#P4C12 Part 1

This past week I had the great privilege of being able to go to the Passion 4 Christ conference in Perrysville Ohio. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to go or not because of funds but God wanted me to go so He provided. :)
     
    Let me tell you... it was... beyond incredible. Exactly what I needed. Even now I don't know how to put into words what I experienced while I was there. All I can say is that I believe I have never ever experienced Christ in the way that I did while I was there. He used every aspect of the conference to reach into the deepest corners of my heart. There are a few moments that stuck out to me in particular. 

    I had no idea that so many of my friends would be there which turned into a nice surprise. I remember getting to know people even better than I knew them before and completely opened up my heart to them and they did the same. We had sweet fellowship with each other and many times simply sat and excitedly told each other what Christ had been revealing to us or expressed our desire to understand hard questions that we had been struggling with. I was inspired by these people because I could see that they wanted Christ to be the forefront of their lives. It was so encouraging to be with these like-minded people for several days gleaning from their experiences and sharing and encouraging them as well. 

   Worship. Ohhhhh how I look at the word completely different now! In one session we defined what worship exactly and instead of making this post longer than it already is I'm going to save that for another time. But before every session we had a sweet time singing praises to the Lord of Heaven. Many I have heard before but there were two that I hadn't heard that had me on my knees before Christ. I'll post the link but wanted to write the words so you can see how powerful it is. 
     Oh Great God of Highest Heaven
     Occupy my lowly heart
     Own it all and reign Supreme
     Conquer every rebel power
     Let no vice or sin remain
     That resists Your holy war
     You have loved and purchased me
     Make me Yours forever more

     I was blinded by my sin
     Had no ears to hear Your voice
     Did not know Your love within
     Had not taste for heavens joy
     Then Your Spirit gave me life
     Opened up Your Word to me
     Through the Gospel of Your Son
     Gave me endless hope and peace

     Help me now to live a life
     That's dependent on Your grace
     Keep my heart and guard my soul
     From the evils that I face
     You are worthy to be praised
     With my every thought and deed
     Oh Great God of Highest Heaven
     Glorify Your name through me

This song is... overwhelming. It says all that is in my heart. We sang this song maybe three times and I was astounded by the simplicity of the words but how powerful they were. This is my prayer every day.Oh Great God of Highest Heaven
           
   One of the greatest eye opening moments was my "Lunch with Jesus". A two and a half hour time with just you and Jesus. Soooooo revealing! Jesus spoke to me! It was such an amazing moment! I was sitting outside going over my notes from the previous sessions about becoming immersed with the gifts of Christ in us. I decided to list all of the gifts I could see that Christ had given me. There I was listing them when all of a sudden, as I was reading a certain verse, I felt a lightning bolt of revelation. Philippians 4:19 says "And my God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus." So, if Christ is in me and Christ has every gift... then that means that the gifts that are in me aren't even mine but Christs! Which means that I have a piece of Christ in me!! My gifts are His!! I got sooo excited in this revelation and still am!! It was just such an out of body experience!
  
   I have soooo much more to say over my time but sadly not enough time right now. But no worries. I will write again soon!

A challenge to keep up

I must say I have been very lax in my efforts to keep up on this blog. I deeply apologize. Sometimes I think my life must be very uninteresting to the average reader soooo... I don't bother writing. Other times I use business as my excuse. All in all though I should be better than I am now at writing. I promise to make a valiant effort to write at least once a week. This is actually therapy for me so I shouldn't be too hard to keep up. :P Now to catch up on life here's whats gone on this week.
  
   School, work, sleep, school, work, maybe sleep, school, work, no sleep then school. Weeeellll... actually it's not all that bad. The highlight of my week was seeing the Broadway play of Les Miserables with my mom. I had obtained some tickets for her birthday and the showing ended up being sooner than I thought. :P But it was absolutely AMAZING! If I wasn't addicted to it already then I am now.
  
   The play did remind me of something though. For the first part of the play I was disappointed because of a scene that was very descriptive. I found myself actually asking my mom if she wanted to leave. She said that it was only for this one scene and the rest would be better but I was still very uneasy and uncomfortable throughout the scene. I was troubled that no one else seemed bothered by it. This is the society we live in today. No one cares whats honoring to God. They only care about being entertained which is... extremely sad to say the least. Thankfully the rest of the play was incredible and I was able to enjoy myself and bask in the singers voices, the set, the orchestra, and the costumes. 
   

   This story reminded me of how we are called by Christ to die to ourselves. Take up our crosses and follow Him. Jean Val'Jeans life was not easy in the least and yet He put everything aside once he saw the Christ had redeemed him and followed after Him. This was very encouraging to me because it showed me that everything is worth it in the long run because once we get to a certain point the only thing that we see is Christ. That's how life should be. Or I should say how we should live it.

