Game Hint for all you cheaters!

For all you guys who like a little bit of an advantage, here is the title slide of the game for Spiked this weekend! Good luck! And remember, it's not all about you! Bring a friend and use the game time to make other students feel comfortable!

If Only, part 2....Haunted

Are you haunted? No, we’re not talking Hollywood B-movie, ghosts around the corner haunted. Are you haunted by the regrets of your past? Do the things you should have done or not done seem to show up where you least expect them? The first step to moving away from the ghosts of our past choices is to name our regrets—to dig down deep beyond our individual choices and discover “why.” What were our real motives? What was really causing us sorrow? Who have we hurt? Part of the process of working through our mistakes is learning to put words to our regret. Join us for part 2 of "IF ONLY" at Club56 (5th and 6th grade only) on Saturday at 6pm and Sunday at 9:30am and Spiked (7th thru 12th grade only) at 11am.

New Horizon Church M25 Food Drop Tomorrow!

The big M25 Fooddrop is tomorrow morning at 7am! We get the opportunity to give food and books and all kinds of cool stuff to 400 families tomorrow morning! Here's an article that is on My NC.com about it:

New Horizon Church Feeds 400 Families in Need

sdf

Credit: AP Online

Caption

DURHAM COUNTY, N.C.

Durham, N.C.—On February 28, at 9 a.m., 400 families in need will come to New Horizon Church to receive food. They will be met by an assembly line of folks waiting to fill their car with non-perishables, some produce, personal care items, and a stuffed animal or book for the kids. The international hunger relief organization Feed The Children is partnering with the church for this event.

"There are so many families in need right now," said Leah Rade, New Horizon Church Community Pastor. "What a blessing to be able to partner with Feed the Children to provide all these families with such essential items."

Larry Jones, founder and president of Feed The Children, commented that "we are very appreciative of what New Horizon Church is doing. Because of their dedication and hard work, families in Durham and Orange County will not have to send their children to bed hungry tonight."

The organizations have pre-identified the families to receive items. The provisions are designed to help supplement a family for up to one week. Special thanks to local businesses who contributed items to this event: Flower Patch, Occoneechee Steakhouse, and Trader Joe's.

About New Horizon Church

New Horizon Church, located at 100 New Horizon Place in Durham, is a nondenominational church that seeks to provide messages that speak to today's culture. Lead by senior pastor Dave Bowman, the church has seen attendance grow steadily since it began in 1986. The church centers all its programming and outreach around their E2 mission: Encounter God. Engage in Community. To get directions, learn more about the church, or listen to recent podcasts, visit www.newhorizonchurch.tv.

About Feed The Children Founded in 1979 by Larry and Frances Jones, Feed The Children is consistently ranked as one of the 10 largest international charities in the U.S., based on private, non-government support. Feed The Children is a Christian, international, nonprofit relief organization with headquarters in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, that delivers food, medicine, clothing and other necessities to individuals, children and families who lack these essentials due to famine, war, poverty or natural disasters. In FY 2007, Feed The Children distributed more than 135 million pounds of food and other essentials to children and their families in all 50 states and internationally, supplementing almost 800,000 meals each day. Since its founding, the organization has reached out to help those in need in 118 countries around the globe. For more information, please visit www.feedthechildren.org.

Related Links

1. http://www.newhorizonchurch.tv
2. http://www.feedthechildren.org

Great Blog Post

Our Spiked Director, Melinda, posted a great blog post today about serving in student ministries. She lays out some great reasons why we need volunteers and what it takes to be a "youth" worker! Go read this post!

Skype

Just setup a free Skype account for video conferencing and I think it is way cool. I look so cool on camera....

Lent

Tomorrow is the beginning of Lent - basically the 40 days before Jesus' Ressurection. You can click here for more details. It is typical christian culture to give something up for lent. So, I decided to give up lint for lent. Yes, belly-button lint. Valorie will be so happy.

There is hope for 16 year olds who fail their driver's test

OK, so if you are a teen who has failed your driving test, don't worry. It's very unlikely that you will ever fail it as many times as this woman! A lady in South Korea has failed her driving test 775 times! I did the math, and I don't even think it is possible to fail a 20 question test that many times if you answer each question differently every time you take it - unless of course you keep putting down the same wrong answers every time! You gotta read this!

Daddy Daughter Day

When Olivea was born, I decided that Monday would be Daddy-Daughter Day (I think I have blogged about this before). Since Monday is my only day off and I am usually worn out from the weekend, I figured it would be a great day to spend with my daughter. Over the last few weeks, I have gotten away from spending quality time with her. We've been together, but we have usually been working around the house or something productive and boring. Today, she and I slept late, ate some brunch, sang some of her favorite songs (B.I.N.G.O., Happy Birthday, Row Your Boat, Ring around the Rosies) and watched her favorite show BOZ the Bear. My daughter is so special to me - and it's a pleasure and privilege to be her father. Thank you, Valorie, for the greatest gift ever!

Weekend Brain Bullets

Another cool weekend at New Horizon Church has come and gone! If you missed Club56 or Spiked this week - you missed the start to a cool new series about regrets! Here are some highlights from the weekend!

• "If Only" kicked off today. We talked about regrets and if only moments in our lives. We looked at the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors story found in Genesis. We keyed in on the brothers and their regret. You can read it all from Genesis 37 to 42.
• The band did some Daughtry and The Fray music - and we had a keyboard player today!
• Played an awesome game today in honor of the Oscars tonight! But, since we would probably never know any Oscar trivia, we had movie trivia for dummies. All the trivia was based on movies by Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey.
• I told some pretty embarrassing "if only" stories of my own - one about acid-washed jeans, one about my NKOTB (yes, New Kids On The Block) t-shirt, and one about my brother bicycle.
• Showed this hilarious video. Several of you have begged me to post it - so here it is!

If Only...

Spiked Sundays @ 11:00am - February 22nd, March 1st, and March 8th What’s your “if only”? Every one of us has one, two or a hundred different scenarios in which we would do or say something differently. That e-mail we wish we wouldn’t have sent. That relationship that we should have avoided—or never began. We all have things we would do differently if given the chance. So if life inevitably brings “if only” moments, how do we handle the regrets that haunt us? How can we keep the mistakes we made yesterday from messing up today and tomorrow?

Too much fun? It's like too much money! There's no such thing!

Checkout what Cathy (our children's pastor) posted on her blog after church on Sunday!

.....on the same weekend we had someone share that they thought the kids inUhambo were having "too much fun", and they were serious. (Click on it to read the whole post so you can make sure I'm not overreacting!)

I can't believe it! If your kid is having fun in church -then they'll want to go to church - and they'll hear about Jesus - and they'll be connected to great people and friends and group leaders - and then they will enter student ministry without a gazillion issues with God and church! Whew! Let me calm down abit.

When God speaks...we usually don't listen.

When God speaks, we usually don't listen. Yes, I meant to say that. We DO NOT listen. Now, before any of my leaders, team members, or volunteers start thinking I am talking about them - let me clarify that this is something I have gleaned from my life this week - actually today. I am not going to bore you with a bunch of details from my personal life or on what God is doing within me. I don't know if you can relate or not, but when God (and some other key people in my life) speak to me about certain things - I don't listen.