4th quarter!

Last week we had the keynote concert on Sunday and it was a huge huge success. Keynote is basically a summer project like ours but its a touring band that goes to other summer projects and puts on an evangelistic concert for them and their guests. They play secular songs, and when they've "earned the right to be heard" they share the Gospel through one of the band members testimony. That night we had almost as many of our friends and coworkers from Santa Cruz as we did project members, we had over 100 in attendance if you include us and we cleaned out 30 boxes of pizza :) BUT most importantly that night decisions were made, we had 3 new brothers in Christ that night!!! We also had 7 people who asked to talk with someone about knowing God, and lots of spiritual conversations happened after the show, it was a huge success and God showed up and moved and the Peter Pan was definitely full of his Spirit. So people reading this celebrate with God in heaven and with us here in Santa Cruz that we have new brothers in Christ!

So, the reason for the title of this post being 4th quarter is because that's the speech I gave today to all of project. We have a week and a few days left here in Santa Cruz before we all go to Yosemite as a group to cap off project. It would be SO easy to sit here and say its been a fantastic summer, we did a lot of great things, God's really moved. We're worn out. Let's take this last week and relax, let's call it a summer and say we've planted seeds and anything we haven't done yet lets leave for next years project. But I challenged project NO! This is the 4th quarter, and if you've ever played a sport then you know 4th quarter isn't the time to relax. 4th quarter is when both sides bring the most intensity, its when you hit the hardest, its when you make the big shots, when miracles happen. It's when you leave everything on the table, so that when all is said and done you know you gave everything you had and you have no regrets. It's when comebacks are the most likely, because the other team gets desperate and in our case that's Satan. He's desperate, he wants a comeback, he knows fatigue is setting in on us, and that we want to relax and hes waiting for us to get complacent so he can wreak his havoc on everything we've done this summer. So, tomorrow we are having a big Christmas in July theme party that we spent a junk ton of money on and we're inviting all of our co-workers to where the Gospel will be presented and testimonies will be shared and fun will be had. Sunday we are staging a giant gladiator battle on the beach to draw in a crowd, and the last man standing is going to share the Gospel with the onlookers. Monday we are having our biggest Monday Night Live of the summer and its going to be praise and worship night, with tons of prayer incorporated in between 15 songs. Tuesday we're re-running the day laborer outreach that I said was such a success last week. Wednesday we're having a Hawaiian night theme for dinner to attract more co-workers again to hear testimonies and just to come hangout. Thursday we're re-running the international outreach from last week. I didn't get a chance to blog about it but it was also a huge success and the internationals are so fun to interact with. Most of them are blank slates, no religious upbringing, they hear the Gospel and they get these big grins and ask things like "He really died for ME?" They are all really interested and many of them have been coming to our dinners and events since we went and had our outreach over there. Some have even come to church with us. Friday we're having pick up soccer with our co-workers after lunch which is always a lot of fun. Saturday we're having another themed dinner night, mismatch night. The cook is going to make a bunch of food that just doesn't go together, and we're gonna dress tacky and its gonna be awesome, and hopefully lots of coworkers will come. And with all of these dinners and stuff, we've built trust and relationships all summer with our co-workers and the international students and from past project we've heard that the last 2 weeks is when most people will make decision to trust Jesus Christ so for a lot of our co-workers we haven't had that heart to heart yet but we really feel like they are ready to have that conversation and so we're going to be having it if they come to these dinners or parties or soccer games or whatever. So it's the 4th quarter, we're hitting hard, we're bringing the heat, and the devil is going to hate it, and God is going to show up and I am SO PUMPED!

Let This Be The Day

The title is just really random because I was listening to a song titled that when I started to write this. The words say "Let this be the day, people turn to you Lord. Let this be the day, lives are wholly restored. Open every eye to see, open every ear to hear. All the goodness of your kingdom has come near. Come bring your peace to all the nations. Come bring your love to every heart. Send us in power to make your kingdom known, Holy God we're crying out!" The guy who wrote it came and led worship at the church I'm going to here and I bought his CD and I love his music a lot. Anyway on to what has been happening in the past week. 2 of those 5 outreaches I was talking about have now happened. A large group went and prayer walked the campus of University of California at Santa Cruz and I heard it was really powerful. Unfortunately all the servant team leaders had meetings so I couldn't make it. The other one was this morning, and it was by far my favorite outreach that we've done on project. It required me getting up at 6:30am and everyone else getting up around 7 but every guy who drug themselves out of bed loved it and said it was totally worth getting up for. It was a guys only outreach because we were going to a hardware store where middle aged hispanic men gather early in the morning waiting to get hired for a day task like mulching. We had one girl Kelly Toner who came because she knew spanish almost fluently, she was such a huge help! She was so worried that she wasn't gonna be as good at spanish as everyone expected or she wasn't going to be useful or something I don't really know but she stepped out in faith and God so used her, it was such a blessing she was there. Anyway so it was her and 12 of the 24 guys on project who signed up and woke up and came with us, we had spanish bibles and spanish "More than a Carpenter" books and spanish "Knowing God Personally" booklets, and even though there was a language barrier like I said we stepped out in faith and God really moved. We couldn't really verbally present the Gospel to these people at all but through like basic spanish and them knowing basic english we were able to just love on these people, try to get to know them a little bit, we brought them all biscuits. They all looked so dreary and like they hated being there when we showed up but when we left there was a definite buzz and an energy and they were all smiling. Because we loved them the way Christ loved us, they were interested in reading what we gave them. Before we left people were already opening up and reading the book of John, flipping through the Knowing God Personally booklet, and even giving extra bibles to their friends as they walked up. The whole scene was just so awesome and encouraging, God overcame a language barrier and His spirit totally moved this morning! Seeing it was very humbling too because knowing I could barely even communicate with these people was just a reminder of how God doesn't need me, and its not how well I can present the Gospel but how God moves that changes lives and today it wasn't God using my talents it was God working despite what I lacked and that was very humbling and awesome and inspiring. But, those two outreaches are only like 3 hours out of the past week so I should touch on the rest of it. One of our family members here on project got sent home, it was a real tough decision that our leadership had to make but this person had broken the alcohol policy as well as some other stuff and after a ton of tears and prayers and seeking the Lord and talking with the staff who had already left at this point, our directors decided they had to send him home, so that was sad for all of us, and especially his roommates. I didn't know him all that well but it was a significant enough event to our whole project that I felt it was worth documenting on here. We're planning a huge Christmas in July party/outreach for July 24th and we found out that the evangelism team still has a lot of budget to use so its going to be pretty awesome, we're all getting really excited for it and its 2 weeks off. Shout out to my awesome brother Mike for getting a job! It was so cool to hear from everyone back home about how much he came back from camp on fire for God and now hes starting his job which I know hes been trying to get for a while so I just wanted to say on here I'm so proud of you man and I love you and can't wait to see God continue to work in your life and grow you up more and more. We also had our guys room ask one of the girls rooms on a creative date which was a lot of fun. We took them out to dinner then took them to the Salvation Army and let them pick out ridiculous clothes for us to wear around the rest of the date. Then we went roller skating and then out for ice cream. It was all lots of fun. Sorry this is really scatter brained I'm trying to think of all the really significant stuff from the last week. Oh! last Monday right after I wrote my post, after the staff left and the four student directors took over they immediately opened in prayer and then called all the students on the whole project up in a line for them to wash our feet which was amazing! We could all feel God just taking up that whole room with his presence, and I remember thinking to myself "only God could inspire students to do something like this" Anyway thats been a few highlights from my week, I love you guys!