Summer Part 3- The Wedding

Before I being I must make a disclaimer. I am NOT a photographer. Not at all. I did take on a few of the hints my older sister Christina gave to me though. However, she is the photographer of the family so when I post photos you must know that they are unedited and uncut. Although many of these photos of the wedding are not ones that I took. Just had to make that clear. :P
  Ok! Now that that's out of the way we can move on.
My cousin has been wanting to get married for awhile now but her fiance and her just have been so busy and dealing with issues that they haven't been able to settle on a date. They finally were able to and thankfully put it just early enough in the summer so we could all be there which meant alot to her since we are her only cousins.
     Anyways, we went down to California a few days before the wedding to help with the preparations. Mainly cleaning, cooking, and watching my little cousin Nevaeh. Behind the scenes was certainly not how I pictured it to be. But God taught me alot during that time. I learned flexibility as many times one person would tell us to do one thing a certain way, then another person would tell us to do something entirely different. Also, patience. Everyone that knows me knows that I l-o-v-e kids. I would babysit kids for the rest of my life... or so I thought. As it turns out my little cousin Nevaeh took quiet a liking to me and shadowed me most days. I didn't mind this and in fact relished in it... until I wanted to have a few moments to myself with the forever chanting of "Ashy" going on, no matter how precious it was. But I learned to take this all in stride and live in the moment. We had quite a few fun times as I taught her how to "clink" her cup like on the movie "Despicable Me".
    The last character that I learned the most was how important it is to be organized. There were those moments as we were preparing that my siblings and I just shared looks as if saying "are you for real? That isn't the best way to do it." However, I learned that when people want your opinion they will ask for it. :P Soooooo... I guess that whenever I'm involved in a wedding I think of what I would do and what I wouldn't do. Good stuff. :P
    Overall, it was an interesting wedding. The party really got hopping though when we decided to do some line dancing. FUN STUFF!! Later we all sat down and talked about some aspects of the wedding that we agreed with and others that we had issues with. One thing about my family, although we may disagree with respect each other. At least the majority of us do. ;)
     With all that, enjoy this little segment from the wedding!

                                                                The ecstatic bride

                                     My cousin trying to be a cool groomsman. Did it work? :P

                                                                       The groom

                                            Sister of the bride, my cousin, and maid of honor

                                  Look at all that CANDY!!!! That's what I'm talking about!

                                     Getting out on the dance floor to show off our mad skilz.

                               The flower girl, my cousin Nevaeh, was having some issues. :P

                      Aren't we a good looking group? I believe this is our first family/kid
                                                         picture for the entire summer!

Summer part 2

As you all can see, while we were in Oregon we had to stop by our favorite smoothie place ever. JAMBA!!! 

                              I had almost forgotten what a sunset with mountains looked like.

     We celebrated Nat Joy's birthday while we were there. She turned 11. Growing up so fast its scary!

                                                The greatest lady I know. My mother.

Now, I almost hate hiking. Not so much if its at a leisurely pace but when its do it or die... not so much. I like just hiking to look at nature sometimes or if not that then I think whats the use of it. :P Anyways, I noticed I haven't been documenting our trip with pictures and decided I need to do that. So, hence your first preview with pictures! This is only a small portion of what we did while we were in Oregon. Many more posts to follow!

Summer

I decided that since I haven't written in a while I'd take short steps to tell you about my summer. Let me tell you this, it was L-i-f-e-c-h-a-n-g-i-n-g. But that's getting ahead of myself. Starting at the beginning. :)

  We traveled first to Oregon and spent two weeks at my aunt's house simply relaxing after a hard year of school. The sun, pool, volleyball, JAMBA, it was a beautiful thing. 

   Before I get going too much I need to share something vital to this summer. I was given the opportunity to go to Ecuador on a missions trip with a group called Global Encounter. My siblings had gone on trips with them before so I thought 'lets see if this is what God wants for me.' I applied and, to my surprise, was accepted as a team member. I was excited but still skeptic. You see I had no money and this trip cost a substantial amount of money. At this point I said 'Ok God. If you want me to go You are going to have to get me there. There is no way I can raise the money without supernatural intervention.' This was very hard for me to accept as I was used to knowing things were or were not going to happen. We were studying James during this time and I leaned on James 1:5-8. 

   

   " But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, not doubting, for he that doubts is like the surf of the sea tossed by the wind. That man will not receive anything of the Lord for he is a unstable man in all his ways."

  I thought 'alright. God I'm asking you without doubting. I know you can do this... but it's just soo hard to believe you can!' The weeks went by and my first payment was only a week away when my dad surprised me. He told me that someone had offered to financially support me for the entire amount. I was shocked! God had just proven Himself to me in a way I didn't think was possible. It was in that moment that a little seed was planted in my heart. A seed of Dependence. Totally dependence on God. 

   This story is too long to share over one post but I just wanted everyone to see a taste of what I started to experience over my summer.

  
   ~Ashley

Fun Times

So today I went and saw "Tangled" with my brothers and sisters. We made quite the group the 8 of us as we made our way into the theater. This was the third time that I would've seen it and the second time for my brothers. The only people that we're seeing it for the first time were my four little sisters. I was excited because when I first got back from seeing it I would say all these lines from the movie and crack up over them. My family would just look at me really funny like. Now with them seeing it, I wouldn't have to look dumb everytime I say a line from the movie.
   They all loved it of course and we went out of the theater talking about who our favorite characters were, what song we liked the best, and who was going to buy it first when it came out on DVD. These are the times that I love with my siblings. One of the cool things that happened was that originally I was just going to take my younger brother and two younger sisters cause I didn't have enough money to pay for everyone. Then Daniel and Brandon spoke up and said that they would pay for the rest to go. And of course they decided to go along as well. I only wish that my older brother Benjamin and my older sister Christina could've been with us. All in all, it was a great day!

New Blog

Hello everyone!
  I'm starting this blog mostly to help me sort out everything that I'm going through right now but also for it to be an encouragement to others. I know what it's like to feel alone in something that you're going through and haven't liked it. This blog is for me to share my experiences and to give hope to others that may be going through the same situations that I am. I'll try to post as often as I can. Blessings!