Two of the most humble, sincere, loving people I've ever known. Both of them, I feel do not get enough credit for how completely incredible they are as friends to so many people.
Emily: You are beautiful inside and out. Your love for our Creator oozes (yes, oozes) out of you and you have to be blind, deaf and mute to not notice it. I think my favorite thing about you is watching you worship. Music is so much a part of you, and it is so apparent that you strive to use your talents to glorify God, and for that purpose alone. I've had so many fun times with you, and it has been so fun listening to your Dad, and hearing your stories about family. We're going to be friends no matter what for a long time, and I know it.
I remember when we first met and you were so shy and tired. It was funny. I would have never expected us to be this close. I love love love it, and I love love love you.
Britany (girlfriend): I think it is funny that people think we like each other. I think its great that we have a relationship that makes people wonder because honestly, I feel like that is how it should be (this goes for you too, Emily hahaha). You are such a beautiful person inside and out, and so humble (but NOT a pushover). The way you deal with conflict is so great. You are the best at that, and I'm so blessed to know you. I'm so sad that I didn't get to know you during Phantom and I'm sorry if I was ever a douche back then.
You give the best advice, you are the best listener ever, and I am so so so so honored to know you, and to be your friend. I love you so much.
I love you two more than words can describe. You know me the best, you've seen me at my best and worst, and we've grown so close together. I love you both..wait I already said that. I love you!
-Marc
p.s. we need more pics together. We have none.
Music I Love
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Vegas
Day 1: Bus
Thursday began our 10 day adventure to LAS VEGAS! Not much to say about today except we have 30 hours of people mover ahead of us. I'm going to be really excited to get there!
Day 2: Bus
Friday was more bus. bus bus bus. I got sick of the bus, but today I got to see a couple things that I haven't quite seen before. I saw a mountain for the first time. A serious, legit mountain. Not only did I see a mountain, I saw tons and tons of them. They're breathtaking. They are just everywhere here. You see a building, there is a mountain behind it.
As we drove up the hill to Las Vegas, when we reached the top of the hill there was just a pool of lights. Something you can't capture with a picture. The city is breathtaking. We finally arrived to our residence for the week: a rental home. A GORGEOUS rental home. We have plenty of rooms, TV's everywhere, a huge pool table and POOL! However, we were too tuckered out for any of that, so we went to bed. Zack Tracy was my roommate. I like him. He's cool.
Day 3: Prostitutes
We woke up early the next morning and went to The Church of South Las Vegas and had our training for the strip ministry we were going to do that night. We learned so much about how prostitution works (its an intense, sad process) and then we set up for what they call store. I like to call it:
A Place For Homeless or Under Privileged People To Get Free Stuff That They Need
haha, it was amazing. They had everything a family would need, and they did it for hundreds of people, AND they do it TWICE a month. How awesome is that?! Okay, that ended and we went back to the house to brush up and went to a church service there that night. The worship was POPIN' and the speaker brought the Truth! It was a really nice service, and it really rejuvenated us from that ghastly bus ride here. After church began our Strip ministry. What an experience. The organization is called Hookers for Jesus, and we called the outing SNL or Saturday Night Love. There are a couple different teams for the night. One is the Frontline team which is a group of strong loving women who have gotten out of prostitution and chose Salvation. What an honor to hear their stories. All have beautiful testimonies, and I am truly blessed to have met Tina, Annie and the rest of the girls. The other teams are the Prayer Team and the Body Guard. Now, they've never really needed body guards, but they have them to shoo away the drunk guys and stuff, and the prayer team just follows the frontline at a distance and just prays for the interactions ...
okay ADD, the frontline has these things called Love Bags, now these are full of lotion, hand soap, girl y things, and a pink bible, along with some devotional stuff and information on the church. They go out, hand these out and we as a Prayer team pray for the interactions. It was a pretty cool experience, and this was the first time I've ever seen the strip. The mind pictures of the prostitutes faces will never leave my head. After this we went back to the house and slept for the next day.
Day 4: Red Rock
This day was so chill! we got up at like 10 and went out to Red Rock park and climbed rocks ALL day! It was really fun, and this place is beautiful. We packed our lunches, and headed out to this beautiful mountain Vanessa Vann has helped plan this whole trip, and it has been a blessing hanging out and getting to know her throughout the week. What a blessing. After red rock, we went to the Dodd's house for dinner. Not only did they feed us an INCREDIBLE taco feast, but they are the people that head up the African Refugee Ministry and they told us all about what we were going to do for them for the rest of the week. It was such a chill day!