long days

So even though the title is long days, and I'll be focusing on two really really long days, I feel like I should at least write something about saturday, and that pretty much flew by. Saturday was my day off of work, and I slept in til about 10:30 which was really nice. When I woke up I did a little bit of cleaning around the room because we do that every Saturday and then a group of us went to In N Out burgers, which is like the cookout of the west coast but its better! I came back and then played some Staff vs. Students basketball which was a ton of fun, we played 3 on 3 and we killed them but then we played 5 on 5 and we lost but the scores weren't really the important thing, mostly it was just a lot of fun. Saturday night I picked up my pay check, took a walk down the wharf, and watched the Sandlot back at the Peter Pan, which was a good movie. Anyway now for the really long stressful days that followed. Sunday was July 4th, which is the busiest day of the year on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Normally, all crusade students have Sunday's off to go to church and have all of our meetings that we need to have to plan for the week, but they couldn't afford to give us all off on the 4th. In fact, as opposed to giving us all off work, we all had incredibly long shifts. On top of having really long shifts, we had at least 3 times the normal amount of customers and the whole thing was just super stressful. Also, that night lots of incidents were happening as everyone left like fights, some being gang fights and some not, people resisting arrest and getting tazed, car accidents, you name it and it was probably happening. We could see most of it from the Peter Pan parking lot because we're like 2 blocks from the boardwalk, and we all have to walk home. Some people didn't get off until close to 2am. I stayed up late watching to see if everyone got back alright cuz I was worried, and as I was sitting by the street I think I saw a police car, fire truck, or ambulance go by at least once per minute. Today everyone on project had off since we normally all have Sunday's off but that didn't mean today was relaxing. It did mean I got to sleep in again but since I woke up its been go, go, go! I had to lead my first evangelism team meeting today, which was long and stressful because to set the tone for a culture of evangelism once the staff leave we are going to be having like 5 outreaches in a matter of 2 weeks, some of them being really huge outreaches. We basically had to plan a giant choreographed beach battle, an evangelistic concert with sound stuff and circuits and advertising and all that, plus a big outreach at the international students hotel, and a few minor ones on top of that all at my first meeting with no staff :). Now I kind of have a breather to write this blog before we have to plan a whole lot of stuff to honor the staff tonight at the Passing the Baton meeting, they leave tomorrow morning! Hope all of you guys are doing well, keep praying please! I love you all!

it's july!

Hey guys so its only been 3 days since my last blog post, and I managed to find enough free time to post another one. I spent all day wednesday with my Uncle Richard which was a lot of fun. He came and got me in the morning and took me up to San Francisco for a Giants vs Dodgers game and we had some pretty good conversation in the car up there cuz its an hour and a half drive and I hardly know my uncle since he lives on the opposite side of the country. The game itself wasn't great, the Giants got blown out and it just wasn't fun to watch but the atmosphere of the ball park was really cool and he showed me around the park and showed me the little bay area where people sit out there in boats trying to catch home runs. Then we left early because the game wasn't really that good and we took the scenic route so we got to talk in the car for like 3 hours and basically on the way home we drove through redwoods, mountains, past beautiful lakes, and finally down route one past a lot of beautiful ocean views. Anyway then my uncle stayed for dinner with us at the Peter Pan which was also pretty cool and then we said our goodbyes and it was all a lot of fun. We had our action group meetings that night, which is what we call our bible study basically for those of you who don't know, that was pretty cool. The topic of the study was how depraved we are as humans and it was really good because it just made us appreciate God's grace all the more. That night I was super hyper for some reason, I had caffeine but I had been hyper before I drank it and caffeine usually doesn't have that kind of affect on me anyway but regardless I was bouncing off the walls, I don't usually get like that but when I do its fun. Yesterday was mostly just work, but I got to share the Gospel with my coworker which was amazing. She was from a place in Taiwan where there is little to no religion and she was basically a blank slate and full of questions and she asked if I was born believing Christianity, which was a dead serious question but I had to try hard not to laugh, from there I said I'll tell you my story and I got to share my testimony. When she heard what God had done in my life she said that sounded so amazing but I told her it wasn't exclusive like she could have that too. When I told her that Jesus had her name in mind when he died on the cross and that he died on the cross to have a relationship with her she smiled ear to ear and said "really?" so all in all it was truly an awesome conversation and I can't wait to talk more with her and answer more of her questions. Today we had friday morning training which was good but I'm not going to talk much on it because lunch is ready! Love you guys!

wow has it really been 2 weeks?

