25 May 2008

YC Alberta 2008 - Passion: recap of Friday night

Composed of speakers, concerts, seventeen thousand youth from across Canada, Rexall Place, the wave, tears, very large sandwiches, sore necks from rocking out during concerts, losing your voice, losing your hearing, and above all discovering that our God really IS an awesome God.

Friday, May 23
8:00 pm - YC Alberta kicks off. Dark stadium full of wired youth, and a video to start us off. The theme this year was passion - renewing our passion for sharing Christ and recommitting our lives to God.

Next was the start of our first General Session, which is all 17000 youth in the stadium, and worship led by Tim Hughes, who came all the way from London, England. He's pretty prolific, and has won awards for what (to quote my YC booklet) is 'arguably the biggest modern worship album ever, Here I Am To Worship'. In my personal opinion, he's very good at what he does, and he picked some perfect songs. You can't really have complicated stuff when you have to lead 17000 people in singing.

The speaker for Friday evening was John Bevere. I don't have all of his message in my notes, particularly the end, which was much more reflective than it was intellectual. From what I do have, his basic message was that friendship with God is reserved for those who fear Him. This statement struck me as incongruous, at first, but he did go into it more in-depth. To fear God does not mean to be scared of God. While He loves us with an everlasting love, He is - as one of the later speakers put it, I think - both King and Daddy. To fear God is to regard Him as holy and to hold Him in very high reverence. God will not allow His presence to be felt in a place where He is not highly venerated. The two men in the Old Testament regarded as friends of God were Abraham and Moses. God shared His secrets with them. But they were friends of God not only because God drew near to them, but because they drew near to God. God doesn't force us to draw near, but however close you are to Him, He'll be that close to you. We determine how close we are. Our goal as Christians should be to be friends of God.

10:00 pm - Skillet concert. For anyone who's not familiar with Skillet, they're compared in my booklet to Led Zeppelin. They've been around for a while, and they also are very good at what they do. I stayed for about the first three songs of this concert - I'd never been to a rock concert that big before (actually, I think this weekend included my first three actual concerts ever) and I couldn't handle the volume level or the crazy rate at which the lights were going. Deaf and blind, I tell you. I think that if they hadn't burst in with Skillet the first night and done maybe Hawk Nelson or Newsboys instead, I might have been able to ease into it, but it was a bit of a sensory overload. The sound in Rexall is also a bit fuzzy - I mean, it's a hockey arena. Not exactly built with excellent acoustics. Anyway, the many fans of Skillet enjoyed their appearance very much, and I wandered around outside until the concert was done.

11:00, evening conclusion. Slept like a rock Friday night. I am an introvert, yes. I adjusted better the next day.

(I was hoping to do this all in one post but it doesn't look like happening. Hopefully I have Saturday and Sunday up soon)

22 May 2008

Please pray

Link

To paraphrase, the youngest daughter of Steven Curtis Chapman, who is a Christian singer/songwriter and Grammy-winning artist, was killed in a car accident on Wednesday. She was five years old. Please keep them in your prayers.

Clicky the egg, please!

Adopt one today!

21 May 2008

I didn't know that piano could make you hungry?

Well, it can, because I just spent 65 minutes on the piano and I'm going back to do another 30 as soon as I recover, and while I did eat breakfast I'm definitely ravenously hungry. Maybe moving your fingers is better exercise than I thought. Which reminds me of what's really a horrible quote:

[Me practicing while siblings are playing a very loud game with a ball directly behind me]
Me: Guys, can you PLEASE be quiet?! I'm trying to concentrate!
Brother: *blinks* How do you need to concentrate? You're just moving your fingers?

Yes, I did piano for ten years to learn how to move my fingers. Right.

To-Dos for today include tossing some stuff in a backpack cause I get to visit my grandparents today and tomorrow (YAY), catching up on math, and then finishing the various graphics I've agreed to do, including awards for a recent contest (four more to go), a Jars of Clay banner, and a banner from the first scene of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I have these weird spurts where I like to make graphics, so I figure I might as well go with it.

This is a week of season finales, incidentally. House and Bones were both on Monday, the two-hour finale of NCIS was last night (though I haven't watched it yet) and American Idol is ending this evening, THANK GOODNESS. It is a little depressing, though, how there won't be anything interesting to watch over the summer.

While I'm at it, a couple interesting links for anyone who happens to be reading and has some spare time on their hands:

Don't Panic, a superbly well done fanfic about a modern-day young woman who gets dropped into Middle-Earth, except instead of instantly falling madly in love with Aragorn, dueling Sauron and becoming the worst Mary-Sue to ever walk the earth, she finds that medieval life isn't all it's cracked up to be, and has to learn Sindarin in order to communicate with anyone. It's really good, trust me, and it has a sequel called "Okay, NOW Panic!"

Weird Canadian Place Names. I found this because Jamie and I were discussing it, and there are some really odd ones in there - the best being Ochiichagwebabigoining in Ontario. I kid you not.

As an afterthought, I'm considering switching my blog over to somewhere else; I'm finding Blogger a bit boring. Any suggestions?

Weather: Rainy.

Melda

19 May 2008

Here I am again

...posting because several people asked me what was up with the not-posting-ish-ness of late. Sorry, I can't use the excuse that life's been hectic, because it hasn't, since the Nakamun quiz meet. Things have actually been pretty uneventful.

A few recent pieces of news...

Well, Nakamun, like I said. Stats-wise, it was disappointing, especially since I'd been hoping for Internationals a little bit and didn't make it. It was a lot of fun, even if I didn't quiz that well. And what made it all better was that I won a $2000 scholarship to Ambrose University College in Calgary. That thrilled me right out of my socks. (I wasn't wearing any at the time, but that's beside the point.)

After Nakamun life slowed down a LOT, with no more quizzing to worry about. I wouldn't have minded continuing to study, but I do like not having as much on my plate. Oh, and pre-Nakamun, I had a very interesting little escapade with my laptop. Basically, it died. I was getting error messages telling me to restart constantly, and yes, I was pretty much completely freaked out. So my uncle was kinda helping me to troubleshoot over the weekend before Nakamun, but nothing worked, and we eventually decided that it wasn't going to. So that was really, really depressing. But since I have awesome parents, the Sunday we got back from Nakamun my little sister goes "AMY! Mom bought you a new laptop!"

...so things really did work out okay. I'm not sure quite how to thank my parents.

Otherwise, this past Friday we went to see Prince Caspian, and I loved it. Every minute of it. They did such a good job, and it was at least as good as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, if not better. And boy, if I crushed on celebrities...Ben Barnes...luckily, I do crush on fictional characters. Caspian was pretty amazing. All the Telmarines, Caspian included, had these COOL sorta Italian-ish accents, and the political intrigue with them added a lot more depth to the story, I thought. There was some tension between Peter and Caspian, which was a masterful addition. Edmund was also phenomenal in this one - he's now my favorite Pevensie. VERY good movie. Everybody go see it right now.

I think that's probably all that's worth reporting. Going to YC next weekend, which should be exhausting/fun, depending. I think YC stands for Youth Conference, which seems like a bit of a misnomer to me - basically, there are a lot of speakers and Christian bands and stuff, and a ridiculous number of youth hang around in the same building. I'm told it's a lot of fun.

I haven't been really making graphics lately, but when I've done some new ones I'll post them. I do have a couple avvies, here and here. I got a new set of icon brushes and I wanted to try them out, mostly :) I also plan to do more writing over the summer than I have been, so maybe stay tuned for random drabble and short stories, too.

...and I'm done.

Melda

"Note that half a deer is not considered part of the population." - Amy's Math Book