All Stars

Okay, well I could go on and on about how my life is just "so busy" and that's why I haven't been posting, but what it comes down to is...I didn't post. These past three weeks have been crazy though. Owen, Dewey, and Daniel had their All Star Tournaments. I'm going to break it down into a little equation for you so you can truly appreciate how crazy this is. Dewey's tournament was in Marianna Fl (6 hours away) July 11-16. His team was eliminated early so he was only up there from the 10th-12th, but Daniels tournament was that same week but in Paxton Fl (7 1/2 hours away). Daniel's team stayed in a bit longer than Dewey's so they were up there from the 10th to the 15th. Then we had Owen's tournament, which was from the 18th-22nd. My mom drove ALL THE WAY back to our house on the 15th only to leave for Marianna again on the 17th (yeah she's the greatest). Owen's team got eliminated quickly also, but we decided to stay up there and just have a little vacation time. So we spent Monday and Tuesday enjoying the springs up there in the Panhandle. We went to De Leon Springs and Blue Springs (yes they have the same name as ours down here). Anyway the springs were awesome. The water was so refreshing and Blue Springs had a diving board that just made my day =D. I was flipping off that thing in just about every way that you could lol. We got home last night just after 10:30, unpacked the car, and then we spent the better part of today getting all of the stuff put away and getting the house back in shape. So that is what we have BEEN doing. This weekend my sister Keri my brother in-law Adam, and their 4 kids Elliott, Coleton, Emerald, and Lily-Kate are going to be here at our house visiting. And then next Friday I am leaving for Haiti. Then when I get back from Haiti I will have 2 weeks till my Dual-enrollment starts at DSC. I will also hopefully be getting onto a traveling baseball team somewhere in the middle of all that. So it is has and will be busy for me. I will be trying as hard as I can to post more frequently though. I have a couple of posts breweing in my mind so hopefully I will be able to get them up soon. Thanks for reading.

Mission X

Well this is a bit late to be doing this post.....ok it's REALLY late, but you know that old saying "Better late then never"? Well, I am a firm believer in that statement, so here it goes. I was only able to take part in 2 days of Mission X Daytona, but from the 2 days that I was there helping out I could see the Holy Spirit at work. The first day I was a part of was day 3 of the missions trip, and for the first part of the day Jed Smith and myself were talking to the other people involved with the missions trip about our experiences in sharing the gospel. We were basically just recounting stories of people we had encountered and giving "advice" to everyone on how to communicate with people who they are sharing the gospel with. I felt so unqualified to be chosen to do that, because before last month I had never really done any extensive evangelizing and when Jonathan and I were doing that I felt like Jonathan was far bolder than I was in talking to people and just responding to what he felt the Holy Spirit was calling him to do. I was very pleased to be able to talk to all of them though, because it really wasn't about me or what I did it was about what the Holy Spirit had done in me. So that day was quite enjoyable for me, and after the talking time and after everyone had gotten lunch, we got to work mowing the church's lawn, pulling weeds, and digging a ditch to re-route the water drainage behind the church. The working part of the day was definitely the hard part, because it was getting into the hottest part of the day and the sun was completely unforgiving. Thankfully we had many hands pitching in wherever help was needed and we were able to get everything we needed to get done, done. Just the fact that we had 20 something TEENAGERS out in the heat of the day working to help maintain the landscape of the church is a testimony to the work of the Holy Spirit working in their lives. I mean how many teens do you know that would give up a week of their Summer Vacation to go and work out in the sun, and talk to complete strangers about the gospel?

The second day that I was able to take part in was the last day of the trip. This was the "big day" of the missions trip. We had a free concert happening at the Badnshell, with Acrobat, Generation Letter, and Curtis Allen all performing. All three performances were AMAZING! Both Acrobat and Generation Letter put on great performances and Curtis' rap performance was great. Curtis walked through his entire testimony from the time he was 10 to 2009 and he shared about how the gospel had trnasformed his life. He did that while rapping! It was unbelievable! People were hearing the gopel preached through Curtis' gift of Rap. And while he was sharing and while Acrobat and Generation Letter were putting on their performances we were able to engage people in conversation and talk to them about the gospel. It was an amazing time to just see how th eHoly Spirit was moving and working in each person there. Another thing we were doing as part of the outreach was giving out free watermelon to anyone who wanted some. So we handed out free watermelon, talked to people about the gospel, and listened to three great artists put on three great shows. It was an amazing week for me and I was only able to be there for a small part of the missions trip. You can read a more detailed account of what all happened on the Mission X Daytona blog. Thanks for reading.

An Uncle Again!

I am an uncle again! My sister Keri gave birth to Lilyanne Kathryn Sereika around 7:45 tonight! She weighs 8 pounds 15 ounces (quite the porker lol) and she is 21 inches long! She is totally gorgeous and has tons of dark hair on her little head. I will get a picture up as soon as possible. Till then I am just going to be SUPER EXCITED!