So my last blog post was June 15th and thats actually kind of hard to believe. Don't worry guys I haven't fallen off the face of the earth! However, I have gotten progressively more busy every day, and its about to multiply. The first 5 weeks are almost up (CRAZY) and that means the staff are going to leave us in charge of everything for the second half of the summer. For those of you who don't know this isn't something they just like sprung on us, we knew when we signed up that the staff would leave halfway through its just actually about to happen. I was blessed enough that they chose me to co-lead the evangelism team for the second half of the summer with this awesome guy named Charlie Lelane. So my responsibilities and amount of meetings are about to go way up, but my job hours and other responsibilities are not going down so I'm preparing myself to count on God for every ounce of energy and asking him to give me just a little bit of time to blog every once in a while if thats what He wants :) Anyway most of you know I have a strong passion for evangelism, I think my eyes are most lit up when I'm doing that, or worship. Either way evangelism is something that I really feel alive while doing and something God has gifted me with a passion for so I'm very excited for the opportunity to lead the evangelistic aspect of our project. God has been teaching me so much about living the spirit-filled life, about prayer, about leadership, humility, servitude, and just about Him it's been such an awesome experience and while I can't believe its almost halfway over already I also can't believe that I still have another 5 and a half weeks of this, it's amazing. Shout out to Karl real quick, hes the staff guy who's been discipling me and listening whenever I need to talk and teaching me a lot of awesome things and praying for me and encouraging me despite having a wife and 3 children to be the spiritual leader of and I really really really appreciate it. God put him in my life for a reason and he can really relate to me very well and I'm so grateful. Hes leaving and he will be missed so thats my shout out to him, love you Karl! Tomorrow I get to go to a Giants vs Dodgers baseball game with my uncle which is going to be awesome. I'm not a huge baseball fan and would never watch a televised game but I've been to one or two live games before and its pretty fun stuff, but more than anything I'm excited to spend the day with Uncle Richard, I haven't really ever gotten to see much of him since he lives here in California and I live in North Carolina but hes a really cool guy so it should be fun. The evangelism team has a 3 option outreach planned which we are really excited for. One option will be to go to UCSC (University of Cali Santa Cruz) and do surveys/prayer walk if not many people are around, another option just for men will be to go early in the morning to where a lot of hispanic men line up outside a hardware store waiting for someone to come hire them for something like yard work or whatever else and bring them biscuits as well as spanish versions of the bible or Knowing God Personally booklets. The third option will be an outreach to the international students who are staying at a motel down the road. We are asking every student on project to sign up for at least one, challenging all the men on project to sign up for the day laborers one, and strongly encouraging people to sign up for more than one. It will be a great way to reach 3 of our target areas in Santa Cruz for the Gospel though and I'm really excited for it. That's all I can really think of right now but God is really moving here right now in my life and in Santa Cruz and I would love to thank all the people who are praying for me and all those who gave financially, the things you are reading about on this blog are the things that you are investing in and I hope it excites you as much as it does me!

long time no talk

so yeah since work started its been crazyyy. I had today off which was nice. But I've been working from like 10:30-5:30 pretty much every day except Sunday. We've done another outreach since the last one I told you about. I basically spent the entire thing on the front porch of a drug house talking to this guy, which was pretty cool. I'm starting to get to know my coworkers better and develop relationships, which is why we have jobs in the first place, so thats also a blessing. I'm learning a ton about how to live empowered by the Holy Spirit, and just let God be in the drivers seat of my life. The people here are awesome and I'm getting to know them better and better every day. I know I focus on the good parts of project here and never really say anything bad but it really is shaping out to be the best summer of my life so far. There are bad parts, but they just seem so miniscule compared to all the blessings. Just so it doesn't seem like an unrealistic picture of project I'll go ahead and say that there have been some conflicts, obviously there are always people that just kind of get under your skin. We have been over scheduled like crazy but its fine because its all good stuff and it forces us to grow in faith and rely on God for energy. Sometimes I feel like they put more on our plates than we have time for, which is why I never write this blog anymore. It feels like whenever we get free time we have something they've asked us to read or asked us to memorize, or we have laundry to do or its our turn on clean up duty after the meal. They leave us enough time to spend time with God which is great, and they even schedule 2 hours with God in on Tuesday nights but in terms of time to just breathe and relax its like non-existant. But in general I'm loving project and thats why I usually have nothing but good things to say about it. I love you guys, thanks for taking the time to read this. If you have prayer requests or need to talk please please please text or email or something, I will find the time. You guys are still my best friends and my brothers and sisters in Christ and I can't ever be to busy to pray for you or offer a word of encouragement. I'd love for any and all of you to send me messages on how your lives are going and I promise I'll read them, even if I can't respond. I miss you guys.

In Christ,

Matt

3 for 1

so hey guys, I know it's been a few days, it's been crazyyyy, so now I have 3 days to update you on, and it will have to be the spark notes version because I only have like 11 minutes. Maybe that gives you an idea of what my schedule has been like.

