Insert Witty Helping Hands and Feet

Upcoming opportunities for service:

Operation Christmas Child-Collect a shoebox full of toys/school supplies/hygiene items for a girl or boy of a various age range. Drop off to Samaritan's Purse (Billy Graham's son, Franklin, is the one who started this organization) and they take the shoebox to a child in one of various countries around the world. It probably costs between $15 and $25 to fill a box, depending on the age of the child (younger childrens toys are cheaper...) Also include at least $7 to help with the shipping costs. We can write a personal note/card to go with the box. November 13-20 is the collection week.

Angel Tree is a ministry of Prison Fellowship. It involves buying Christmas gifts for the children of people who are in jail. It costs about $60 to adopt one child (about $6 each) and the parent usually gives some gift idea, the childs clothes size, etc. This is something that NCC has been doing for a while, so we can get the name of a child through them. We will need to sign up by November 15 so they will know how many children NCC plans to sponsor this year. These children will be local to the Washington, DC area.

Help the Homeless Walk-Saturday November 18th on the National Mall. I've done the walk for the past 4 years and it's always fun. They have bands and performers along the way. It's about 5K and there are thousands of people who do it. The registration fee is $15 for those under 25 and $25 for those over 25 and you get a free shirt. You can choose for your money to go to a general fund or to a specific organization (including Christian ones) that work with the homeless in Washington, DC. You can also raise extra money from family and friends.

I just thought these were some things we could easily do together as a small group. For Operation Christmas Child and Angel Tree we get to go shopping! Yay! I love buying things for other people :)

Let me know if you are interested in doing the walk and contributing money/going shopping for Angel Tree and Christmas Child. I think these kinds of things are great ways to help out around the holidays. It's cool that we can be of service to those in our own community and around the world!

Overdue post...

Ok, so I haven't been the best at updating this...you need to post comments! If I know people are reading, then I will write. Haha.

For the past 2 weeks, we have done lifesharing. That is, we have shared our testimonies and just gotten to know each other better and find out where we have all come from. It's really amazing to hear the stories of the things that God has done in everyone's life (and all the things that he is still doing!). It's always really cool to me to see the different lessons that people have learned through different situations. No matter where we come from, we all have something so important to add. It was very encouraging to me to hear everyone's stories and I hope you all found the experience valuable as well.

It seems that many of us are in crazy transition periods in our lives (yay 20s and quarterlife crises!) and I hope that we are able to learn things from each other and from the Bible studies that we do that will help us follow God's will and trust him to lead and guide our every stop.

Snacks:
Oct. 23 - Valarie
Oct. 30 - Jenny O.
Let me know if you want to be the next week...

Lesson:
Oct. 23 - ? I'll do it unless someone else wants to volunteer...
Oct. 30 - Sarah

Monday Oct 2 Review

Last week we again talked about God's will, but we focused on how to figure out what it is, how to hear his voice and his guidance.

Jen C. led and she talked about 3 different ways that we can we receive words from God.

1. The Bible-different passages can speak directly to us. We can read a verse for the millionth time and it can speak to us in a way that is hasn't before.
2. Delegated Authorities-we can receive guidance from those in authoritiy over us including parents, church, government, school, etc.
3. Spiritual Revelation

We focused the most on the third one--how to hear the voice of God speaking to us and leading us personally. 1 Samuel 3:1-10 is the story of Samuel being called by God. God keeps calling his name, but he thinks that it's Eli calling him. We talked about how communication with God is something that we have to learn. We have to learn how to recognize his voice. God doesn't necessarily make it easy. He wants us to learn, to grow, to trust him. We also talked about God allowing us to wrestle with Him and read the story of Jacob in Genesis 32:22-31.


Prayer requests:

Adrienne has a friend whose parents have diabetes and were both in the hospital and Adrienne just wants to pray for grace and strength for her friend. Adrienne would also like guidance on her job situation. She would like to quit one of them because she's too busy/stessed, but she's trying to stick it out for the rest of the semester.
Jen C is seeking guidance on buying a house with her sister.
Sarah had the praise that she now gets Sundays off from work.
Rachelle has a praise that she has heard back from a couple of universities in China interested in her teaching English there and a prayer that it would all work out and that she'd know which one to go with.
June wants to get back on track with God. She also is still looking for a job.

