The "Usual"

Well, over the last few weeks, it has been pretty crazy around here. I apologize for being a "sellout" to Facebook and not updating my blog, but it really has been crazy around here. So let me explain myself and then you all can decide whether or not you forgive me.

About a week or so after I got back from Haiti I was at the beach with a bunch of the kids from Metro and Daytona and we were all having a good ol' time =D. We were basically just hanging by the pool at the Lightfoot's condo, walking on the beach, doing a little swimming, and eating hot dogs and hamburgers. Sounds like a good time right? Yeah, it was! At least until Nolan and I decided to go do some body surfing (not my best sport). We were out riding the waves for about 20 minutes or so and I decided I was going to go get something to eat. I tell Nolan: " hey bro I am going to ride one last wave in and get something to eat".......famous last words. That one wave totally thrashed me and sent me to the bottom in a very awkward position making it so that I landed right on the back of my right shoulder. Right as I hit the bottom I heard a very unpleasant "pop" in my shoulder. I got up and knew immediately that I had done something bad. I started walking toward the condo and as I was I tried to move my arm and as I did I saw that my bone was not where it was supposed to be :/. Luckily I just lifted my arm and gave it a little push and it popped back in, but it did continue to hurt pretty bad and swell up a lot. Long and the short of it; we had to go to Gainsville to get it checked out, because it was my throwing shoulder and this type of injury can end people's career. When we went to the doctor's they told us that they were going to have to do an MRI to see what kind of surgery I would need. Notice I didn't say "if" I would need surgery. They basically told us that the chances of it dislocating and not needing surgery to repair it are small at best, and especially for a pitcher if I was ever going to throw again I would probably need surgery. The MRI wasn't till the next day so we went home and we let some people know about what they told us and asked as many people as we could to be praying for me. By the end of the week I had a small army of people praying for me. I had people in my church, the metro church, the Titusville church, the Gainsville church, my sister's in-law's church (in North Carolina), and so many others that I can't list. I had so many people praying for me and a lot of them did not even know me, it was really amazing to know that that many people care and were lifting me up in prayer. So, as it turns out I go for the MRI and it goes good, but we won't know till the following Tuesday if I need surgery. So over the whole weekend we continued to pray that I wouldn't need surgery. When we went back on Tuesday the doctor came in and said "Well, I am really surprised. His MRI looks great he has no cartilage or tendon damage. He isn't going to need surgery at all". When he told me that I was like "really?". I couldn't believe it. God had answered my prayers and the prayers of so many others, it was an amazing experience! They did tell me that I would need to go through some pretty extensive Physical Therapy before I could go back to playing, specifically throwing, but that was WAY better than having to have surgery and then Therapy =). So that is the firs thing that has been going on.

The second thing has not affected my schedule too much, but I do want to tell you all that my brother Keith and his wife Aimee are expecting!!!! This will be their first child and we are all really excited for them =).

The third thing, which is the saddest of all of these concerns my other older brother Barrett. Barrett left day before yesterday for Texas where he will be working for a company called Galco Steel. Jason Link, who used to go to our church, offered Barrett a job in Texas working for Galco. He is moving out there to be trained to do what Jason does, which is the selling of steel. So Barrett is out in Texas now =(. Yes, I am VERY sad. Barrett is not only my brother, but he is also my best friend, and one of the biggest reasons I am who I am today. He is a constant encouragement to me whenever I am mad or frustrated, he is a seemingly never ending supply of Godly wisdom on basically any subject or any circumstance, and he is also just one of the best people to hang out with and be around. So, that's it guys. That's what has been happening at the Nugent house =). Again, I apologize for being a sellout (Kaylee) hahaha. I will be trying to post again soon. Don't give up on me yet! =D

Haiti

Here it is people, the post you've all been waiting for =P. I spent 9 days in Haiti last week and let me say before I get into this post too far, I would STRONGLY encourage everyone I know to go on a missions trip to a country like Haiti, if the opportunity ever arose. That is not to say that other missions trips are any less important, not at all! But there is something about going to a foreign country (especially one as poor as Haiti) and seeing how the rest of the world lives that just changes your perspective on your own life completely. I know for me personally, seeing the extreme poverty that is everywhere in Haiti is something that I will remember for the rest of my life. Haiti is not without hope though, quite to the contrary the people that we had the privilege to work with and serve with were some of the most hope-filled and joy-filled people I have EVER met. That in itself is a testimony to God's spirit at work in Haiti. That is another thing that God was challenging me with throughout the trip. See, when I thought of Haiti I thought that for some reason God's presence was not there as much as it was in the U.S. or in other places of the world. I saw Haiti as "God-forsaken", and God made quick work of showing me how wrong I was. The people and the children at the Boys and Girls home that we were working at had such a passion for worshiping and praising God. The one Sunday that we were there three of the men from our team (Jesse Philips, Derek Walley, and my dad) had the opportunity to preach at 3 different churches. We split up the rest of the team in three and sent some team members with each speaker. I ended up going to the boys and girls home for their Sunday service and Derek Walley was the speaker there. Before Derek gave his sermon though they had a time of worship by singing praise to our God. That time of praise and worship is something I will never forget. They sang half the songs in French and half of them in English, so there was a time when we (as stupid little Americans) had no idea what they were singing, but they just sang and sang and sang. They didn't know all the verses to all the songs in English so they just repeated one verse and the chorus over and over, it seemed like they could go on singing non-stop for the whole day.The joy and the thankfulness that they had in the way they sang was just unbelievable and it really challenged me to be more passionate in my own worship.


As far as the work that was done, here it goes. We mixed and poured 45 TONS of concrete over the course of 4 days. All by His grace let me tell you, God was so gracious to us in keeping us all free from injury and giving us excellent weather to work in. We also had one heck of a construction team working on this wall. We had 14 guys "officially" on the construction team, but the childrens ministry team ( made up of all girls) were made honorary members of the construction team after the first day. The childrens ministry team spent the first half of the day at the babies home and then the second half of the day came to help the construction team. They didn't do any mixing (except one batch =DDDDD) but they performed and invaluable task of filling buckets with rock and dirt so that we could keep mixing as fast as we possibly could. So you can fully appreciate how this all worked let me tell you how the mixing and pouring process went. First, there was 3 teams on our construction team: bucket fillers, mixers (WOLF PACK), and the pouring crew. This is how it went. The bucket fillers filled 12 buckets with rock and dirt then sent them to the mixers. The mixers poured out the buckets into a pile, then dumped a bag of concrete onto it. Then, they added water and mixed the pile with shovels till it was ready to be put into buckets and then lifted up to the pouring crew that was standing on the scaffolding. The pouring crew grabbed the buckets from the mixers and dumped the freshly mixed concrete into the wall. So yeah, that's what the construction team did in Haiti. I can't tell you anything about the medical crew, other than the fact that they also worked their butts off down there. They saw over 800 people over the course of 4 days. God was so good and so gracious to all of us through the whole trip. He is worthy of all praise and all glory. Thanks for reading.

Haiti

Well, as most of you know, I am leaving for Haiti tomorrow night (very late). So this will be my last post till I get home. Please be in prayer for this trip. I am SUPER excited about what God is going to do in us and through us on this trip so please be praying. Pray for everyone's safety, pray for good weather, pray for everyone's health, and most of all pray that the gospel will be proclaimed and God will be glorified. I will try and post as soon as possible when I get back, but until then you all will have to try and survive without regular posts from my blog. I know that is going to be super hard for some of you, but I have confidence in you guys and I will be praying for you. ......Ok that was a joke *Laugh Out Loud* lol. Talk to you all later =D.

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.