Sunday:

Church. Outreach. The end. Just kidding, but yeah that was basically it only they were both way too exciting to just leave it at that. Church was great because the service and worship was amazing and we get to help out with the children's ministry all summer! I am working with 3-4 year olds :). Then the outreach was probably my favorite thing on project so far, which might be why I'm on the evangelism team planning them but anyway, it was super successful, the staff said they had been part of similar outreaches before but that they didn't even compare. Tons of people heard the Gospel, we even had a guy sharing it in sign language with a group of deaf people. It was amazing, we did a tug of war on the beach and gave out water and watermelons and attracted hundreds of people wondering what was going on, and then went from person to person explaining who we were, what we were about, and why we were in Santa Cruz, and hopefully getting into spiritual conversations.

Monday: First real day of work (not orientation). I got taught in like 5-10 minutes how to run one of the games and then got left to work it for 8 hours. It was a lot of fun though when I got the hang out it and people were actually coming (morning hours were kind of empty). I got to get really enthusiastic about it (most boardwalk employees aren't) and high five the kids and make their days and just make it more fun than just playing a 10 second game and getting a dog if you win. Then we had our first Monday Night Live, which is our weekly meeting with worship and a speaker, Mike Mehaffie talked about How To Walk With God for a Lifetime, which if you know Mike, it was a perfect talk for him to give. It was amazing and super practical, and the worship was awesome too especially since they only had like a day to practice.

Tuesday:

Basically same deal as Monday, I worked 8 hours, but then instead of Monday Night Live we had our Time of Reflection which was basically just like 2 hours with the Lord, and it was really really awesome. Now we are about to do s'mores outside so bye!

A Day Late

Hey so since I didn't have time last night, I'm gonna write you about yesterday now and today tonight, if that makes any sense. Okay so yesterday was my first day as a game operator, but not really. I went to work all nice and dressed up in my uniform, after doing a quiet time and getting with the other game operators to throw a blanket of prayer over our days. When we got there, we realized it was just yet another orientation. 12-5 of learning game operator specific stuff even though two days ago was 5 hours of job orientation but it was a lot more broad. Anyway so that was long and draining and I'm sick of orientations but I did meet a few of my coworkers and that was pretty awesome. If we hadn't blanketed our day with prayer I might have not had the best attitude about it, but it turned out okay. We did dinner, uneventful. Then we did 2 hours of training, an hour of which was led by Holly Thomas. She talked about creating movements on our campus' and it was alright, I know it was really exciting for some people because she talked about entering into other peoples cultures and that was something God had already really hit me with last year, so I know some people in the room were getting hit with it last night just like I was and feeling called to do something when they go back. The other part though was with Noel on how to follow up with people after we've shared the Gospel and that was all really exciting, useful stuff a lot of which I hadn't heard before. The whole combination of orientation and training is so exhausting, training is exciting but I feel like I'm only halfway mentally present for it. I'll be so glad when all the orientations are over and I can just focus on the training, because right now it all seems so back to back to back and I can't focus for that long. Anyway then we went on a 2 mile run which was fun and obviously good for me, and then I went to bed. So that was my yesterday.

John 15:5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."

So this morning was job orientation. I found out that I will be a game operator. So I'll be doing the stuff like shooting baskets on that oval basketball goal that nobody can make it on and throwing balls at milk things and all that good stuff. I start tomorrow at noon. Anyway the orientation wasn't awful but not great anything. Then this afternoon we did our first training session. Mike Mehaffie gave a talk on how to share the Gospel using the KGP, and Misty Cook gave a talk on how to live the spirit filled life, and Josh Bolden gave a talk on preparing our testimonies. It was good stuff, but my personal favorite was Mike Mehaffies talk, he has soo much to offer and I'm really excited to be learning from him. Anyway from there we went to the coolest part of the night. We went to the Soquel Vineyard which is owned by a couple who is good friends with Mike. They let us all come up and see their beautiful vineyard and eat dinner there and do praise and worship there. Lots of pictures for the vineyard but it really brought a very really tangible expression of John 15 about Jesus being the true vine (hence the title of this blog post). It was pretty cool. Worshiping there was also awesome. Now chilling back at the Peter Pan

The Calm Before the Storm

So today was as the title implies, a calm before the storm. And after the storm. So I guess it was a calm between two storms. (Not bad storms though, just busy ones). The past couple days have been pretty intense like orientation, getting to know each other, getting adjusted days. Tomorrow morning is my job orientation to get started working full time. Today was a day of mostly free time in between all that craziness, which was nice, even though I spent most of my day running errands. We were assigned community teams this morning and had our first community team meetings. Community teams here are like servant teams back at home, theres the social team, the evangelism team, the prayer team, the special projects team, the housing/administration team, and the weekly meeting team. I'm not going to explain what each one is but I got evangelism team, which seems kind of self explanatory. We plan outreaches and help train the rest of the project in evangelism and just generally try to create a bold evangelistic culture within the project so it becomes a lifestyle for all of us. We had our first meeting which took about 2 hours and it was really pretty exciting. We went through 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 to break down why biblically Christians evangelize. We talked about how it was a privilege that God chose to use us to be his Ambassadors when He could easily have spread His message any way he wanted, and how even if the world sees us as crazy its because Christ's love compels us. Then we made our mission statement and planned the first outreach. Sunday we are doing a huge game of tug of war on the beach to attract attention and when people come up and ask us what is going on we're going to try to get into spiritual conversations with them. More on that in the blog entry Sunday night. Anyway then we had til 3 off and I did some laundry and made some lunch and did my dishes from lunch. At 3 we had our first action group meeting. Action group = bible study. It was really uneventful though we just went over some stuff we'd need to know for the summer, didn't take long. So we basically had another 2 hours of free time before dinner, which was already more free time than the first few days combined. Then we ate and had the rest of the night free, so lots of free time today. We watched the NBA finals which was interesting cuz everybody was from everywhere and had all different opinions on players and teams. Some guys were from kentucky and thought John Wall and Rajon Rondo were like the greatest things ever and were pulling for Boston just cuz they thought Rondo was like the best point guard in the NBA. Other people (like me) disagree and think that Rondo isn't that great hes just always open because the other celtics players are getting double teamed. (this is all just an example and if you don't understand a word I'm saying, bear with me for a second). Anyway so that was really interesting and after the Lakers won I made a target run with one of my roommates and got some shorts and a new razor. Now I'm back, and am probably going to go to bed after I finish writing this blog. I love you guys and I hope everything is going great back on the East Coast, please don't hesitate to text me with prayer requests or anything like that. Preferably not early there because of the time difference here it will be in the middle of the night but you guys know me you can call me at any time in the middle of the night if you really need me. I'd love to hear from more of you even if I may be too busy to respond.

