Day 6 (5-17-11)

This morning we started our devotion with a prayer called centering prayer. This is a prayer type where you're completely still and silent focusing on only God. To say the least it didn't go well for me, maybe because "quiet" is something that scares me being an extrovert. I hope that I can learn more about this prayer type and learn to quiet my mind and focus on God. After devotion we learned about our Jobs together, about finances, vehicles, and youth group dynamics. We've started doing our separate testimonies at lunch and dinner and today we heard John's and Stephen's (site leaders for Tuskegee and Livingston respectively). After lunch we learned more about poverty in Alabama and just in generally which was interesting to see different dynamics of social classes. The group discussions so far have all been very cool to see where different members of our groups specialties and interests and educations play out. I also got some free guitar lessons from John which was exciting! At night we went back into discussing our "Big" night of the week which is focusing on the Knock part of our theme verse we thought of a lot of cool ways to convey the idea behind Knocking which I'll be able to write about in more detail when it's all figured out. So far it's really really cool to see how the theme is going to play out. I'm looking forward to the week ahead and receiving more and more training so I can get to Livingston and be able to jump right in.
Something I sort of had a small epiphany about tonight was what the word "Staff" means. Technically I am an ARM summer Staff member. But what is a staff? A staff was a stick a shepherd used to herd his sheep and Jesus is our shepherd, a staff was what Moses used to part the red see, a staff is a tool, an instrument to do God's work. This summer I want God to use me as his "Staff" in the true sense of the word, to do his work, this is my prayer tonight for my summer, as well as the rest of the Livingston and Tuskegee staff.


Sometimes by David Crowder