From The Orange State

Well Folks, say your farewells to yours truly because summer is coming to Fresno. It's supposed to be a balmy 99 degrees today so that's about 36 real degrees and it's not supposed to be any less than 34 degrees for about the next 10 days. Last year there was about two weeks of sustained 43 degree heat... basically at 3:00 in the morning it is still about 37 degrees outside. I'm doing fine with the heat so far but it is unreal how much water you have to drink in order to function like a normal person out there! Yesterday I drank about 3 litres of water about 2 hours before going to bed and I woke up and barely had to pee at all. It's rediculous. Oh and our air conditioning is broken currently so basically I have a shower and go to bed wet with my fan on so that I can fall asleep. Good times in Fresno California.
I'm going to give a little relational wisdom so the wise should probably stop reading now: When you first start dating a girl don't move away for three months unless you can, or are willing to learn how to communicate well. Communicating well can seem like a chore sometimes... you know keeping up all those highschool contacts, trying to stay on top of what everyone is doing with their lives, trying to encourage everyone (facebook only adds to this load because it brings sooo many people back into your life. You now have contact with them and therefore there's a certain amount of expectation to maintain that contact). Brittany makes communication exciting. I know that I have very few ways to be involved in her life from here but if she can come home and be encouraged and smile because of something I have written for her it makes it all worth while.
So I "preached" on thursday night to about thirty highschool kids. It was awesome, I loved it. I got to tell them about Joshua and how he radically obeyed God's commands and how God gave him success in everything he did because of it. Bible school definitely came in handy when preparing for that (thank you Ken Esau). I think that I was able to hold their attention simply with the story of Joshua and it's lessons. I hope that those who did pay attention saw that the Bible is exciting and very applicable. Next week I'm "preaching" on Josiah and his reforms. I'm really looking forward to it. I love the Old Testament, there are so many awesome stories in it.
So Fred and his family are gone now so I basically have their house to myself for the rest of June. I'm responsible to mow their lawn and keep everything watered etc. It's a pretty big task because their yard is beautiful and therefore if it isn't when they get back it's basically my fault... luckily they have automated sprinklers that pretty much water everything for me.
Oh if anyone wants to make a donation i'm still collecting for my "bring Brittany to California" fund. Every little bit counts :)
I've been doing a lot more reading lately which is soo good. I don't think that I've read anything but my bible and text books for the last two years. I forgot how much I love to read. I've got a couple of books on leadership that I'm plugging through for my internship and they are really cool so far. Very inspiring. Inspiring... kind of like perspiring which is definitely what I'm doing right now as I write. Must be time to go jump in the pool.
I love you all. (maise, this was just for you :) happy birthday little sister) (oh and happy birthday to Kira too!)

Stewie

From Fresno With Love

Well it has definitely been too long. Apologies to you my friends. So Pentecost came and went last sunday and it was awesome. I don't think that I've ever fully read or studied the 14th chapter of I Corinthians but it was certainly exciting to do so. It is the chapter about the gifts of tongues and prophecy and their use to build up the believer and the church. If you've never read it I encourage you to... and then I'd encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to give you those gifts. They are so cool and soo helpful in the church body. Come Holy Spirit inspire your children to seek after the gifts that you promised to give them.
Well God is good. God has been providing for me in every way while I've been in California. I have a place to stay, I have more than enough food to eat, I have gas in my car, I have new friends here, I even had someone pay almost $400 to fix my car after it developed some issues on the way down! Praise the Lord for he is my provider.
So apparently sports are a pretty big deal here in the USA. I went to Roxanna's graduation ceremony with the Leonards yesterday and it was enormous. It was held in a perfectly manicured, weedless, highschool football stadium and then moved over to the perfectly manicured, weedless, highschool baseball diamond for picture taking time!!! These are common sights in and around the Clovis area. They take their sports very seriously. If you are going to be on the Varsity team for any sport you are pretty much guaranteed that you'll be practicing all summer long five days a week!!! Isn't that insane? It's like everyone worships different sports gods and they basically sacrifice their adolescent lives to them. If you don't play any sport then you're kind of an outcast. Some of the guys in our youth group played on the highschool basketball team that won the Southern California State basketball tournament and they got gem studded rings the likes of which I've never seen before in my life! The Ring is so big it can have their full name written on it readibly!!! It is honestly rediculous and slightly laughable but it makes more sense why they clean up in the olympics now.
Tonight at youth group one of the guys who come early to skateboard dislocated his knee (kinda Ashleigh Hau style but worse), broke his patella, seperated one of the tendons in his knee and fractured the top of either his tibia or fibia. It was crazy and I was the first one their on the scene. At first he was screaming and then he calmed right down (I think his body was in total shock although he didn't look or sound like it) until the abulance showed up and then he started lookin in pretty rough shape. Basically it was one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen. where his knee cap was supposed to be was concave and there were some seriously out of place projections all over the place. The funniest thing was that he had a red pen in the pocket of the same leg that the knee was messed up and it had let red ink all over the place so it totally looked like it was a compound fracture even though it wasn't. What are the chances of that eh? Hopefully we'll get to go visit him soon and pray for him.
One of the things coming up that we're doing is a missions trip to Utah from July 2-14 where we're gonna partner with three Mountain View Church plants there to run vacation Bible schools for a couple of weeks. We'll be presenting ourselves to be used by God to reach mormon people in the Mormon capital of the world. If any of you are interested in hearing more about this or have a desire to pray for us while we're there or want to support us financially as we go, let me know with an email and I will hook you up with an email giving you a bit more information on how you can effectively take part in this mission.
I can't explain to you my excitement about the growth I've experienced in my prayer life while I've been here. This week even, I got to take a course on prayer led by Esther Leonard (who is amazing by the way). I never knew there was so much the Bible had to say on the topic of prayer. It was so good. I am going to hopefully become a prayer usher at church but you have to fill out a fairly extensive interview form before you are allowed to. One of the best things that we talked about and I was reminded of our highschool days, was prayers of Blessing. Next time you have some free time allow the Holy Spirit to give you words of blessing and encouragement for a specific person. Then go and give that blessing to them in the most sincere and heartfelt way that you can muster and see if you are both not encouraged by it.
Wow I've ranted long enough. Side note: Ray Harms-Wiebe has been staying in the room next to mine for the week... he's a very cool man and also Brittany's uncle! Random enough?

much love,

Stewie... thanks mr. kiers