Thoughts on The Big Ticket Festival and life in general
I spent the past week up in Michigan again. I just left two weeks ago, but it was so nice to be back. I have enjoyed my time home so far, but it has been lonely. I do live in a house with 5 other people, but it’s definitely much different than living with a friend. I went to school in Michigan for 5 years, and three of those years the only thing that was keeping me really tied to the place that I grew up was the fact that my family was still living there. I spent 99.9% of my time up in Mt. Pleasant, living life practically independent of my family. I did miss them while I was gone though. Anyways… now that I’ve moved back, I don’t really have anything/anyone to rely on back here. I haven’t kept in touch with a lot of my high school crowd, and those who I have talked to on occasion have scattered throughout the state/country. I’ve been to church here several times. I really like Christ Community Church (the church that I decided to attend while being home), but it seems so hard to get connected. I know it’s not really too much of an excuse. I did sign up immediately to receive more information about serving in children’s ministry. I also checked the boxes saying that I would like more information about the community groups (so I can join a small group) and the service oriented groups (so I can also become involved in serving within the community). I did receive a welcome e-mail from the connections assistant saying that she was glad I was interested, and that she had passed on my information to the three people in charge of the three areas I am interested in. She said that they should be contacting me very soon if they hadn’t already. This was over a week ago. I know that people are busy, but I am so desperate to become connected to a group of Christians in the area. With none of my family being Christians, I feel very isolated and unsupported. Perhaps this is God’s way of telling me that I need to lean more on him than ever before. Maybe I’ve been getting too attached to the body and less to the soul of Christianity. It’s so confusing though, because it says several times in the Bible that we are to be in the Body of Christ (the church) and that each person is an independent part of the body, but that it cannot function properly if it is not connected to the other parts of the body (Romans 12:4-8 ; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31). Perhaps it just takes time. It is hard to fill what I had at MPCC. I really felt like I had a family there.
So anyways… I left last Wednesday to go up to visit Elyse and her precious kitties. It was so good to be able to just sit and relax with Elyse, like old times. Her kittens are precious. I completely understand why she was unable to give any of them up (She and Matt fostered 5 kittens from the age of 2 weeks, they are now about 16 weeks) Every single one of them is adorable. We sat and talked, and just watched some TV. I drove up to Mt. Pleasant after that, and stayed with Chelsea in my old room for the night. It was kind of weird to be in my old apartment without any of my stuff being there. We ran some errands, watched One Tree Hill, and then headed off to Gaylord, where the festival was taking place. We chose to go up a day early so that we could get everything all set up in our campground before the festival (we chose to camp to save some $$). It was overall a wonderful time. We met both sets of camping neighbors, both up for the festival also. We had a very difficult time getting a fire going, and after multiple attempts, and some invaluable help from both sets of neighbors, we got one started. (it went out 3x prior to it being ready to cook over). The ground was hard and the nights were more chilly than we expected, but we made decent campers. Of course there were showers available so we didn’t stink, but other than that, we were really roughin’ it… lol.
The concerts started on Friday morning at 11, and we were there. The first day was absolutely packed full of artists that both Chelsea and I really liked. We were very excited to see, Tree 63, Building 429, Chris Tomlin, and the Newsboys. With the Newsboys, we both experienced some injury because of the huge crowd, but it was worth it for the pictures that we got. We also were more excited about Paul Colman being in the Newsboys than we were about the Newsboys music, but we really enjoyed that part too. We also were able to see Family Force 5, Superchic, Aaron Shust, Kutless, and Sevenglory on Friday.
As we were walking out of the festival, they were handing out shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child, so we both took one and went to Super Walmart in order to fill it for the next day. By the time we got back to the campground, we both were completely exhausted and could barely stand.
We woke up early so that we could catch the early ‘coffee house’ part of the fest that started at 9. The day was more laid back, as there were less bands that we really wanted to see. We enjoyed hanging out near the back in the grass and just listening. We did make it a point to see Michael Gungor (who lead worship the night before). He was great and made us sad that we had opted to go home before that event last night. We also saw Shawn McDonald, Decyfer Down, Disciple, Sanctus Real, Thousand Foot Krutch, AG Silver, Skillet, Barlow Girl, and Jeremy Camp. I really enjoyed seeing Jeremy Camp… he was wonderful. We ended up staying for the worship that night, and I’m so glad that we did. It tops the charts of one of the best worship experiences I’ve ever had.
Overall, the festival was a great experience. I really felt revived and reenergized spiritually afterwards. The lead guy of Building 429 was talking about his son and some of the stuff that went on in his house, and I was thinking, how cool would it be to have your Dad be the lead singer in a Christian rock group… but then I thought about how we have an even better deal than that. We have a heavenly father who not only is the king of Rock, but the king of the world (and no, I’m not talking about Leonardo DiCaprio). God not only knows how many hairs are on our head, but he thinks of us more in one day than we can possibly think of anything in a 1,000 lifetimes. That’s pretty cool if you ask me.