Wacky Wednesday

Hey everyone, hope I haven't bored you all out of reading this yet. I keep repeating this and its not because I want attention or anything but I feel like this isn't really being read. I guess the cool thing about Facebook is that everyone is on there and it will show up in news feeds and everyone will comment on things and stuff so you know what your posting is being appreciated. Blogs not so much, I'm going to keep doing it anyway hopefully even when things get busy and I start my job here in less than a week mostly because it helps me gather my thoughts at the end of the day, but it would be cool if you guys would comment on this or something and make me feel like people are actually reading it. Anyway sorry about that little tangent, on to today. We started this morning by having soul to soul with our action groups (our bible studies). It was basically like an extended version of our testimonies we all shared like everything we'd struggled with and what God had done in our lives up to that point, it was pretty intense but it was a cool bonding experience, and now we can all help each other out with a lot of things. Now you are probably wondering why this post is called Wacky Wednesday if it was so intense, and that is because after the intense stuff the staff wanted to lighten things up a bit. We had a day where we wore around stupid hats all day got funny looks from the locals and did things like a scavenger hunt and football where the guys had to have their legs taped together and sand sculpting. It was a lot of fun and our group got second overall. Silly games like that I don't generally don't enjoy that much but as long as its not a consistent thing, today was really fun.

Hey everybody! Road trip is finally over, and let me tell you what: pulling into the Peter Pan Motel blasting music and having everyone who was there already cheering was one of the most awesome feelings ever. Having spent so long on the road and finally pulling up to the final destination was awesome. Also awesome was seeing months of God working and raising support for 60 people all come together in one place at one time. The people who all showed up at the Pan God has raised up a total of like hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it all came together at once it was mind blowing. Everybody was super warm and friendly and welcoming and you could just walk up and be like "Hey I'm Matt" and they say their name and then you stand and have like a 20 minute conversation, it was awesome. Nobody was awkward or anything like that and we all had the same thing motivating all of us being here. The whole first night was just really awesome, and God was moving. The first day however today was less exciting. It was definitely necessary in that we had a super long orientation, but it was long enough that I had a headache at the end of it. I think we spent 5 hours in orientation, but we did have breaks. That night though we went to dinner with our bible studies which was awesome getting to know them and then we heard our bible study leaders testimonies. So today was pretty tiring but I'm still in the phase of I can't believe I'm actually here because I've been looking forward to it for so long.

Road Trip Part 6

Day 10:

So this was supposed to be a 10 day road trip so this would be the last day, except we didn't account for the fact that 10 days meant 11 nights, and since we only planned a 9 day trip in case we fell behind but then we didn't fall behind that meant we had 1 day and 2 nights to kill. So, last night we used one of Kyle's extended stay passes in Santa Barbara, and tonight we are staying with my Uncle Richard in Berkley, CA. which is just outside of San Francisco. My Uncle is actually working late tonight, so hes not here he just left the key under the mat and ribs for dinner and the password for the wifi. In other words, my uncle is freaking awesome. But anyway before we got here we drove on CA-1 which is one of the 10 most beautiful roads in the world or the country, or something like that. It lived up to it. The whole stretch we had the pacific ocean next to us and it was just beautiful, pictures to describe it on Facebook. And thats about it for today, about to eat some ribs, yum. Tomorrow we're going into San Francisco to see the city and then finally headed to Santa Cruz, it's gonna be cool to finally say we made it. Love you guys. Leave comments and stuff to make me feel like this is actually being read, tell me what you think, I'd love to hear it.

Road Trip Part 5

So for the first time on my road trip, I have internet 2 nights in a row. That means for a change I don't have to write 4 nights at once and it's actually pretty nice. So carrying on,

Day 9:

So we woke up this morning and headed into Los Angelos, the drive took about an hour, not bad at all compared to what we've been doing :) First we went and saw the Staples Center, which is where the Los Angelos Lakers play, it was really cool even though I don't really like the Lakers. Anyway, then we went to Hollywood and to see the Hollywood sign, which we got some pretty cool pictures of. After that we took the Walk of Fame which is that stretch of Hollywood with the stars all the way down the sidewalk with famous peoples' names in them. Then we got to that Chinese restaurant that has all the actors' hand prints and signatures in front, it's hard to explain but there will be pictures on Facebook. Anyway we ate at Jack in the Box which was awesome, I wish they had them in the Raleigh area. From there we drove down route 1 (gorgeous) to Santa Barbara. For those of you who don't know, route 1 is supposed to be like one of the top 10 most beautiful roads in the country, the entire thing is going along the pacific ocean. Anyway so then we reached Santa Barbara where we're staying tonight with one of Kyle's free extended stay passes. We dropped our stuff in the room and we went to the beach! It was way different. Instead of millions of seashells there were millions of rocks that had been smoothened out by the ocean, some of them were perfect for skipping and we all skipped rocks, we taught Kyle how. Also there was basically a mountain next to the beach, where the sand dunes would usually be in NC. The water was the biggest difference, instead of that greenish color the water was completely blue, it was beautiful. Anyway since then we've just been relaxing in the hotel and thats where I am right now writing this blog. Love you guys!

