When life gives you an amazing youth minister...

It's just like the old saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." But in this case, it's "When life gives you an amazing youth minister, spend two hours in her office analyzing your life." One-on-ones with Sara are one of my favorite things ever. We could seriously spend a whole day just talking in her office... But when you have to be home by 6-ish to eat dinner with your fam, we find a way to squeeze it into a two hour time frame. We can actually cover quite a bit of ground in that time. You never know what's gonna come up in our conversations... Anything from the art of the "shaky face" pictures, to topics to discuss at FLOCK, to how we found out Santa's not real (sad day...), to The Hangover and Elf, to Prayer and Action, and to some actually deep stuff like relationships, prayer, adoration, camp, and who knows what else. But that's exactly what I love about me and Sara's relationship -- one second we're being goofy and joking around, but five seconds later she's giving me advice about anything and everything: telling me stories about her own experiences, helping me edit a speech, guiding me through the little things that come up in life, and basically coaching me through everything. Sara, I want you to know that I really appreciate all you've done for me and just always being there as someone to talk to about whatever life throws at me. I legimately don't think that I would be who I am today if I hadn't met you back at GET REAL in 5th grade and gotten to know you and build up our friendship. So thanks. A ton. God really blessed all of us FLOCKers with two ridiculously awesome youth ministers, and we all really look up to you guys. Keep rockin' it and being yourselves. We <3 you.

(Bringing back some Prayer and Action memories) ... For random, deep, long, epic conversations at St. Michael's... GOD IS GREAT. :]

Love is an ability, not an emotion.

Last night was Sex & Dating night at FLOCK (where we talk about, but don't actually do either of those two things).  It's probably one of the most highly anticipated FLOCK nights of the year. Pretty legit. So of course, it was fantastic. But what I loved is that we talked about it from a totally different perspective than we ever have before - that you have to know yourself and what you want before you can ever even think about finding and giving yourself to someone else. So obviously there was a game to go with this idea of "knowing more about ourselves." And during this game, we learned that Justin has gotten a speeding ticket in the last year, that Sara has peed her pants from laughing too hard, that Mike blames his farts on his dog (even though he doesn't have a dog?), and so many more ridiculous things about our fellow FLOCKers...

So all fun and games right? Sure. Until Aaron, Sara, and Mike got up and shared with us some of their actual dating experiences. Can you say, "We have the greatest youth ministers ever?" I can. We have the greatest youth ministers ever. For real. Just that they were willing to get up there in front of all of us and tell us about things that they've been through is super duper awesome. And we learned a lot from, at least I did. But my favorite quote of the night was when Mike was talking about love. "Love is an ability, not an emotion." Then he eplained how that "perfect person" isn't going to be standing right there in the moonlight with all the stars twinkling all perfectly and whatnot (and there were some pretty hilarious actions to go along with that...). But his point was: When you take away all the emotions and great feelings that love give you, you have to ask yourself, "Why am I dating this person? Because I just want to say that I have a boyfriend or girlfriend? Or because this other person and I seriously have common goals and help eachother grow and be the best people we can be?" Obviously we want to strive for the second answer, but that's the whole challenge that we all face in today's society. We can fall into today's popular trends of dating just to date, or we can wait (like Brian did so he could get 10 bucks instead of one...) and be patient and let God decide when we're ready for that someone to be a part of our lives. The key is: knowing who we are, what we want, and not settling for anything less than what God wants for us.

Alright. "Operation Trust in God" is a GO. We can do this (with His help of course). :]

Cash-ardy or No Fortune...

Tonight at FLOCK we pretty much finished off the semester about the Bible with a bang. Sara started off by recapping basically the whole old testament and telling us how it connects perfectly to the New Testament. It was legit. She mentioned how nothing is coincidence with God- He plans everything out to fit together perfectly, because He's just awesome like that. :] So then we played the ultimate game show of all game shows- a mixture of Cash Cab, Jeopardy, Deal or No Deal, and Wheel of Fortune (which Aaron so cleverly titled Cash-ardy or No Fortune). So all of the knowledge Sara and Aaron had taught us all semester was finally being put to the test... Greatest thing ever. These two boys on the pink team were amazing. I swear they were just whippin' out answers left and right- it was epic. Of all the question categories, I've gotta say that my favorite was the "Youth Ministers" category. Watching ridiculously random, hilarious videos of Kyle Kuckleman and C-Dub can brighten anyone's day... So after all the action was coming to a close, all the groups got to open the beautifully-wrapped prize boxes. Well. Team orange went up, opened the highly-anticipated gift box, and guess what we found? A roll of toilet paper. Fantastic. And obviously, if you give a bunch of highschoolers toilet paper, you have to expect that something is gonna get TPed. And that something happened to be Sara's office (you're welcome, Sara. We <3 you). So it was definitely a good FLOCK (as always).

Gotta love Sunday nights... :]

I Heart Old People. :]

So every Monday from 3-4 I go to adoration with Sara. It's pretty stinkin' fantastic. It's usually just us two, but recently other people have been in there chillin' with Jesus with us, too. Which leads me to my point... Today there was this cute old lady who was sitting right in front of me. I've seen her before because she's usually leaving when I'm coming in, but today we were there at the same time. I noticed that she was reading from a little prayer book that was all worn and beat up... And I was just thinking, "How long has she had that thing??" Which got me thinking about how awesome older people are that they have stayed strong in their faith for so long and that God is such an important part of their lives. It was pretty awesome... So Sara left and it was just this lady and me. A few minutes later I got up to leave and she just turned around and gave me probably the biggest smile I've everrrrr seen and she said "Have a good day, God bless you." It was one of those things that just made me want to go over and give her a big hug. Maybe next Monday. :]

Oh how I love old people... :]

We're crazy, but (believe it or not) we're also pretty deep.

So. Sara's blog "We Have the Best Job Ever" pretty much blows my mind. I read it almost every day and wish that I could write like she does about the hilariously epic things that go down at FLOCK every week. And I got thinking... We do so many funny, weird, completely ridiculous things, but we can also get pretty deep (sometimes.... mostly depending on the mood Brian and Joe are in). So I decided I would start this blog to share some of the Flock funnies, but also some of the amazing life lessons I pick up from hanging out at St. Michael's so much...

Well, let's start with AP Flock from Wednesday night. Let's just say that sometimes the conversation is better when the boys are off for a quick trip to Game Stop buying Call of Duty: Black Ops... :] We started off with a topic that Sara, Aaron, and I talked a little bit about last week: True masculinity and femininity. Holy shnikeys. Can you say intense?? We had kind of planned on starting with that topic, then maybe moving on to some articles Sara printed out for us... But we determined that the topic was a little deeper than we thought. Our 90 minute conversation basically only established two things: Men are protectors and givers, and women are sensitive and receivers. It was a great conversation and we really couldn't even come up with a clear definition at all. We did come up with a pretty good one for love: selflessly putting someone else above yourself and getting them to heaven.  I'd say it was some pretty good, stimulating conversation. Then Aaron and Brian somehow got into a serious debate about building a mosque in NYC, racism in airports, and who knows what else... Overall, definitely a productive, eye-opening night.

Oh the things you learn from Flock... :]