It was a great privilege and opportunity to work with the folks at my church to make this site a reality. They have some creative guys making the videos and several of the graphic elements – I’m gad I could just bring it all together for them. Go check out rebelfreshman.com and I’ve included one of my favorite videos from the project below.

After said party I went home to pack up as this past weekend was spent with the college ministry from church at their annual fall retreat. While it was a busy time for me (as I was responsible for all the sound/tech needs for the weekend) God used it to really stir within me. He raised questions within me that have been refreshing and renewing for my spirit. Please pray for me as I begin to allow God to make changes in my life to remove things that will detract from Him being my satisfaction and detract from me finding my rest in Him. Photos from the retreat will be up soon.

We arrived around 9:30 PM at the Delta Lake Center (auxillary worship center at my church plus the home of our Sunday morning college life class, H2O) with two pig cookers and begin to get things ready to go. We had the pig on the grill by 10:30 PM and were off to keep ourselves awake for the next few hours. Barren got the first sleep shift and slept until 2 AM. The rest of us made 10+ gallons of sweet tea, laughed, watched movies on the projectors in the DLC, and just generally had a good time.

I caught a few hours of shut eye between 3 and 5 AM but it was on a short couch which wasn’t really comfortable so I wouldn’t exactly call it “sleep”. The pig finished cooking around 6:30 AM. We pulled and chopped from 8 – 10 AM and then began serving after H20 around 12:30.

We planned for ~ 300 people, a lot more stayed. Thankfully we didn’t run out of BBQ but man it was a lot of fun! It has been suggested that those of us who cooked Saturday night should open up a restaurant. Leave some love on the comments below with some ideas for a restaurant name and how many of you would be loyal patrons :-p. Oh and don’t forget to check out some of the photos from that night of fun!

Our purpose this year more over the purpose of why we exist – to spread the fame of God to a college-age generation by living passionate lives of worship, truth and love.

Notice that word – Fame? Dave O., our college pastor, said it best; “fame is making a name known well”. Notice it is more than just the name of God. Many people have heard God’s named proclaimed. We exists to make His FAME known. That people would know much more about God that just His name. That struck a cord with me – deep down. Do I live in such a way that people around me know more that just God’s name?

After some time of prayer, worship, and vision casting Thursday night and Friday morning the remainder of the leadership team joined us at Camp Caraway, just west of Asheboro. Imagine 60+ (mostly) college students gathered together for that singular purpose – the Fame of God. In addition to gathering to plan out the next years events and how to better equip and serve our students, we fellowshipped together. This included songs, prayers, smores, basketball, ultimate frisbee, and swimming.

It was personally a great time of renewal; to be around students living such passionate lives was a privilage and an honor. My prayer is that by the words I say and the actions I take, may I not detract from God and may His Fame be known.

David doing the Superman thing while on the zip line

A few of the musically inclined females

Why so sad?

Adam getting “roughed up”

The whole point of the weekend

“Divine Obsession”

The theme of the weekend was “Divine Obsession”. As Dr. Nelson worded it:

a compulsive preoccupation with the beautiful, triune God

Wow, what a concept! I really feel that the nearly 90 college students that were there really gained some unique perspective on God and His character; I know I did.

Hopefully the talks will be made available online, and when they are, I’ll let all of you diligent readers know. For now, you’ll have to entertain yourselves with the photos of the retreat over in the gallery.

So what else happened (since most of you think I’m a sound nerd now)? Well, I practice another passion of mine, cooking some dinner for some dear friends. We had a blast and I think my meal was a big success. Only one problem cooking for a bunch of girls, they force you to watch Just Married instead of the NC State Football game . I did get to drive home and watch the rest of the game however, close win by NCSU over GA. Tech.

I also worked on another passion, photography! I took some photos of my friend Natalee practicing her dance recital piece. She dances here at NC State, thus easy access for me to take photos. I’m happy with several of these and I believe they’ll be used for their promotional flyer materials for the fall recital! They’re posted over in the gallery, so take a look if you like: Natalee Fall Dance Studio

Well, I should return to the grading. The midterm average isn’t too hot for my students and so now I must decide if I was too harsh or if they just didn’t study. Maybe I’ll be nice and offer some sort of makeup . . . maybe .

Tom chillin’ with the bass

Kate with mean/funny/weird face

Daniel doing the closed eyes, praise thing

Josh and Tom rockin’ it on the acoustic and bass respectively

Daniel doing some hardcore singing here

Ahhhh, much better face Kate

Todd praising, the only way he knows how