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Event Review: The Gracies Film Festival

Last weekend our Student ministries team created a new event in order to allow our 30+ discipleship groups to grow closer together.  This new event tried to tap into the "Youtube" generation of students who are constantly shooting videos and uploading them online.  So, on Friday the groups met at the Church and received their packets describing the type of movie that they were to shoot.   We gave them the theme "Friendship" as well as a few ways to score bonus points if they are able to capture certain props, people or locations in their film.  The groups then left and spent the night together writing, filming, editing and burning their videos to be submitted by 1:30 on Saturday afternoon.  Our team then feverishly worked to judge these videos and put on an award show that same evening called the "Gracies" that would rival the Grammy's, Emmy's, Tony's, VMA's, Dove Awards...

This was a great event that we are excited to improve upon for next year. Our leaders did an excellent job keeping the main thing, the main thing (which was that this event's purpose is to allow groups to grow closer together).  Our students are extremely creative and our student ministries team is excellent at working together and creating environments that bring about lifelong memories.  It was a lot of work but it all seemed worth it. 

You can view some of the Senior High submitted videos below:

You can read one of our leader's reaction to the "Gracies" here

"Stop It"

I got this a while ago from Pastor Clark Crebar who is currently heading up our care and counseling.  I think that it would be a time effective approach to helping people with their problems.  I should add that this is not the approach our Church uses!

A quick update...

I realize that I haven't blogged in a while and I really can't write a lot now as I have a few things going on.  So here's an update:

• Last week I took some vacation and with the help of a few handy friends we got the floors done!  I think my body has finally recovered from the process.  The floors were all consuming for a few days.  So much to the point that I really felt like I was on vacation in that I had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world.  They look good and the boss is happy.  That's all that matters.
• In the process of putting in the floors, I broke this streak.  However, I can say that I now am drinking caffeine in moderation!
• My mom is in town and she is helping Greta prepare for the baby and helping me repair, refinish and install all the baseboards around the hardwood floors.  (then I will have complete closure on this project!)
• I'm dissapointed in this years Black Friday ads.  I might be staying bed this year for the first time since I can remember.
• We are smack in the middle of a new event that our student ministries team created called "Gracies Film Festival".  The Gracies is an event geared to help our small groups grow closer together by writing, editing and shooting a film overnight.  They will then submit and arrive to the Church for a Formal award ceremony (tonight).  So far it is going well, but it will all come to fruition tonight.  I will post later how it goes.

Guess Who's Nesting?

I'm about to take on the biggest home remodeling job of my life.  This weekend I will be (with the help of some friends) putting in prefinished hardwood floors on our main level (our living room, kitchen and main hallway.  We have some stairs to do, but we are going to hire that out.  I'm a woos.

The hardwood is stacked in our home climatizing to our home.  I have started the job by tearing out the linoleum and plywood in the kitchen and will do more prep on Thursday to be ready to staple the boards on Friday, Saturday, Sunday (and maybe Monday).  Yikes!  One of my biggest prayers is that I ordered enough wood to get the job done, that I will get the job done and that the floors will look better afterwards!