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