Sorry I haven't been posting much. I have been super busy with soccer, school, and everything else. We had a great Thanksgiving this year and hope you did too! This year we went to Arkansas to see the family and we had a great time. Always love this time of year! Here is a little bit of what has happened here lately.
Just Recently Sophie participated in the Nutcracker recital and she was a little Soldier! She was so cute and she did great! She is learning a lot and doing very well :)
Yesterday Sam turned 16 years old!!! I can't believe it! I remember playing with him when when we were little bitty :) He has really grown up and he is 6 feet tall! He is a great big brother and I love him so much <3 Happy Birthday Sam!
Sadie just recently finished up her soccer season and her team really did well this year. Sadie is always doing her best!
That is about all besides Christmas coming up and all! I can't wait! We are counting down :)
Sophie and Silas both had a birthday recently. Silas had his 7th and Sophie had her 9th! They were both very excited and of course they started counting down about a month befor their birthday. :) Silas got some boxing gloves and a sand bag for his birthday and Sophie got a lot of clothes and she got a steelers jersey. :)
Sophie is in ballet again this year and she has joined the nutcracker too! She is gonna be really excited about it. :) She is doing really good and she loves it!
As I have mentioned in my last post we are back in sports season. So far my team has been doing pretty good! We had a tie against the number one competitive team and this is our first year in competitive. :) We also won in Norman Saturday so we are doing pretty well so far for our first year! I think these are the best uniforms we have had so far. :)
Sadie has been in one tournament and they placed 2nd in it! They are doing pretty well! I think so far they have won one and lost one and this week I believe they are playing the best team in the league. :) Go Sadie!
This year Henry decided to try football and He really likes it! They have had one win and two losses. He is doing pretty good and I think he plays center and noseguard. Go Tigers!
I think Nick is ready to play football too!
Silas has played two football games so far and they have won both of them! This year Silas is playing quarter back and he really likes it. :) Go Razorbacks!
Summer is over and we are back to school! Actually, we have been in school for 6 weeks now. Also, sports have started up again to so we are super busy! This year Sadie and I are in soccer, Henry is in baseball and football, Silas is in baseball and flag football, and Sophie is in ballet. We r gone everyday doing something that either relates to these things or church, guitar, and piano. We are so blessed that we are able to do all of these things! These are all blessings from the Lord! Thanks Mom and Dad for taking us everynight to do these things. I am sure that most people with 7 kids don't do that :) Here is a picture of all of us holding up the sign of what grade we are in this year:
I can't believe I am in 10th grade! Only 3 more years until I graduate ;) Hoping for another good school year!
This summer we signed up to go to San-Antonio for a missions trip and it turned out to be the BEST TRIP EVER!!! So, our schedule was a really busy one, but it was tons of fun! We traveled by plane and it was the first one I had ever been on. It was pretty exciting!
When we got there we set up the sports camp that we were going to do in the neighborhood all week. Then from 4 to I think 6:30 we had sports camp with the kids in the apartment complex that was near Agora (the church that we were partnering with). More kids showed up everyday and they were sooo cute. :) I met one little girl and she was about 8 years old and her name was Mercedes and she was my buddy everyday of the camp! She is so precious to me :)
We had services every night and they were so powerful! On Thursday, we had a great time in worship and one of my friends (Maddie) kind of blacked out and she was paralyzed. It is kind of difficult to explain all this but I will do the best I can. She was what they call "Being slain in the Holy Spirit". It is a very good thing!
Also during one of our human videos, one of the guys on my team (Caleb) just felt the Holy Spirit come over him and you could tell something was different because he stumbling all over the stage. He got the strength to finish the video and he basically cried the rest of the night. Later on after the service the same thing happened to one of the other guys (Trystan). It was really amazing!!!
After service that night we were driving home and Maddie was still out. Caleb ad Trystan were still crying and praying aloud in the van. We got to the church and we all went to the auditorium (of course we had to carry Maddie in and the boys were dragging themselves to get in there.) When we got in there a bunch of the kids from our team fell on the ground and were screaming God's name. It really is amazing to see God work like that especially in such a different sort of way. :)
For the past few years I have been wanting worship to be intense and I wanted to feel God. It just wasn't happening for whatever reason. It was frustrating me and I started questioning God if He really loved me and wanted to be with me. That Thursday night when everyone was praying, Caleb got the strength to around to everyone and tell the kids on our team different things that related to their life. God was speaking through him and he was talking about things that he never knew.
I asked God to give me a sign that He loves me and that He cares for me. The second I asked that question Caleb came running over to me saying that God loves me so much and he just repeats it over and over again. Caleb didn't hear me when I was praying to God and I never told him anything. The Spirit was definitely speaking through him and it was amazing! I think for the first time ever I felt God just cover me like a blanket and it was a wonderful feeling!
The next night was the last night we were going to be there so we were having reflections. After reflections we had a prayer circle and everyone had to say a prayer. After prayer we just sat in the little room we were in and everyone was just seeking God! It was great! That night we had maybe 6 or 7 people black out like Maddie. I was one of them and usually when it happens you don't remember when you wake up.
Last thing I remember before it happened was that I was singing the song 'How He loves'. I remember just feeling God come over me again and it felt great! Then I went out and I was paralyzed. I was told that during that time Maddie told everyone that she saw me in God's lap! Also I was told that I would sit there for 5 minutes and then start breathing real hard and that I never stopped smiling. :)
Of course when I woke up and hour later I didn't remember a thing. :) That's usually how it is. I was paralyzed for about 30 minutes after I woke up and felt really weird. I think I started to remember about an hour after I woke up and this is what I remember.
I remember sitting on God's lap and He was telling me that He loves me sooo much over and over again. :) He also told me that I was getting ready to go into a great battle. At first I was kind of scared, but after He said that He placed His own armour on me and I felt amazing! After that He sat me back down and He told me jokes and we laughed soooo much! It was wonderful!!! There are no words to describe what I felt and saw! :)
What I saw last week makes believe in God so much more! This was the best trip ever for a lot of us. :)
Before we left:
This was our theme song for the camp services:
We believe
These were the rest of the songs we sang in the services:
So good!!!
This beating Heart
Let my people go
This is amazing grace
Here is our team and a video of a little of what we did:
Praying for the city:
There was a homeless man on the street so the boys got out of the car and went to pray for him.
The services were great!
The worship was wonderful!
Every morning for 3 days we did service projects and the first one we did is go chile and jalapeno picking at the food bank. It was sooooo hot!
We painted over a lot of graffiti and that was probably my favorite service project :)
We got to fix up this cemetery: (you couldn't tell it was a cemetery cause there were no head stones or anything like that)
It looks so much better, doesn't it?
A successful team:
At Schlitterbahn: (Tons of fun!!!)
Our flight was delayed so we had to sit in the airport for 4 hours! Ugh! When we were there our team performed a couple of our human videos and they were great! It felt a little weird doing it in the middle of the airport and I am sure there were a few people who thought we were crazy, but we had a pretty good reaction. :)
Here are the human videos we performed: By the way the we forgot to do a whole part in the legion one and we got really confused:)