Road Trip Part 4

Day 7:

So I'll relieve you guys of the suspense. I got up early in the morning and left the other two in the tent to go down to the rangers office and tell them what happened and all that good stuff. Soo I get there and the lady looked me up saw I had a reservation, and said she'd send the park ranger to go kick the people out of my campsite. I drove back to the place in the woods where we camped and helped pack everything up before the ranger got there cuz the lady asked where I had slept and she said I was lucky I didn't get a ticket. So we get it all packed up and we sit at the car waiting, then we get to watch with smiles on our faces as this bum looking guy from new mexico with super long hair gets woken up and booted out of our campsite. He was all like "dude, it was late, I just wanted a place to sleep, I figured I'd pay in the morning." I was thinking "I wonder if he noticed all the "Campgrounds FULL" signs everywhere. Anyway so he drives off, the guys are like alright we'll set up camp, you go check in. So I go to check in and I'm in line behind none other than the bum looking guy from new mexico who stole our place to sleep. We're in line for the same lady who I went and complained to that morning. The guy goes up and explains himself and she sees me behind him, makes the connection, and winks at me. She proceeded to send him on this huge guilt trip about how the people he stole the site from slept on rocks in the woods and got a ticket from the ranger for not being in a campsite. It was hilarious. the guy said something like "well at least it'll make a good story for them" and I piped up and said "yeah, it will" and he turned around and said "it wasn't you was it?" and I was like "yeahhh. that's me" and the look on his face was priceless. it was such an awkward situation for him. Anyway so we got a free night camping in the grand canyons because they charged him for our campsite for that night and gave me my money back. Wow I've typed like a book and its still like 9am :). The good news is the rest of it will be pretty short. We went to an overlook and saw our first real view of the grand canyon and our jaws all dropped. we ran around frantically taking pictures and we weren't even at the good part yet. Then we all made sandwiches, we didn't have spreading knives. Joel used his pocket knife and Kyle and I spread it with our fingers, it was pretty funny. Then we hiked down into the canyon!. We went about a mile and a half down and then the same thing back up again. At the farthest point that we hiked down to we stood out over this edge and it was literally the most awe-inspiring view I've ever seen in my life. This is another post where I'm just gonna stop because pictures are the only way to describe it, and those don't do it justice. This didn't take more than a few hours but it took a ton out of us in terms of energy so we just chilled the rest of the day and relaxed. We went down to the showers and found out it was 2 bucks for an 8 minute shower, it was ridiculous. I got caught still soapy when the shower cut off on me after 8 minutes and they had to bring me another 2 dollars :). Good times. We camped another night and woke up to Day 8.

Day 8:

Today, so it's fresh in my memory. Some of this stuff feels like it happened forever ago because so much has happened in between, I feel like I've been on the road for way more than a week. It sounds cliche but these really are memories that I'll have for the rest of my life, some of the stuff I've seen has just blown me away, and lots of fun times with Kyle and Joel too. God's creation is just incredible. Some places like the Grand Canyon I knew were going to be spectacular and then some places just like on the road, or at a gas station God showed me something like a sunset or a mountain range that wasn't there and then it just showed up when we rounded a corner, and He's blown me away over and over and over again. I've felt tiny countless times on this road trip. Anyway, that was a tangent so back to today. We woke up this morning and packed up camp, ready to be done packing and unpacking the tent and be done sleeping on rocky floors and just be done camping, it had been our third night in a row and we were all so looking forward to sleeping where I'm typing this post now. Which, by the way, is some random lady whos a friend of Kyle's mom and Kyle had never even met her. God provided us a place to stay tonight for sure. Anyway so not a whole lot of eventfulness occurred during the drive today, but we did cross the California state line and take pictures with the Welcome to California sign. We have officially driven from NC to CA. We also made it to Barstow, which is where I-40 ends. It stretches all the way from Wilmington to Barstow, so we made it all the way down 40, which was pretty cool. We ate lunch at I-Hop in Barstow. And that brings us to the present, we made it to Ontario, California. At this random lady's house who none of us had met before we got here and I'm using her wireless internet to write this blog and upload a bunch of pictures. 2 more days, we're seeing LA tomorrow and Hollywood and the Staples Center (where the LA Lakers play) and etc etc and then we're gonna check out the pacific ocean and probably stay at Kyle's other free extended stay pass in Santa Barbara, and then go stay with my Uncle Richard in Berkeley, CA (right outside of San Francisco) and see San Fran and then finally to Santa Cruz for 10 weeks. Let you know how all that goes when I get to it. Keep up the prayers, God is watching out for us big time and I know that has a lot to do with all of you guys bugging him about it all the time :) Love you guys!

Road Trip Part 3

Alrighty, been a few days since I've been able to jump on here and update you guys. It's now day 8, which means I have 4 days to fill you guys in on. Let's see what I can do!