Random Updates

I have emailed Belvedere Plantation (the hayride place) to see if there's any way we can work out a deal to go there. I'll keep you all posted. It will most likely be on a Friday night. I'm thinking October 20 or 27 (both Fridays). November 3 could also be a possibility, but I'm not sure if they stay open into November. Let me know what you think of those dates.

Dinner on Saturday. We have decided to get together to have dinner on Saturday night. I think Chinatown would be a fun place to go. We can decide what we want when we get there. 5 Guys and Fudrucker's are always tasty, but we could do Chinese, Chipotle or something else. Just because I think it's funny, let's meet at the big red China gate at 7:15pm. :-) You can't miss that one. I'll be at the 5:05pm service at Ebenezers and if anyone else is there, we can travel together. Post a comment or email me to let me know if you're coming, so we won't miss you. Bring a friend too, if you want.

We talked about getting together another dinner and I'll think about a different time for that when others may be able to come. What do you guys think of coming to small group right after work and eating dinner together at our place? Just a thought....I don't know what time you all get off...it wouldn't be this Monday, the 9th, but the monday after, October 16th.

Next Monday night, we're going to spend some time giving our own testimonies so we can get to know each other a little better and how we became Christians, what kind of church we grew up in, important events/times that have shaped who we are, and all of that thing. It will be a good time to get to know each other better. In past small groups I've been in, we've called this "Lifesharing." Kind of cheesy, I know.

One last thing. Who wants to bring a dessert/snack next week? We forgot to talk about it at this week's meeting.

Ok, this is really the last thing. If anyone is interested, the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival is going on from Wednesday to Sunday. There is a free concert on the Mall starting at noon on Saturday that I am planning to go to. Let me know if you're interested. I also want to go up to the top of the Washington Monument because I haven't done it in almost 15 years. You can get tickets in advance for like $2 or something for a specific time, so let me know if you're interested in doing that ASAP and I'll get some. I enjoy random and fun free/cheap things in DC...and there are a lot of them, so I'll try to keep you posted on what I hear about. All you newbies definitely need to get out and explore this city! :-)

Remember that you can all post on here, by leaving comments or starting your own threads, so feel free to discuss whatever you want, give ideas for fun outings/concerts, prayer requests, Bible verses, etc.

P.S. I'm kinda drugged up on Advil Sinus at the moment, so if this makes no sense, I apologize.

Monday September 25 Review

Just a summary of last week, for those of you who missed it. Or if any of you have additional comments.

Scriptures:

Hebrews 11
Jeremiah 29:11-13
Romans 12:1-2

God's will looked different for every person in Hebrews 11. Noah built a boat, Abraham left his home, Rahab protect spies, etc.

Dual Destiny is a term Pastor Mark uses frequently. He talked about how the first destiny and universal destiny is to be conformed to the image of Christ and that the second destiny is our unique destiny. If you focus on the first, the 2nd will be more natural and more easy to determine.

God often only reveals one stop at a time. We're never really going to know God's will for our lives. It's really a journey and not a destination.

We can't miss his will. He'll bring us back to the path he wants us on if we trust in him, even if we've walked far away and made a lot of bad decisions.

Each step along the way is equally important--the big things and the little things. Every day there are lessons that we need to learn that will prove invaluable in the future.

Those are just a few of the things we talked about and shared personal experiences about.

As the sermon from this weekend talked about:

"Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten"

I think we all need to leave the past in the past and the future in the future. The only thing we can do is take one step along the path today. Sure, we can plan for the future and that's a good thing. And we need to learn and remember lessons from the past. But the only day we can live and the only thing we can change is today. So you've got a blank slate. What are you going to write on it today?

Sep. 18 Prayer Requests

After a slight delay, here are the prayer requests from this week's meeting:

• Rachelle: Her friend Ashley, who has to go to DC court and may face jail time.
• Adrienne: she's stressed/overwhelmed with 12 grad credits, 2 part-time jobs, etc.
• June: She has 2 part-time jobs, but she's looking for something full time
• Valarie: Her twin sister who is a teacher in a really poor school district in Lebanon, PA. She's having a hard time adjusting to teaching first grade.
  

It's on!

I'm really excited about this group! For a while I wasn't sure if it was even going to happen, who was going to be in it, where we were going to meet, etc. But now I'm excited. Hello to all of you who I met at the Connection Cafe on Sunday at Ebenezer's and the others of you who have emailed me to find out more details and to my new roommate, Jen! :-)

Our first meeting is going to be September 18. More details TBA.

