping out with all the transition work from winter to spring/summer season. The people there are AMAZING. They opened their homes, let me eat their food, and had some awesome conversations. Shoot, I thought I was going to be working 10-5 then heading back to my cabin, making a peanut butter sandwich and having to entertain myself all week long. I brought a book to read. I hardly had time to crack it open, unless I wanted to stay up into the late hours of the night. Again, my time there was just plain sweet.

So, now that I'm back in the swing of things, you know the usual; going to class, putting off homework and studying, the normal college student activities, life is challenging again. Monday morning, I meet with my career center advisor, and it was what I expected and what I didn't at the same time. Let me explain; I took an online personality/job match test thing and expected the guy to say, stick with what's on top off the list. But, I learned that there is some truth to that. We all have aspects and talents that God has placed in our lives. It would make sense to choose an occupation that involves your strengths and not something that doesn't really interest you. What even made my meeting better was that he is Christian and that he understands what I feel. It really made things great. But, I did not receive the answer, the direction I was looking for, which I knew probably wouldn't happen but it still bummed me out. Here I am, asking God where he wants me to go and I'm not receiving an answer, at least not now. But, I've let it drag me down and that got me nowhere so, I'm pressing on. Right now, to me it's come down to either secondary education or exercise science. Yea, nowhere near engineering..... We'll see.....

Time to sleep, since I put off studying tonight, that means I need to do it tomorrow! Hooray procrastination! Who knows when my next post will be and if will be in this dying theme of day (insert number here).

"Give me a revelation Show me what to do ‘Cause I’ve been trying to find my way I haven’t got a clue Tell me should I stay here Or do I need to move Give me a revelation I’ve got nothing without you"- Third Day