Day 5:

Hmm. Day 5 it's been a while and a TON has happened between then and now. However, some very memorable things happened on day 5. Of note, we drove like 8 hours or so from Loveland, CO to Cortez, CO which was where our campsite was, near mesa verde. So, on the way was one of the interesting moments. On the way down a mountain somewhere in Colorado we see this stop on the side of the highway and we're like sure why not. It's this tourist thing called "Treasure Falls" and it's a huge waterfall! You can see it from the stop by the road in the distance but you can hike up and get really close. Of course, I look at Kyle and say "Hey Kyle, you wanna climb a mountain?" and of course, Kyle is like "sure, let me go get my shoes on." So the path says "Trail Closed." Kyle and I decide we're going to go find out why. We end up going all the way up the closed path, it was closed because it wasn't well maintained and slightly dangerous. Then we continued on up the mountain, after the path ended, it was completely exhausting and probably pretty dangerous, it was almost straight vertical at points and we had to grab onto rocks to make our way up. Eventually we reached the top of the mountain and it was one of the most breathtaking views ever, the road we had just been driving on was tiny and the cars were like dots and right across from us was a big snow-topped mountain. Anyway the second interesting thing we did was try to cook, we tried to do mac and cheese over an open fire at the camp site that we made it to. I'm just going to say it didn't end well and leave it at that, we ended up eating Wendy's. Epic Fail. We went to bed and onto day 6.

Day 6:

Mesa Verde. Heard of it? I hadn't. In fact, we had looked for the nearest place to camp to the four corners (four states at once) and it was the KOA that we chose. So then Kyle's mom says you guys need to go to mesa verde! and I'm like hey thats right like 10 minutes away from where we reserved a campsite. God obviously wanted me to see this. I still don't really know why God wanted me to see it but it was pretty fantastic. They were ancient indian ruins! They were built and inhabited around 1200 A.D. and they were complete villages carved into the sides of the mountains. Pictures are about all I can do to describe this one. Then in the same day we drove to the grand canyon. That night was kinda insane. Grand Canyon National Park is HUGE, and it was dark and we got lost in there trying to find the campsite. Then we were low on gas and had to leave the park to get gas and get our bearings then go back in and try again. While we were outside the park we realized we hadn't eaten yet. Food and Gas were way jacked up prices because there was nothing else within 50 miles. We payed 3.60 a gallon for gas, and I payed almost 9 dollars for a double quarter pounder combo at mcdonalds. Then we go in, and finally find out campsite. But it wasn't ours. Well, it was, but someone else had taken it. It was late and everything was closed and we tried to call the park but no luck, and we were exhausted so we set up camp in the woods between two campsites and went to sleep. (this is one of those moments when you're reading a good book and the chapter ends and you have to start the next chapter because they left you a cliffhanger)

Road Trip Part 2

Day 3

Alright continuing on in my adventures, day 3, the longest drive of the trip. I think our motto on this drive was "It's all downhill from here" because after this beast of a 12 hour drive none of our other drives will be more than like 9 hours. We woke up around 7:30 and hit the road from Oklahoma City at 8. I left a note for the people cleaning our hotel in Oklahoma City thanking them so much for cleaning up after us, and said that I would be praying for them and wrote John 3:16 on there, I wanted to leave a Knowing God Personally booklet but somehow made it out the door for a 10 day road trip without any of those booklets, so I'm trusting God to use that. We left in hopes of reaching Colorado for dinner. A goal that in the end, we did achieve. But many things occurred before that point. Lots of video games and jamming out to music and reading and watching movies for one thing. This was the first day we really did get tired of being in a car. If you don't know, Oklahoma and Kansas (both of which we drove through) are nothing but flat plains the entire way, nothing to see the entire time you are driving, so that coupled with the fact that it was our longest drive made it a longggg day. Oh and I'm ADD so now while I'm trying to recall things about day 3 I'm going to remember some things I left out of my day 2 post and right them on here. We crossed over the Mississippi River into Arkansas, which was pretty sweet, and at some gas station in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma we saw one of the prettiest sunsets I've ever seen. God blew me away because of all the amazing places I'm going during these 10 days, the last place I expected him to reveal his glory to me was at that gas station in Oklahoma. Anyway, now that my ADD moment is over, back to day 3. Obviously not much happened that day since I'm having such a hard time remembering anything exciting that happened. We did stop at Kyle's friends house in Hays, Kansas. He did work crew as well last summer at Frontier Ranch in Colorado and this was one of his friends from work crew. Her name was Whitney. Then we got to Denver, Colorado to have dinner at my Cousins' house because my Aunt and Uncles' kitchen stove caught on fire and was currently unusable. We helped lay some stones for my Cousin, she was making a stone pathway in front of her house, I have pictures of that too. We earned our keep for having a meal and a place to stay. I got to meet my second cousin Ellie, named after my mom. She was adorable. Then we traveled another hour from Denver to Loveland to stay the night with my Aunt and Uncle. We stayed in the little screened in area in her backyard which was really cool and rustic, again pictures to illustrate this will be on facebook.

