ILLUMINATE 2012
My goodness.
God
is
so
good!
Seriously. I don’t even know why I ever am surprised by how good He is! God’s our Father who loves us dearly, obviously He’s going to pour out his love in crazy amounts.
For those of you who don’t know…we had a conference for girls in grades 6-12 at my church this past weekend. It’s called ILLUMINATE and this year was our third year doing it.
A huge, huge part of my heart is to see teen girls find their identity in Christ and live out God’s purpose! My teenage years were crappy. Like a lot of people, I had no idea who I was. I had no meaning to my life. I partied because it’s what everyone else did. I gossiped. I hurt others. I hurt myself. I was a brat. I was selfish. I didn’t treat my body with respect. I felt empty on the inside. The list could go on and on and on.
I wish I had a youth leader who saw potential in me, who prayed for me, who encouraged me, who helped me discover that I had value, who told me I could make a difference, who told me there was a God in Heaven who LOVED me and had a plan for me….
I don’t blame anyone but myself for past mistakes but I’m going to do whatever it takes to prevent teens going through hurts that I had to go though. That’s why I’m so passionate about teen girls. It’s stupid hard in high school (and middle school).
So basically Illuminate is a 2-day conference packed with three main sessions (worship & speaking), breakout sessions (covering different topics), moG panel (getting guys perspectives on different questions!) & more.
We like to go all out and really dazzle these girls. Let me tell you about the ending… Our band busts out this amazing song they wrote (folk/pop goodness) and near the end, lights drop then BOOM 60 GIANT (3-foot wide) balloons fall from the ceiling. Pure goodness. Smiles all round.
We had almost 200 girls & leaders there. And man, did God ever move in their hearts. We had an AMAZING TEAM who served so faithfully and most importantly, so prayerfully. I’m honoured to serve under amazing leaders who place such a high value on prayer. God listens and answers prayer!! God moves because of prayer! The pre-service prayer times we had were powerful, powerful times where we could feel the Spirit heavily at work. I am so thankful for the guy leaders who spent the main sessions praying for the girls. How cool is that!?!
My favourite moment of the conference was during worship on the final session. The girls were singing Hillsong’s, The Stand. The worship team had stopped singing and the girls continued to sing. Listening to their beautiful voices surrendering their hearts to Jesus, just made my heart sparkle to the moon and back. God showed me His heart sparkling over them, I only caught the tiniest of glimpses and that was bigger than I could ever imagine. Ah, how the Father loves his daughters. What a blessing and a privilege to be a small part of what He’s doing. He is so good.
Here’s a crappy picture from my Blackberry… isn’t it oozing with loveliness!?
I’ll link to more when they’re up on our flickr…
talk to you soon!
s.s.♥.
COOKIES & CREAM CUPCAKES
These are pretty much the BEST CUPCAKES you will ever eat.
I had to seriously restrain myself from not eating the entire batch.
Let’s start from the top..
Crumbled Oreos on top of Cream Cheese Frosting… Some of you out there don’t like Cream Cheese Frosting..there is something seriously wrong with you.
Now onto the middle…
A basic vanilla cupcake with chopped up oreos inside. Heaps and heaps of oreos.
Oh by the way, did you know it’s Oreo’s 100th anniversary? Because of the big birthday, they made CAKE BATTER OREOS. Simply, amazing. (Side note..does anyone remember those amazing neon Oreos that came out when you were a kid? They defs need to bring those back.)
So instead of putting in regular Oreos, I used chopped up CAKE BATTER one. Delish.
Now the bottom. Usually the bottom of a cupcake ain’t too exciting. But this cupcake has some serious junk in it’s trunk…at the very bottom of each cupcake is half of an oreo. Crunchy, chocolatey goodness. Oh baby.
If you’re on a diet…I’m sorry, but you seriously have to make these.
Recipe at Annie’s Eats (she’s an incredible baker, I highly recommend checking out her blog!!)
enjoy the sunshine :)
xo,
s.s.♥.
NEW GROUNDS
Hello lovelies,
Just wanted to share something that God dropped on me this morning…
I was reading the beginning of John 11. Jesus found out how Lazarus was ill and waited two days before departing to see him. I love the way the Message put it, ‘Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, but oddly, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed on where he was for two more days.’ Ha, isn’t it funny how we sometimes look at God’s way as “odd”. Love it.
He told his disciples that Lazarus was asleep and he needed to wake him up. His disciples didn’t get it and…Then Jesus became explicit: “Lazarus died. And I am glad for your sakes that I wasn’t there. You’re about to be given new grounds for believing. Now let’s go to him.” John 11:14-15 MSG
YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE GIVEN NEW GROUNDS FOR BELIEVING jumped off the page right before my eyes. I sat there reading it over and over and over. This is a crazy week for me. We have our girls conference, ILLUMINATE starting on Friday. Many of us have been praying for it, for a long time! We know God is going to move in incredible ways in the girls’ lives. BUT sometimes things don’t always go the way planned…like last year and the flowers.. oh those dang flowers… let me remind you..
At the end of the conference last year we wanted to give the girls each a rose. We ordered the flowers online to save the costs. Well those stinking flowers got held up at the border and would not arrive in time. I found this out Saturday morning and was slightly, heavily, freaking out. Little did I know, God had it all covered. And in it all he was GIVING ME NEW GROUND FOR BELIEVING… I received a phone call a few hours later from my pastor. A local ministry was donated 66 dozen roses, they didn’t need them so they called my pastor to see if our girls conference wanted them. Yes, you heard right.. 66 DOZEN ROSES. God turned our measly attempt of 100 roses to 792. In that crisis, seeing God go ABOVE & BEYOND most definitely GAVE ME NEW GROUND FOR BELIEVING!
So be encouraged! Maybe you’re in the midst of a terrible situation or facing a difficult circumstance. Believe God. Allow the time spent waiting on Him to ready your heart to BELIEVE. Because who knows, YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE GIVEN NEW GROUNDS FOR BELIEVING just may be what He’s speaking to you…
Be sooo blessed,
s.s.♥.
CUTE
I’m pretty sure I’ve told you once or twice or a thousand times, how I love to paint my nails. I completely suck at it, but I love it. Probably the hardest part yet my most favourite part is picking out what colours to put on (One colour cannot grace an entire hand of mine!) Anyways.. saw this little video today and HAD to share…. ohhh being a girl is way too fun.. :)
Happy Sunday!
If you don’t go to a church in Vic…come to mine! Adore - 6:30pm, 1800 Quadra Street (tonight’s message- You can’t put a condom on your heart! ha, get there!!!)
xoxo,
s.s.♥.