Day 5: Burma
We woke up and got ready for Cynthia to come over and tell us what was going on. When she was telling us we were going to the PLAYGROUND with kids, I got pretty excited, and that is honestly what we did for the whole afternoon. We went to one of the only apartment complexes in Vegas that agrees to house refugees to meet these families from Burma and Bhutan and then we were off to the playground. These children were beautiful. So so beautiful, and so were the older kids and adults. Everyone came, and it was one big party. Well, not really, but it was such a blessing to hang out with these kids at the play ground and play some soccer. Daw-reh and Too-rey were my two favorites (pictures will be up for sure when I get back). When we were done here we went back to the apartment. Now, Cynthia is an angel, and she takes care of these people. They don't even know how to speak English, so she meets with them on a weekly basis and goes through their mail so they can pay their bills ect, and this goes a whole lot easier when they children aren't there, so we were the child care. It was SO MUCH FUN! We played all different kinds of games. It's amazing how much you can do even with a language barrier.
Day 6: Borderless Beauty
What a day this was. We woke up and went on two prayer walks around the apartment complexes where they house the refugees. What a blessing it was to pray with Brooke Harris. She is a beauty of a person, and it was so great to pray with her for an hour. She has a heart of gold. After our prayer walk we went to the other apartment complex and played with the kids some more. Meet Too-Lay (I don't know how to spell it,
but thats how you say it). This kid is all smiles, I swear! I never saw him sad or anything! He was for sure my favorite during the week. Playing tag never got old to him, and I could just see Jesus through his eyes. There were so many other beautiful children we met on this day, and we had such a good time hanging out with them!
After hanging out with the children all afternoon, we set out for a night on the strip to get some dinner and dessert, and watch the show at the belagio! It was Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra!
It was a good song! And we ate at the...
It was good and stuff, then we went to this crazy place with a chocolate fountain thing in the belagio for some gelato! I have very berry and lemon mixed together, and I can honestly say that it brought me right back to Italy. So good! After this we walked around for a little bit and by then we were all tuckered out so we went back to the house to sleep. The next day is going to be great!
Day 7: Back to School
Today we went back to elementary school for a morning! We were all split up into classes where we were going to help out the teacher for a little bit. Robin and I went to kindergarten and did some things with them and I got to read a few stories to them and help them out with puzzles, worksheets, ect. They were all beautiful kids, and I could just see how less stressed the teachers were because we were there. It was a blessing to be there. After we did our duties there, we went to a middle school to hear Vanessa Vann speak. It was a great talk about dreams, and how we can always accomplish our dreams. Vanessa is a graduate from Spring Arbor, and a former Peer Advisor and now she words for Rapport doing motivational speaking as part of her duties there. It was so great to hang out with her, and here her speak. She is full of encouragement and enthusiasm! After we were done at the middle school we went back to the apartment complex and met the families we were going to hang out with the next day, and played a ton of four square with the neighborhood kids. It was a blast, and I was so excited to spend the day with the family Vanessa choose for me, Robin and Steven! Here are some pics of this day
So great. So so great. After we were done, we went back to the house and had some BBQ chicken on the grill and hung out for the rest of the night.
Day 8: Helpin' Out
This is one of the days I've been looking forward to. First of all, we got to sleep in then we went back out to those apartments and spent the whole day with our families! Ruth and Maria were the adults. Maria was too old to learn English so the extent of her English was "Yes, No, and Hi, my name is Maria," but one of the coolest things about this day is Steven Owlsey got a bible in Swahili and English and attempted to translate it to her. It was so cool to watch! But before, after, and a little during that I just scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed down their apartment, and killed so many cockroaches... This was a beautiful family. There was also two other girls in it, Twiz and Annie. I'm not sure how they were all related, but It was so great watching them. They played Swahili worship music the whole time and were dancing and singing to it. It was great! And we got to teach them how to make pizza!
Steven, Annie, Maria, Twiz, Ruth, Marc
After we left there we went back to the house, ate some of our own pizza and debriefed the night (because that is what PA's do), and we went to this amazing place called YogurtLand which was oh so good. That's all. Non-Fat goodness.
Day 9: Headin' Home...At least we thought
We got up at the BUTT CRACK of dawn and went down to Arizona to see the GRAND CANYON! It was breathtaking, but we were there for a long time then we started our 38 hour drive home. At least we thought. A big snow storm started in Albuquerque and they shut down all of the interstates. So a hotel we went. It was cheap, but it was pretty nice! So we stayed there that night, and left at around 1o the next morning to finish our journey. We did go about 5 mph in Oklahoma for a couple hours, but we kept the journey going. (oh wait, this is a different day...)
Day 10: Travelin'
We traveled all day, and all night. That is all.
Day 11: DONE
Well, this day is today, and I am here finishing this blog and chilling with some friends. We got back at around 5, and I've just been visiting people and stuff and now I have to start on COM102 homework and stuff, but I'm going to hit the sheets tonight and worry about that tomorrow.