I'm really looking forward to this fall and getting to know all of you. I hope our group will be a place where we can be honest about our victories and struggles, joys and pains, food and boys, jobs and hobbies and pretty much anything else.

I'm going to be thinking of some specific goals for the semester and would invite you to add your comments and thoughts about what you would like this group to be. In our first meeting, we will get to know each other a little more and make some plans for the semester.

See you all soon! :-)

Add to the Beauty: The Most Obvious

By Sara Groves

About nine years ago when Troy and I were new homeowners, we were dealing with all the new problems that come with a house. As apartment dwellers, we never thought about how fast grass grows or that a bug-less existence is not an accident. No matter how much I cleaned, cobwebs kept forming in the corners of our dining room, so every Saturday, I would take a rag and jump up and down, swiping at the crown molding. One day Troy walked in while I was jumping. “You know what I need … I need sort of a brush type thing that could be affixed to the end of a long pole,” I said.

“You should invent that, and you could call it a ‘broom,’” Troy said.

When we moved into the house that we are in now, it was the middle of the winter, so we had no idea how hot it would get upstairs in the middle of summer. For two weeks in July, Troy tossed and turned, sighing loudly, until he snuck into the baby’s room to take the small fan that I use for white noise. One night I said to him, “I wish you wouldn’t take the fan out of the baby’s room.”

“I know,” he said. “I need to go to Home Depot and pick up another fan.”

“What’s wrong with that one?” I asked, pointing to the ceiling fan that hangs right over our bed.

Troy looked up at the fan for a long time and finally said, “That’s a fan.”

“Yeah, that’s a fan.”

“I have been lying on my back for two weeks, staring at that fan, wishing I had a fan.”

I don’t want to over-spiritualize a funny story, but I do wonder how many times in my Christian walk I have been staring at a spiritual fan, wishing I had a fan? I wonder how many times I have been looking at an obvious need, something that God wants me to respond to, but I miss it somehow. I wonder how God keeps Himself from rolling His eyes or from saying “Come on!” from heaven every once in a while. So many people are dying for a purpose: to know the will of God. So many of us are walking around with a purpose saying, I wish I had a purpose, or with a gift saying, I wish I had a gift. The more I ask God what I’m supposed to be doing, the more I find the answer surprisingly obvious.

For example, the other day I was talking to my sister about doing a back to school drive, but the whole idea got complicated. We heard of other organizations doing something similar, and in the end, we decided not to do it. So tonight I went shopping for Kirby’s supplies (the K man starts kindergarten this year) and felt bad the whole time about the supply drive I didn’t do. My question to myself now as I type this is, why didn’t I just buy two of everything while I was at Target for someone in Kirby’s class? So I don’t have time to organize a city wide campaign called Toolz for Schoolz, but I was at Target tonight buying school supplies ...

Often, if I can’t do everything, I will do nothing. Many inspirations and ideas have died because instead of doing the one thing in front of me, I turned it into something impossible and then failed to do anything at all. At the root of this, there is something slightly sinister… I want to be a part of big things and make big changes, and the obvious stuff isn’t always big or glamorous.

But the obvious things add up. Mother Teresa’s ministry started when she prayed that she would be able to perceive the need. She often told her Sisters, “Open your eyes and see.” Meeting the obvious need was the whole point of her faith in Christ, and the small things mattered. “You can do no great things,” she said, “just small things with great love.” She also realized that obvious things don’t always fit into a schedule. At her many homes for the poor and dying, love did not happen on a schedule, but according to the need. “Charity begins today. Today somebody is suffering, today somebody is in the street, today somebody is hungry … We see a need, we go meet it.”

Jesus spoke plainly; some people could hear Him and others could not. Intelligent, rich, religious people could not understand, while simple, uneducated people could. What sets the Good Samaritan apart from the others, He asked? He responded to the obvious need and demonstrated love in action.

I want to make things more complicated sometimes, but it really is pretty simple. I am learning, and I too am praying that I can open my eyes and see.

Since her debut release in 2001, Sara Groves has become one of the most critically acclaimed artists in the Christian music industry. Along with her music credentials, she is also a well-known humanitarian, helping Hurricane Katrina victims and the poverty emergency in Africa, which is featured in her new reality film titled Sara Groves: Just Showed Up for My Own Life.

From radiantmag.com

I just wanted to post this article since I hope we'll spent some time in small group discussing what we feel God's call on each of our lives is and what he calls all Christians to do. This is just good food for thought...