Well, that’s what’s been keeping me busy the last week. I’ve had a couple job interviews today… one went pretty well, and I have really nothing to judge how the other one went. Neither of them was for a teaching position, just for something to keep me busy and get me an income until I can get myself a teaching position. I’ve got another 9 days in Batavia, then I head back up to Michigan to be a volunteer camp counselor at Camp Brethren Heights for a week. My old campus pastor is the dean of the camp that week, and Chelsea and I are the two female counselors that are going to be working. There will be a male counselor, as well as several other positions, but I don’t know who is filling them. It’s going to be a Christian Camp for 8th and 9th graders, so it’s going to be challenging, but I am very excited about it.
Well, I’m exhausted. I think I’ll do a bit more reading, then I’m off to bed.
So anyways… I left last Wednesday to go up to visit Elyse and her precious kitties. It was so good to be able to just sit and relax with Elyse, like old times. Her kittens are precious. I completely understand why she was unable to give any of them up (She and Matt fostered 5 kittens from the age of 2 weeks, they are now about 16 weeks) Every single one of them is adorable. We sat and talked, and just watched some TV. I drove up to Mt. Pleasant after that, and stayed with Chelsea in my old room for the night. It was kind of weird to be in my old apartment without any of my stuff being there. We ran some errands, watched One Tree Hill, and then headed off to Gaylord, where the festival was taking place. We chose to go up a day early so that we could get everything all set up in our campground before the festival (we chose to camp to save some $$). It was overall a wonderful time. We met both sets of camping neighbors, both up for the festival also. We had a very difficult time getting a fire going, and after multiple attempts, and some invaluable help from both sets of neighbors, we got one started. (it went out 3x prior to it being ready to cook over). The ground was hard and the nights were more chilly than we expected, but we made decent campers. Of course there were showers available so we didn’t stink, but other than that, we were really roughin’ it… lol.
The concerts started on Friday morning at 11, and we were there. The first day was absolutely packed full of artists that both Chelsea and I really liked. We were very excited to see, Tree 63, Building 429, Chris Tomlin, and the Newsboys. With the Newsboys, we both experienced some injury because of the huge crowd, but it was worth it for the pictures that we got. We also were more excited about Paul Colman being in the Newsboys than we were about the Newsboys music, but we really enjoyed that part too. We also were able to see Family Force 5, Superchic, Aaron Shust, Kutless, and Sevenglory on Friday.
As we were walking out of the festival, they were handing out shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child, so we both took one and went to Super Walmart in order to fill it for the next day. By the time we got back to the campground, we both were completely exhausted and could barely stand.
We woke up early so that we could catch the early ‘coffee house’ part of the fest that started at 9. The day was more laid back, as there were less bands that we really wanted to see. We enjoyed hanging out near the back in the grass and just listening. We did make it a point to see Michael Gungor (who lead worship the night before). He was great and made us sad that we had opted to go home before that event last night. We also saw Shawn McDonald, Decyfer Down, Disciple, Sanctus Real, Thousand Foot Krutch, AG Silver, Skillet, Barlow Girl, and Jeremy Camp. I really enjoyed seeing Jeremy Camp… he was wonderful. We ended up staying for the worship that night, and I’m so glad that we did. It tops the charts of one of the best worship experiences I’ve ever had.
Overall, the festival was a great experience. I really felt revived and reenergized spiritually afterwards. The lead guy of Building 429 was talking about his son and some of the stuff that went on in his house, and I was thinking, how cool would it be to have your Dad be the lead singer in a Christian rock group… but then I thought about how we have an even better deal than that. We have a heavenly father who not only is the king of Rock, but the king of the world (and no, I’m not talking about Leonardo DiCaprio). God not only knows how many hairs are on our head, but he thinks of us more in one day than we can possibly think of anything in a 1,000 lifetimes. That’s pretty cool if you ask me.
Well, that’s what’s been keeping me busy the last week. I’ve had a couple job interviews today… one went pretty well, and I have really nothing to judge how the other one went. Neither of them was for a teaching position, just for something to keep me busy and get me an income until I can get myself a teaching position. I’ve got another 9 days in Batavia, then I head back up to Michigan to be a volunteer camp counselor at Camp Brethren Heights for a week. My old campus pastor is the dean of the camp that week, and Chelsea and I are the two female counselors that are going to be working. There will be a male counselor, as well as several other positions, but I don’t know who is filling them. It’s going to be a Christian Camp for 8th and 9th graders, so it’s going to be challenging, but I am very excited about it.
Well, I’m exhausted. I think I’ll do a bit more reading, then I’m off to bed.