This trip gave me hope. Hope that if God can be present in sin city, that he can be present anywhere. It's not sin city to me anymore. It's now revolutionized city. God is completely present there.
Revival is happening. Lets pray for it to continue not for it to start. Praise the Lord.
Thanks for reading, dear friends.
-Marc
Thursday began our 10 day adventure to LAS VEGAS! Not much to say about today except we have 30 hours of people mover ahead of us. I'm going to be really excited to get there!
Day 2: Bus
Friday was more bus. bus bus bus. I got sick of the bus, but today I got to see a couple things that I haven't quite seen before. I saw a mountain for the first time. A serious, legit mountain. Not only did I see a mountain, I saw tons and tons of them. They're breathtaking. They are just everywhere here. You see a building, there is a mountain behind it.
As we drove up the hill to Las Vegas, when we reached the top of the hill there was just a pool of lights. Something you can't capture with a picture. The city is breathtaking. We finally arrived to our residence for the week: a rental home. A GORGEOUS rental home. We have plenty of rooms, TV's everywhere, a huge pool table and POOL! However, we were too tuckered out for any of that, so we went to bed. Zack Tracy was my roommate. I like him. He's cool.
Day 3: Prostitutes
We woke up early the next morning and went to The Church of South Las Vegas and had our training for the strip ministry we were going to do that night. We learned so much about how prostitution works (its an intense, sad process) and then we set up for what they call store. I like to call it:
A Place For Homeless or Under Privileged People To Get Free Stuff That They Need
haha, it was amazing. They had everything a family would need, and they did it for hundreds of people, AND they do it TWICE a month. How awesome is that?! Okay, that ended and we went back to the house to brush up and went to a church service there that night. The worship was POPIN' and the speaker brought the Truth! It was a really nice service, and it really rejuvenated us from that ghastly bus ride here. After church began our Strip ministry. What an experience. The organization is called Hookers for Jesus, and we called the outing SNL or Saturday Night Love. There are a couple different teams for the night. One is the Frontline team which is a group of strong loving women who have gotten out of prostitution and chose Salvation. What an honor to hear their stories. All have beautiful testimonies, and I am truly blessed to have met Tina, Annie and the rest of the girls. The other teams are the Prayer Team and the Body Guard. Now, they've never really needed body guards, but they have them to shoo away the drunk guys and stuff, and the prayer team just follows the frontline at a distance and just prays for the interactions ...
okay ADD, the frontline has these things called Love Bags, now these are full of lotion, hand soap, girl y things, and a pink bible, along with some devotional stuff and information on the church. They go out, hand these out and we as a Prayer team pray for the interactions. It was a pretty cool experience, and this was the first time I've ever seen the strip. The mind pictures of the prostitutes faces will never leave my head. After this we went back to the house and slept for the next day.
Day 4: Red Rock
This day was so chill! we got up at like 10 and went out to Red Rock park and climbed rocks ALL day! It was really fun, and this place is beautiful. We packed our lunches, and headed out to this beautiful mountain Vanessa Vann has helped plan this whole trip, and it has been a blessing hanging out and getting to know her throughout the week. What a blessing. After red rock, we went to the Dodd's house for dinner. Not only did they feed us an INCREDIBLE taco feast, but they are the people that head up the African Refugee Ministry and they told us all about what we were going to do for them for the rest of the week. It was such a chill day!
Day 5: Burma
We woke up and got ready for Cynthia to come over and tell us what was going on. When she was telling us we were going to the PLAYGROUND with kids, I got pretty excited, and that is honestly what we did for the whole afternoon. We went to one of the only apartment complexes in Vegas that agrees to house refugees to meet these families from Burma and Bhutan and then we were off to the playground. These children were beautiful. So so beautiful, and so were the older kids and adults. Everyone came, and it was one big party. Well, not really, but it was such a blessing to hang out with these kids at the play ground and play some soccer. Daw-reh and Too-rey were my two favorites (pictures will be up for sure when I get back). When we were done here we went back to the apartment. Now, Cynthia is an angel, and she takes care of these people. They don't even know how to speak English, so she meets with them on a weekly basis and goes through their mail so they can pay their bills ect, and this goes a whole lot easier when they children aren't there, so we were the child care. It was SO MUCH FUN! We played all different kinds of games. It's amazing how much you can do even with a language barrier.
Day 6: Borderless Beauty
What a day this was. We woke up and went on two prayer walks around the apartment complexes where they house the refugees. What a blessing it was to pray with Brooke Harris. She is a beauty of a person, and it was so great to pray with her for an hour. She has a heart of gold. After our prayer walk we went to the other apartment complex and played with the kids some more. Meet Too-Lay (I don't know how to spell it,
but thats how you say it). This kid is all smiles, I swear! I never saw him sad or anything! He was for sure my favorite during the week. Playing tag never got old to him, and I could just see Jesus through his eyes. There were so many other beautiful children we met on this day, and we had such a good time hanging out with them!
