Thanksgiving

Well Thanksgiving has come and gone! I can't believe tomorrow is the last day of November! Christmas is just around the corner. :)

This year we didn't have many places to go for Thanksgiving. We had Thanksgiving on Sunday with my mom which was fun and nice to do it on a different day to make Thursday a little less hectic. We went to Jared's grandmas for lunch on Thanksgiving day and had a great big meal. Then a few hours later we went to my dad's and had Thanksgiving with the Nuelle family and had another great big meal! The Nuelle family always has around 20 people so normally some sit in the basement and some upstairs. This year, dad decided to put everyone up stairs so we could all be together. We went around and said what we were thankful for, it was nice!

At school, we did something cute and had my kids dress up as pilgrims and the other kindergarten dress up as Indians. We did our own first thanksgiving where we discussed what we were thankful for and created food out of construction paper and glued it to a paper plate. The kids enjoyed this. We also let all of the kids make Indian shirts to wear on Wednesday, the day before. They got to choose their own Indian name I had anywhere from hopping jack rabbit, and howling wolf, to raging red horse, ha. These kids were creative. They LOVED their shirts, and they should! We spent so much money and time into them! We bought plain white t-shirts and dyed them with tea. Then we washed them and dried them, finged them, beaded them, and finally painted them. Whoa that was a lot of work!

REALITY retreat

Last weekend was the first shot gun season of the year. So, of course since Jared has nothing else on his mind besides hunting, he went, as usual. I definitely don't mind him hunting but this one time I wish he could have come with me to the retreat. It was amazing! All of the leaders were really praying that God would show up and move on this trip. The day started out early, we left at 6:30. When we got to Camp Maranatha we heard a message from Chris Ethridge on "Worship". He talked about what worship is and what it isn't.

Worship is not

    about the feelings we receive when we sing

    about convincing God to bless us

    whether or not the guitar is too loud

    about what's happening on the stage

    about entertainment, lighting, or sound

    about us at all.

It's about Him.

It's our response to what we value most...

 

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship.  Romans 12:1

It really made me think about the things that I put my time and effort into, "idols". God desires for us to spend time with him and get to know him, and truly worship him.

We also had the opportunity to have break out sessions this year which was cool because the kids got to choose what they wanted to learn more about or get encouragment in. I chose the session on being a "people pleaser". Which made me realize that I am to an extent a people pleaser, but I'm more of a peacemaker. I don't value either of these qualities in me and I pray that God help me with not always wanting everyone to "like" me. As soon as I hear of a conflict or someone saying something about me, I often let it overtake my joy and thoughts. I need to stop doing this! I realized I should be more worried about pleasing God rather than pleasing people.

During the sharing time I had a hard time sharing. I kept wanting to say what God had put on my heart but everytime I tried, I cried. Yes, I'm emotional and sometimes I hate that! So, I'll share it hear for anyone who may be reading/listening. I took a lot from the retreat. I realized in the first session that my family is my "idol". They are what I put my thoughts into. This doesn't seem like a bad thing, but when I try and control everything, that's when it becomes a problem. It is literally like having a 50 pound weight on your shoulders when you try and control the uncontrolable. When I try and fix all the problems my sisters, mom, dad, and extended family are having, it's a lot. I've always been the person who wants everyone to be happy and when something is wrong, I worry and let it consume my thoughts. I'm going to try my hardest to give this over to God. I found a verse in Matthew that really put it out there on the line: Matthew 10:37
"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me" This verse seems kind of harsh because how can you not love your father/mother/husband/sister/brother! But what I took from it is that I'm putting WAY more time and energy into loving my family, worrying about their problems, and trying to fix it all rather than putting that time and energy into loving God and knowing him more.
I love ther verse in John 14:6 that reminds us to love him because "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to know God except through me." So, it just really made me think, who do I know and care about more, Jesus or my family?! Wow! Tough thing to work on!

The last day of retreat was just another amazing day. I was kind of tired and ready to get home, but the message was awesome. Matt and Stacy did a 2 part duo message. They spent a lot of time really teaching about the history of the tabernacle and how back then you had to do so much WORK to get to God! You had to clense yourself, be mentally prepared, sacrifice an animal, put it's blood on you, and then MAYBE you would be allowed to enter in and talk to God. It was a lot of work! Then they shared about how when Jesus died on the cross (they showed the very emotional clip from Passion of the Christ) the veil of the temple was torn and that represented that we no longer had to do that to get to God. We have freedom to come to him whenever we want now! How cool is that!

I'm so thankful for an awesome retreat where God moved! The Holy Spirit was SO powerful!
Listen to this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR156yJZFUY

Christmas Lists

So last Friday we had a half day of school. Those are way more cool when you are a student rather than a teacher! We had to attend a meeting in the afternoon. Our last meeting we had on institute day was the most boring day of my life! This one wasn't as bad, maybe becasue we got out a little early and it was only for a half day to begin with. Anyways, since I was not really paying attention to what this lady had to say about 504 plans (students with special needs have these)... I decided to make my Christmas list. I started out thinking I don't really need anything/want anything particular this year.. to having a list a mile long! So, I'm glad I was bored and glad I wrote it all down! Jared's mom has been asking me to put my list on Amazon and until this year, I never did. Well I went to amazon.com and created my wish list! It was fun! You can even download a wish list button and go to other websites other than amazon and add stuff to your list, how cool! So, if you haven't made your list, you should make on on there! Other people can just type in your name and see what you are wanting. You can set your privacy to "keep it a secret" which means that YOU won't be able to see what's missing, but others can delete the items after they purchase it. I love this idea! I will be doing this from now on for sure. I even added some stuff for Jared and put in the comment box "for jared" because I knew he wouldn't make a list. So I thought of some things he wanted and put them on there as well.

Check it out! Its a great way to shop and get people what they really want! Thanks Jackie!