The End (of the Beginning)

Dear Readers,

Well, we have come to a fork in the road (keep on walking and you’ll find the knife later). I have decided to end this blog with this final post. Why do you ask? Good question. I’m glad I had some answers ready.

After this post, I will be switching to an email style of newsletter, where I will still do the same format (with some tweeks of my own) but it will be sent out to the group of my supporters (and anyone else who wants to follow along) The main reason for switching was that some of my supporter simply are not on Facebook. If they aren’t on Facebook, even though I am posting all of my blogs on a regular site, it is hard to explain to people how to get on there without Facebook (even I can’t remember the URL sometimes). Also, in moving to the email, it’ll let me know who is getting and reading the updates, so I will have a much better sense of who is following along, instead of only being able to guess from the 500+ Facebooks friends that could have been potentially reading it. Don’t get me wrong, if you’ve been following on Facebook and still want to, that’s great! Just shot me your email on a message, and I will get you on the list, but this way, it will be much more controllable. I also check my email much more often than my blog, so if I get any responses, I’ll be able to see them a lot quicker. In fact, even as I wrote this, I already got a reply back from someone, now isn’t that nice. :D Thank you again for all the prayers, love, and support you all have shown, and I can only hope that this change can help the connection between all of us stay that much stronger!

Once again, if you would like to be added to the email list, just message or text me. Thanks!

                                                                                                                                                                Josh

Senatobia, MS

It's time to hear about church number 3, so for that, we are heading back down South, where Sweet Tea is measured by the amount of cups of sugar you put into it!

After leaving Morton, we shot straight down through Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas, finally ending up in Senatobia MS. Lifepoint church is about 7 years old, and they have just moved into a new building. It's a church of about 600 or so, and their Pastor's name is George Ross. (Trivia fact: George was actually the former youth pastor of Clay, one of the boys on the team.)

Throughout the next two weeks, God really broke through and changed a lot of hearts and lives in the church. Marriages were restored and God made himself known in a lot of lives of the people. The staff/Pastor relationship was greatly strengthened, and we are all excited to see what God has in store for them in the future.

My host family you ask? Well, let me tell you about them! The Cole family opened up their house to me, Joel, and Caleb, and it was an incredible time. Some of the events included shooting guns, racing go karts, and dancing around a bonfire (at a safe-ish distance of course). We really got to spend some quality time with them, got to go on long walks around their property, play some video games with them, even laugh our heads off with games like Balderdash and Apples to Apples (BTW: did you know that a kakkerlak is an Albino Cockroach? Oh the things you learn in family games)

Signing has been going good, I continue to have about 5-6 people come up each summit and ask where and how I learned it, and it has been encouraging to see the response and the welcoming atmosphere of the churches so far. I am starting to get some different songs thrown at me, since we are going into more contemporary churches, we're having to do quicker songs, so it's a bit of a challenge, but by God's grace, it has been going well.

Finally, God has still been doing a continuing work in me, through these summits. His grace is being made known to me more and more every day, and the Holy Spirit is continually showing me areas that I am not giving up to Christ. I would say that each summit has been a different "period" for me. The first summit was the "test run" period, where God was showing me just what I had gotten myself into. The second was definitely the "breaking" summit, where God broke me wide open to show me where I really was in my relationship with Him. This previous summit was probably my "rebuilding" summit. I came in to this summit a little overwhelmed by what I learned in Morton, but now I have had a chance to sort through some of it, and have been able to start to look at my life one area at a time.

Thank you all so much for your prayers AND DRUM ROLLLL!!!!!! I GET TO COME HOME IN 27 DAYS! Excited much, and I so excited to see all of you again!

In Christ,

Josh