After hanging out with the children all afternoon, we set out for a night on the strip to get some dinner and dessert, and watch the show at the belagio! It was Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra!
It was a good song! And we ate at the...
It was good and stuff, then we went to this crazy place with a chocolate fountain thing in the belagio for some gelato! I have very berry and lemon mixed together, and I can honestly say that it brought me right back to Italy. So good! After this we walked around for a little bit and by then we were all tuckered out so we went back to the house to sleep. The next day is going to be great!Day 7: Back to School
Today we went back to elementary school for a morning! We were all split up into classes where we were going to help out the teacher for a little bit. Robin and I went to kindergarten and did some things with them and I got to read a few stories to them and help them out with puzzles, worksheets, ect. They were all beautiful kids, and I could just see how less stressed the teachers were because we were there. It was a blessing to be there. After we did our duties there, we went to a middle school to hear Vanessa Vann speak. It was a great talk about dreams, and how we can always accomplish our dreams. Vanessa is a graduate from Spring Arbor, and a former Peer Advisor and now she words for Rapport doing motivational speaking as part of her duties there. It was so great to hang out with her, and here her speak. She is full of encouragement and enthusiasm! After we were done at the middle school we went back to the apartment complex and met the families we were going to hang out with the next day, and played a ton of four square with the neighborhood kids. It was a blast, and I was so excited to spend the day with the family Vanessa choose for me, Robin and Steven! Here are some pics of this day
So great. So so great. After we were done, we went back to the house and had some BBQ chicken on the grill and hung out for the rest of the night.Day 8: Helpin' Out
This is one of the days I've been looking forward to. First of all, we got to sleep in then we went back out to those apartments and spent the whole day with our families! Ruth and Maria were the adults. Maria was too old to learn English so the extent of her English was "Yes, No, and Hi, my name is Maria," but one of the coolest things about this day is Steven Owlsey got a bible in Swahili and English and attempted to translate it to her. It was so cool to watch! But before, after, and a little during that I just scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed down their apartment, and killed so many cockroaches... This was a beautiful family. There was also two other girls in it, Twiz and Annie. I'm not sure how they were all related, but It was so great watching them. They played Swahili worship music the whole time and were dancing and singing to it. It was great! And we got to teach them how to make pizza!
Steven, Annie, Maria, Twiz, Ruth, MarcAfter we left there we went back to the house, ate some of our own pizza and debriefed the night (because that is what PA's do), and we went to this amazing place called YogurtLand which was oh so good. That's all. Non-Fat goodness.
Day 9: Headin' Home...At least we thought
We got up at the BUTT CRACK of dawn and went down to Arizona to see the GRAND CANYON! It was breathtaking, but we were there for a long time then we started our 38 hour drive home. At least we thought. A big snow storm started in Albuquerque and they shut down all of the interstates. So a hotel we went. It was cheap, but it was pretty nice! So we stayed there that night, and left at around 1o the next morning to finish our journey. We did go about 5 mph in Oklahoma for a couple hours, but we kept the journey going. (oh wait, this is a different day...)
Day 10: Travelin'
We traveled all day, and all night. That is all.
Day 11: DONE
Well, this day is today, and I am here finishing this blog and chilling with some friends. We got back at around 5, and I've just been visiting people and stuff and now I have to start on COM102 homework and stuff, but I'm going to hit the sheets tonight and worry about that tomorrow.
This trip gave me hope. Hope that if God can be present in sin city, that he can be present anywhere. It's not sin city to me anymore. It's now revolutionized city. God is completely present there.
Revival is happening. Lets pray for it to continue not for it to start. Praise the Lord.
Thanks for reading, dear friends.
-Marc
Monday, March 8, 2010
Will you marry me, Brooke Fraser? (but only if Britany says no)
If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy,
I can only conclude that I was not made for here
If the flesh that I fight is at best only light and momentary,
then of course I'll feel nude when to where I'm destined I'm compared
Speak to me in the light of the dawn
Mercy comes with the morning
I will sigh and with all creation groan as I wait for hope to come for me
Am I lost or just less found? On the straight or on the roundabout of the wrong way?
is this a soul that stirs in me, is it breaking free, wanting to come alive?
'Cos my comfort would prefer for me to be numb
An avoid the impending birth of who I was born to become
For we, we are not long here
Our time is but a breath, so we better breathe it
And I, I was made to live, I was made to love, I was made to know you
Hope is coming for me
Hope, He's coming
-C.S. Lewis
Music by Brooke Fraser
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHpuTGGRCbY
Hope is coming for us.
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