Lift up those prayers!

There's been a lot of things happening here on campus. Students are losing loved ones left and right, midterms are this week, and homecoming is next week. I really would just ask all of you to just pray, pray, pray! God knows what all is going on and will take care of things.

Coming to a close

Goodness, this is nuts! I'm getting ready to begin my last two weeks of PT! We are running the church service tomorrow, I have 3 days left of day camp with the kids, site cleanup day, the Celebration Banquet (end of the year banquet), then Urban Camp with the youth. It's gonna be a busy, yet very exciting last two weeks.

We had our last Friday experience yesterday, where we all came together for a instructions for the next couple weeks and for some reflection. The reflection part was pretty cool. We had a few different stations set up for us to go to and we had an hour to either use the stations, or just have some time for prayer. I went to the four stations, which were a couple of prayer stations, a station that had us write down how we saw our summer, and a station that had us illustrate how God had used us this summer. I felt that the station that allowed us to write about our summer was really cool. I began writing, and had a good full page worth of reflection. I read it over and realized how much I've grown over this past month. I feel that God really took me to PT for a reason. God has used me in so many ways with the kids and has helped me grow through it all as well. I guess in a way, you could say I'm becoming more "mature."

So as the last couple weeks take place, I just ask that you would pray that I be able to finish on a strong note. I have 3 days left with the kids, plus 5 days left with the youth. I'm definitely going to need strength and patience to get through it all. So here we go! The last two weeks!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Give Me Strength!!!

Alright, well this week was definitely a tough one. I got sick this past weekend with what started out as a day flu, but then turned into a bad cold that just completely DRAINED me. I didn't have any energy at all from Sunday until Wednesday. It was horrible! It also didn't help that my kids weren't on their best behavior during the week. Lucky for me, with the power of prayer, some extra sleep and some medicine, I was able to get my energy back for Thursday aka Messy Day. We had some interesting activities planned for the kids including a noodle relay, paint target practice, and bowls full of gross food that they reached into with blindfolds on. They really enjoyed it and so did we!

But what really got me through this week was God's strength. Tuesday, one of my teammates gave the morning devotion and he talked about needing to rely on God's strength instead of our own. A lot of us were sick so this devotion was perfect. He went on to speak of how when we are in situations like this when we are sick and tired and not wanting to work with the kids, we need to ask God for His strength to get us through day by day. I was listening pretty hard to this talk and thought to myself, "You know, Kodi is one hundred percent correct! That is exactly what I need to do to get through this week." So the past few nights, during my evening prayer, I would just ask God to give us all strength to get us through the next day. To help us not to rely on our own strenght, but on His. I asked for a healing touch over each and every one of us too.

The morning after I began praying for strength, I wasn't really too tired and when I got to the church, I felt like I would be able to get through the day with more energy than I had started with. Everyone else at the site was doing pretty well too! We seemed to all have our energy until the last kid left, and then we were exhausted. That was what we needed though, strength to get us through the day with our kids. God provided us with His strength, and we wouldn't have been able to get through these past few days without it. Amazing what the power of prayer can do, isn't it?