Dreams

I recently started reading a book by Bruce Wilkinson called The Dream Giver. The book is all about dreams, how everyone has a "Big Dream", and why we should pursue our dreams. I personally have found the first 3/4 of this book AMAZING. My mom told me to read it, knowing that I have been having some struggles with how to pursue my dream. Now, I personally think my mom knows everything, but I think it was also a little bit of a Godsend because the timing of it was just too perfect. Anyway for those of you who don't know my "Big Dream" is to be a professional baseball player. I am fully aware of the "chances of making it", the "percentages", and the amount of people who do not end up making it to a career in professional sports (baseball in particular). But even with all of that I want to pursue my dream as far as God will let me. If that means just playing through high school or college then so be it. If I end up making it pro HALLELUJAH! The thing is, I want to pursue my dream. Now in my pursuit of my dream I have come upon road block upon roadblock and slow down upon slow down. I won't go into the details, but lets just say I was having some serious doubts about what I was doing and I was becoming more and more unbelieving about what God wanted me to do with my life. I went through about 5 months of this craziness, of not knowing what I was doing. Then, through the encouragement of a few friends and reading this book, God started to open doors for me to get back on the road to my dream. I didn't really understand why He was doing it when I was going through it, but now that I am out of it and I'm pursuing my dream at full force again I am realizing that he used that time of unsureness and confusion as a way to strengthen my relationship with Him, particularly in the area of trusting Him. I'm still not certain about how far God will have me pursue my dream, but no matter how far I get with it doesn't really matter, because what he is teaching me through my pursuit of my dream is far more valuable than making it to the professional level of baseball. If you have a dream you are pursuing, or were pursuing, or haven't yet started pursuing I would encourage you to read The Dream Giver. It will dramatically change the outlook you have on your dream and the way pursuit your dream.

Viewer Discretion Advised

Hey, here is a change; a baseball related blogpost! A couple games ago Dewey was playing a really intense game against one of the better teams in the league when disaster stuck! Dewey was playing Shortstop (for those of you who don't know, that is a position in the middle of the infield) when a throw came to him from the pitcher. He was getting ready to catch it when a player from the opposite team (who was on the bases) ran in front of him causing him to lose sight of the ball. Right as the kid ran passed him the ball came right through and slammed Dewey right in the face (WOOHOO!). Dewey, being the tough guy that he is, was ready just to shake it off and keep playing, but then he started spitting blood so the umpire called time so that they could take a closer look at his face. What they saw was pretty gruesome. After a little on-field examination we discovered that the ball had lodged Dewey's braces in his lip and they had to be forcibly removed (Dewey's coach did the honors on that one). When we got the braces out of the way we surveyed the damage.... It wasn't a pretty sight. Here are a couple of pictures to show you what I mean. After we got home and everything was winding down, Dewey came out of the bathroom and was like "Hey mom, I think I lost a tooth". Yes, he had lost a tooth we made the confirmation the next day when we looked at his dental records, thankfully it was a baby tooth. So, yeah, if you ever hear anyone saying baseball is a sissy sport, remember this post.