Day 4

Okay so while Day 3 was probably the worst day of the trip so far, day 4 was probably the best. It took forever to get to Colorado but once we got here it was so worth it. First of all, we finally got to sleep in. Day 4 was our first day that we didn't have to get up at like 7 or 8 and hit the road for like 9-12 hours, we had no rush. So, we slept until 10 o clock, and with the time zone difference we had gotten tired and went to bed around 10 the night before so we had like a solid 12 hours of sleep, it felt incredible. Then, we had breakfast, showered, made lunch, and drove to the Rocky Mountain National Park. We basically spent all day exploring the Rocky Mountains. We also experienced a blizzard in the middle of may. We drove up into the mountains and we were on our way to this place inside the park called bear lake when it started snowing. It was super windy too, blowing the snow right at us at what must have been at least 30 mph. So basically, it was a thunder storm but we were so high up that it became a snow storm. I have pictures of this experience too, it was completely crazy and unexpected, and unplanned for. At least we wore semi-warm clothing because we planned for it to be chilly in the high altitude, but we definitely did not plan for snow clothing, or gloves, or hats. Anyway we explored the mountains some more, saw some elk, had some good times, bought some Rocky Mountain National Park T-shirts, and headed back to Loveland, with even like an hour and a half to just chill before dinner. I was so glad for a day not on the road, we all needed it. We had no idea how much we were going to need it when we planned it either, so that was God. His creation has been blowing me away this entire trip, but the mountains have such a way of making you feel small and realizing just how big and powerful and artistic He is. I love the mountains. Then we grabbed dinner, another free home cooked meal :) at my Aunts' friends' house. She had a beautiful view of the mountains from her back deck, unfortunately I didn't bring my camera to their house for dinner. It was really relaxing and we had good conversation and told them all about our trip and our majors and life plans and all the usual old people questions :) haha. Then I did their dishes for them :). Again, earning my keep. Finally, I've made it up into the present with this epic story. Now, I'm back at my Aunt and Uncles' house, finally getting online to update all of you guys, getting ready to sleep in that rustic screened in area again, doing some laundry for the rest of our trip, and then leaving in the morning for Mesa Verde, which I can't wait for. Thank you all for caring enough to read all about my adventures, and for continuing to pray for me and for safe travel and an awesome summer, it's definitely off to a great start. Love you guys! More to come from the last 6 days of our road trip, but maybe not until I get to Santa Cruz.

Road Trip Part 1

Alright so I finally have found the time to make this thing, and I'm four days into the trip, so now it's time to try and recall everything thats happened in the past 4 days, and that's a lot. So let's start with Day 1:

So day 1 we head out of my house in Apex around 7am, or at least that was the plan, we probably ended up heading out around 7:30-8. Anyway, pretty uneventful drive up until the smoky mountains, thats where we hit a thunder storm. It was of course, my turn to drive during said thunder storm. But even more of an adventure than that was Joel who was in the back seat at the time, he realized that since we had our straps from the car top carrier wrapped around the inside of the car that they were starting to become drenched and leaking in the back of the car, so he was going to work with a roll of paper towels and water coming in from the straps on both the right and left sides of the car. So then we get through that and end up in Knoxville, where I met a few good friends for lunch. A.J. Pawel and John Barr. This was ironic because I had one friend from high school who was going to college in Knoxville, and one friend from college who was back at home in Knoxville, both UT fans and both rather hilarious and southern, they got along great. Becky, if you are reading this picture the Peyton Manning guy from the super bowl party and John Barr having lunch, you will laugh. Anyway it was great to see both of them and moving on we didn't really stop again until Nashville, where I got to see my friend Michael Scott from work crew last summer. For those of you who don't know, which is most of you, Michael was one of my roommates, and worked with me in the pits (doing dishes) and he was a special needs guy. He is 21 but has the heart and mind of a child, he loves everyone around him no matter what and is completely innocent, I love Michael, and so did Joel and Kyle (the guys who are road tripping with me). So next stop Franklin, TN where Kyle's Aunt and Uncle lived, where we'd be staying that night. They lived on a farm, surrounded by a ton of other farms, and it was just really peaceful and beautiful out there and lots of fresh air, great relaxing start to the trip. Kyle's Aunt made us all a great home cooked country meal to cap off a great first day.

Day 2:

Wow, I know you've all read a lot now and that was just day one, now picture actually experiencing all that haha and that was only the beginning. So day 2 I wake up and go on a tour of Franklin with Kyle's Uncle. On this tour I found out that that was the richest county in America, everyone owned acre upon acre of beautiful lush farm land, and most of it was owned by country stars. He took me to see Kicks Brooks house, from Brooks and Dunn. He took me to see Alan Jackson's house. He took me to see Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's house. He took me to see Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman's house. It was amazing, especially for someone who loves country music. I even have pictures of the Texas Longhorns on Kicks Brooks farm. Then we went back for breakfast, again a great home cooked meal. We proceeded to hit the road for Memphis to hangout, and then Oklahoma City to see the city and sleep, all in the same day. Memphis however, never happened. Right before we got to Jackson, TN. which is like 1/3 of the way between Franklin and Memphis, I-40 came to a stop, traffic jam. Then closed down to one lane. I guess they were doing some work we got briefly detoured and sent back on 40. However, this traffic jam was probably just as good as Memphis, why you might ask? Because we made the most of it. When traffic stopped, we got out and did a chinese fire drill, on 1-40. Yeah, we did a chinese fire drill on the giant highway that spans across America. When we did it the mini van behind us was laughing and gave us the thumbs up. A few minutes later we're chatting it up and all of a sudden the older couple, parents, from the mini van behind us comes running around our car. We had to do a double take. Not to be outdone, these parents had followed our lead and done their own chinese fire drill on 1-40 right around our car. We burst out in applause and hysterical laughter. But thats not the end of our traffic jam adventures. When they condensed traffic to one lane, we got out of the car and used the now empty right lane to take a picture laying down in the middle of I-40, which is an epic picture. Anyway then when we stopped for Wendy's at dinner that night I prayed over our food and the manager came and brought us 3 large fries, one for each of us, for free, and said it was because not many people pray in public and she likes to see that and thought it was admirable. So God provided us large french fries, it was pretty sweet. Then we stayed in an extended stay in Oklahoma City, which Kyle got a free ticket to through his work. Worth noting was that when we got there there was a fire drill going on, and a fire truck outside, which was a little scary. Just a drill though, then we went to sleep.