My Gethsemane

Luke 5:16 (NIV) But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.   

John 6:15 (NIV) Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

These last couple weeks have been busy and full of Bible in Schools, Livewire (middle-school group), youth group, meetings, study and much more. Bible in Schools has been awesome. Judi (my new supervisor) has been really awesome with encouraging me and helping me to take on some of the roles with the children. One day I got to read the scripture to them and dress up in a crazy costume and act liked the paralyzed man that Jesus healed. It was fun capturing their attention and hearing what types of questions eight year olds have. I just find it so encouraging seeing these young minds so interested what we are talking about and just wanting to learn more. My favorite question so far was, “how did God make the sky blue?”=) This next week the class is going on a trip so we won’t have Bible in Schools. I’ll miss that and will look forward to it next week. 

            The last two Sundays I have had the opportunity to teach the Livewire group at church. They are a very active age group. The first Sunday we talked about giving and being generous. I challenged them to do something for their mom’s last week as it was Mother’s Day yesterday. It was a struggle the first Sunday because they want to be an active group and not just sit there and talk. So I decided that yesterday we would be more active and that I would bring some American candy to give them for answering questions. That worked great!!! Kids love candy. =) This week we talked about forgiveness and how sometimes it is a hard thing to do and something that we must work on and ask God to help us. Our activity was to write things on a whiteboard that require us to forgive such as; lying, hurting, and breaking things… Then I brought wash cloths and had a bucket of water. They had to throw the cloth at the board to try and wipe away the words. It was a great visual as to how sometimes it takes awhile to wipe away the hurt, but sometimes it wipes right off. It was quite similar to how sometimes things are harder to forgive than others. I challenged the kids to try and forgive this week. They all have siblings so I told them to start there. =) Judi was there (she is the head over the Livewire group) and said that she liked the activity and that maybe I should try it with the youth group… I think that’s a great idea. 

            The last two weeks of youth group have been more on my own without the pastor there. However, I am quite blessed to have Ye-Gon and another guy called Graeme to be there helping out. Well last Sunday at youth group we only have four youth show up. We had a lot of fun though playing sock wrestling and then talking about John 5. I loved working with this group because they were asking some awesome questions and really getting into a deep discussion. It is really encouraging to see. Then yesterday we had a large group that showed up. One of the youth’s birthday is this week so I made chocolate chip cookies and we played a few random games. We then talked about John 6: 1-21. It was really neat seeing the questions that were brought up such as; the trinity and if God can provide endless food (feeding the 5000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish) then why is there still a famine? I challenged the youth to bring up topics at the beginning of youth that they wanted to talk about and I believe that these two things might just fit in that category. I pray that I will be able to adequately answer these questions or find someone that can because I’m not sure I even know these answers or explain them well enough. However, I am willing to try. I love these types of questions. My youth group rocks. 

            Assignments: This last week I loved reading The Bible Jesus Read. I had a lot of cool ideas about the Old Testament that I never really considered before. I’m really excited to read the Old Testament with these new ideas and see what I learn. Assignments are going really well, better than I ever thought I thought maybe it would be hard to get back into doing assignments after not going to school for a year and it isn’t too bad. My biggest problem is procrastination and figuring out the right balance between studying and working at the church. Mostly life has been super busy.

Sometimes the business can be overwhelming. The last couple weeks I have been trying to tweak my schedule to get the right balance of work and rest. For about a week and a half I was getting into bed around 9:30 and falling asleep straight away, then getting up around 7 still exhausted from the day before. Don’t get me wrong I love what I do but I just can get tired and burnt out after going nonstop for a couple weeks. Two Saturdays I decided that I wanted to try and take the day off so I went and watched the Avengers! It was a really fun movie and now I feel as if I need to watch the other movies so I know more about the different heroes. It was a pretty fun day but we missed the first bus and then had to wait on other buses and I just felt rushed not really relaxed. Then after a week of been busy again I talked with Judi, my ministry supervisor about balance. We talked about how even Jesus took time away from everything to rest. I even read about it with my youth group this week how Jesus withdrew again to a mountain by himself. Also, in Luke 5:16 it talks about Jesus withdrew to a lonely place to pray. So I decided that Judi was right and that I should really try to make some time just to have Brandi time and not think about everything that has to get done. There are always things that will need to be done but if I’m not spiritual, mentally, physical and emotionally full then I won’t be able to get anything done. So this weekend I was home alone and decided to take all day Saturday to do whatever I wanted. I decided to Skype with my parents and Josh. I baked cookies for the youth and I cleaned… yes I cleaned on my day off but not because I had to but because it was something I wanted to do. It was such a relaxing Saturday!! I woke up Sunday refreshed and ready to go. I have decided that I’m going to take at least one day a week off a week and do this. As much as I love doing my ministry and study I also know I need to balance rest and take a Sabbath.

I have some exciting news that has also happened this week. I bought a car!!! I was looking and not really finding anything less than $1500 but then Andre’s dad found a car for $600. I hadn’t seen the car or anything but I trusted him and bought it. I felt as if by buying a car I would spend less time on a bus and more time being able to rest and put in time with my youth. I now can also be mobile and go to my youth’s events and maybe even take them for an ice cream just to catch up. I really believe that this will help in so many different ways. I thank God that He provided for this. It was quite funny because I had just prayed to God, “God, you know how I can’t even decide on buying a pair of jeans? Well, I think figuring out which car I should buy is going to be harder. I think I’m just going to trust you and have you decide for me by giving me a great deal or some sort of a push in the right direction.” Well, not even an hour later I found out and bought this car! God is SO Good!!! I got to see it today for the first time and I drove it this evening to get Subway! It is so different on the other side of the car and rode but I think it will be okay! Watch out New Zealand Brandi is behind the wheel!

That is pretty much all I’ve been up to these last couple weeks. In two weeks time we will be having our 40 hour famine event so pray that goes well! I can’t wait to get all the activities planned for that. =) I would like to ask you to continue praying for my youth group and the rest of my church, that I travel safe in my new car, my studies and my family. Also, if you see my mom these next couple weeks give her a hug for me for Mother’s Day, she is the best mommy in the world after all =D I love and miss you all! Let me know how you are doing. Thank you again for you continuous support!