Cause Life's Too Short

Over this past week I have come to realize that life is too short, God it too good, and I do not have enough energy to live my life caring about what what people think of me. My very very good friend Jonathan Stemberger and I spent the week backpacking around Ormond Beach and Holly Hill, visiting friends, reaching out to people, and getting extremely strong shoulder muscles. As you all know it rained this week in a way that it has not rained since Noah and The Flood. Yes, Jonathan and I were walking in that. It was a cold, rainy, windy week of walking, but I would not trade the time we had for anything. Jonathan and I started our "Grand Adventure" on Monday morning when we walked to our good friend's the Baloa's house. That first day was probably the hardest for us, because we were pretty unprepared for what the weather was throwing at us. We got a lot of our stuff wet, even though I had a poncho and Jonathan had a couple garbage bags covering his stuff. We were completely soaked head to toe by the end of the day and when we arrived at the Baloas and we both got hot showers and got into dry clothes both Jonathan and I agreed that showers had never felt so good. The second day we had gotten just a little bit wiser and so when we walked to the Dunlop's house (which was only about 1/2 mile)we had all of our gear completely covered and protected. Since it was so close to the Baloa's house we dropped off our bags and just headed out to do some evangelizing. Our main thing with evangelizing was getting people to talk to us by using a survey on the "Impact of Religious Expression In A Free Society". I am writing a Sociology paper so my mom thought it would be a good idea to survey people on what they believe as a lead in to sharing the gospel. So the first thing we did on the second day was go to Office Depot to get our survey laminated, which paid off in a HUGE way because on the first day three of our copies had already been claimed by the rain. So after that we headed to the Ormond Library to survey people. We used the library as our central spot through the whole trip because it was really close to the middle of everywhere we were going. Talking to people at the library was a very fun experience for me, but it was very enlightening and eye-opening as well. As the title of this post reads: Life it too short. At the start of the surveying process I was very hesitant about talking to people, because of what they would think of me, I mean god forbid they think I am some kind of weird Christian guy right?!?!?!? It was totally absurd to be worried about something like that, but I was and thankfully God changed my heart by showing me that life is too short and he has done too much for me to be worried about what other people think of me. After I got over being a total idiot the talking to people and reaching out to people became so much easier, Jonathan and I even prayed for two complete strangers who were having some relationship issues, and it was just because Jonathan said "Hey, I think God wants us to pray for them" and he was right. It was totally amazing how God worked on my heart through this past week. The rest of the week we spent one night with the Smiths, the Urquharts, the Moores, and finally Jesse and Tiffany Jarvis. All of our host families were so gracious and welcoming. Every family we stayed with opened up their houses to us and made us feel like we were completely at home. Thank you all so much! I don't know how many of you will read this, but I just wanted to make mention of it anyway. God also used this week to really build Jonathan and my friendship. While we were walking in the cold, wet, windy weather we had a lot of time to talk and really just get to know each other better (maybe even a little more than we wanted to) lol. Seriously though, whether it was just walking along in the pouring rain singing songs and talking about how God is working in our lives or walking over the Grenada bridge screaming "GOD IS BIG! HE'S REALLY REALLY BIG!" at the top of our lungs God used this trip to make Joanthan and my relationship even stronger than when we had started. In closing I would just like to encourage any of you who read this unusually long post. Don't be afraid to talk to people and don't be ashamed of God. If you are trusting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior then you are carrying the news that the ENTIRE WORLD wants to hear! "JESUS LOVES THEM!" Even if they don't want to admit it, they do and that is another thing this trip has taught me; there are SO many people out there that are searching, looking, yearning, and dying to hear that they are loved and that they can have peace. So many people out there do not know the peace that you you know if you are trusting in Jesus as your savior. And let me tell you, just from what I saw in ONE WEEK of talking to people, it is a very uncertain and hopeless life if you are not trusting in Jesus. So please "Live the Commission", I am not saying go hiking all over your hometown talking to people, but wherever you go if you feel like there is ANY WAY you can reach out to some one DO IT! Ok, thank you for reading.

...And The Holy Spirit

Most of you (if not all) know what the Holy Trinity is: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. If you are a Christian than you know all about The Father (God) and The Son (Jesus Christ), but I think that there are a fair amount of Christians out there that do not know a lot about the third member of the Trinity...The Holy Spirit. I will tell you, that before last Saturday I did not know too much about the holy Spirit either. I knew that the it was part of the Trinity and that Jesus had sent it to Christians to be a "Helper", but other than that I did not know anything whatsoever about it's purpose or it's role in a Christian's life. That all changed last Saturday when I attended the Mission X Training Day at Metro Life Church in Orlando. The Training day was excellent, the teaching was amazing, the questions I had coming into it were all answered, and it was an awesome time of fellowship and worship. After the Training Day though, came Deluge (Metro's Youth Group meeting). Deluge was led by Jesse Phillips and his message was great, but it was what happened after the message that was the highlight for me. After the message was over and we were closing in worship Mr.Phillips came up and asked if anyone wanted to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. I went forward not really knowing what to expect, because I knew so little about the Holy Spirit and what it's purpose was. Thankfully Mr. Phillips separated the people who came forward into two groups-those who had already been baptized and wanted to be refreshed, and those who hadn't been baptized yet. While we were being prayed for Mr. Phillips all of the people who were being baptized for the first time to go to another room so that he could discuss it more in depth with us. So while we went into another room the rest of the people finished up the worship and concluded Deluge. When we got to the room we were a fairly small group of maybe 15 to 20 people (that includes the people who came to pray for those who were being baptized). Mr. Phillips started out by just giving us all a "rundown" of what being baptized with the Holy Spirit means and what will happen once we are. After that was done people began praying for all of us who had come forward to be baptized. What followed was by far the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. People were praying, singing, prophesying, speaking in tongues, crying, and laughing. There was such a strong presence of the Holy Spirit there that night that you would have to have been there to understand what I mean. I don't mean to sounds cliche in saying this, but the way I felt that night was so amazing I wanted it never to end. I was filled with so much faith that night, faith, that I had never experienced before and it was amazing to feel. We were in that room for about an hour and a half just feeling the holy Spirit move amongst us in ways that would make even the most hardened atheist believe there is a God. I can't describe it any better than that, any words I try to use just don't seem to do it justice. I will say that it was the most amazing experience of my life and I will NEVER forget it. If you want to have an unforgettable experience I suggest you try getting baptized with the Holy Spirit :). Thanks for reading.