Boker Tov

Good morning from Israel… well, sort of.  It is 1 am here!  Just wanted to post a reminder that we are in Israel and are blogging on our Tallowood student blog.  If you are interested in what we are doing, check it out.  We are on Team Haifa so those posts contain our info – along with the touring posts because our whole group was together for four days of touring in Israel before we divided into five mission teams that spread out all over the country.  Here are a few highlights from our trip so far!

(At the Temple Mount/Dome of the Rock)

(Our Haifa team in the Mediterranean)

(On a camel in Jerusalem!)

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Wow, we have been horrible bloggers lately! It won’t get much better over the next couple of weeks, but I’ll try to give you a little update…

We leave today for Israel! Hard to believe this trip is already here, but we leave in just a few hours… and I’m still shoving stuff in my suitcase! This is a hard trip to pack for, not only with the regular TSA travel restrictions, but we are also restricted by the size of our rental vans. We have to make sure we can fit both people AND luggage in the vans. Not to mention the fact that half of the sites we are visiting have dress codes, so outfit selection has been difficult. Knees and shoulders must be covered, but we need to stay cool in the 100 degree heat!

Anyway, the first few days of our trip will be spent visiting Holy sites and other places of interest, including the Mount of Beatitudes, Caesarea Philipi, Tel Dan, the Sea of Galillee, Capernum, the Dead Sea, the Western Wall, Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives, Garden of Gethsemane, the Temple Mount, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, etc. Whew! Just typing all that made me realize that this is really real!

After all the touring, our group heads to Haifa to work with Tents of Mercy, a Messianic Jewish congregation. We’ll be serving in whatever way they need us, including painting, organizing their food pantry, sorting clothes and babysitting. Their facility also has a youth center, so we should get a chance to hang out with some of their young people and do some activities with them.

Pray that God will give us and our students the opportunity to minister to a number of Israelis – whether it is through our service or through our words. Pray for our safety and our peace of mind.

While we’re gone, we might have an opportunity to update this blog, but our Internet access will be limited. We will definitely be updating the Tallowood Student blog as often as possible – www.tallohoodtoday.com. Each team will be posting, so keep an eye out for the Haifa team posts.

A million pictures and lots of stories to come when we get back!

-Laura

Camp Tallowood

Sorry we haven’t posted in a few weeks but honestly, we are still recovering from Camp Tallowood.  So, if you want to see more about what we did there, check out the Tallowood blog: tallohoodtoday.com

We’ll start posting again soon!

-Micah

Camp is here!

We are just about to head out for Camp Tallowood 2009! Micah and I get there this afternoon with a handful of other adults, our seniors come tomorrow and the rest of the students arrive on Sunday afternoon.

While we’re at camp, we’ll be attempting to blog from the Tallowood Student Ministry web site at www.tallohoodtoday.com. Check it out for info, pictures and maybe even a few videos. That is, if we can get Internet access for long enough out in Texas Hill Country!

Neither of us can believe that this week is already here (well, scratch that – after all the hard work, I think Micah can believe it!). I’m just so glad that I once again get to join Micah and minister to students right alongside of him. I know I probably won’t always get to go to camp or on other youth trips, so I’m glad to have the opportunity two years in a row!

Pray that all 350 students and adults will grow closer to God and have the chance to experience Him doing awesome things in their lives this week!

-Laura

Zack Attack

Are you a child of the 80’s or 90’s? If so, I can guarantee you’ll appreciate this!

Mark Paul Gosselaar has not changed a BIT in 20 years! (Thanks for sending this to me Katie!)

-Laura

A weekend to celebrate

We had a lot of reasons to celebrate this past weekend, not the least of those being Micah’s birthday!

Friday night, we went out to a ranch near Giddings, TX to celebrate the engagement of a couple of our favorite people. Jacob proposed to Charis and then arranged for us and a crowd of other friends to meet up with them and celebrate. We had a great time listening to them recount the proposal story, enjoying s’mores over a bonfire and just catching up with a couple of friends we don’t get to see often enough. Of course, the ranch was gorgeous too! It had that Texas-country thing going for it, and made for a perfectly romantic spot for these two to get engaged.

(I borrowed this pic from one of Charis’ friend’s Facebook. She is a professional photographer, and obviously great at it!)

We also had some friends in from Baton Rouge this weekend. Laura & Patrick stopped in for a couple of nights on their way to San Antonio, and to assist with the Woodard’s move.

That brings me to our next reason to celebrate – we have new neighbors! Mark and Tamara have moved to Katy in a nearby neighborhood. Their new house is beautiful and we’re so happy for them having bought their first house! We’re already exchanging favors, and I’m sure it won’t be long before one of us is knocking on the other’s door to borrow a cup of sugar (regardless of the fact that there are probably 3 grocery stores between our respective neighborhoods!).

We might just be pretty terrible friends, though, because we weren’t much help with Mark and Tamara’s move. I guess we had a pretty good excuse, though. We had a marathon Camp Tallowood sponsor meeting Saturday morning. Camp begins Sunday and we’re scheduled to head out on Friday. It’s soooooo hard to believe that it’s already here!

Last, but certainly not least, our main reason to celebrate over the weekend was Micah’s birthday! We celebrated with… well, a meeting. We tried our best to still make it a celebration, with Micah’s favorite – a Great American Cookie Cake!

Doesn’t the green dinosaur just make you smile? Ha ha! We also had dinner Saturday night with our friends, and then Sunday lunch with the same peeps. Good times, good times…

-Laura

HSM at Tallowood

Schools in our area are wrapping up their year this week. In fact, I think many of our Tallowood students are having their last day of school today. It’s an exciting time of year for students and teachers as they look forward to a little relaxation, some welcomed boredom and some extra sunshine.

In youth ministry, however, this is the busiest time of the year! Micah has been swamped with preparations for camp, mission trips, JAM Days, etc. and I’ve been following right along doing what I can to help. It’s so exciting to think that we’ll be heading to Israel in a month and 10 days! And it’s hard to believe that we will be at camp in just over a WEEK! (Or at least Micah will be. We’re still not quite sure if everything will work out for me…)

Each year, as part of his camp preparation, Micah orchestrates a “Camp Rules” video. The rules are pretty simple (no weapons, no cell phone, no iPods, no changing tribes, etc), but Micah finds a new way to communicate the same old message each year. The theme of this year’s video? High School Musical!

Some of our seniors and the youth interns did a great job portraying the main characters. They even did some “spontaneously” choreographed dances! And, both Micah and I had some cameos. All I can show you for now is these pictures because Micah is still putting the actual video together…

 Peter and Joel as “Chad” and “Zeke”

Allyson and JT as “Sharpay” and “Ryan”

Katy as “Kelsey”

Jeff as “Troy Bolton”

Katherine, JT and Claire as “Taylor,” “Ryan” and “Gabriella.”

Allyson as “Sharpay” again

…but, here’s a link to the rules video from last year to give you an idea!

-Laura

Recovery Room

After several naps on the pull-out couch, we finally feel like our bodies have recovered from a major lack of sleep. Why the insomnia? Our annual Middle School Lock-In!

Friday night, Micah led 153 middle school students, 12 high school student sponsors and 25 adults to four different locations around the Houston/Katy area all throughout the night!

The whole night was a blast for everyone involved. It is the first youth event that we have ever been a part of that has been “sold out.” During the last three days building up to the Lock-In, the “buzz” on this event was wild. It seriously felt like some exclusive night club everyone was trying to get in to. Unfortunately, because of fire code, there had to be a limit. Once all the students who neglected to pre-register found this out, there was a mad rush for the last few spots.

Since last year’s Lock-In attracted about 100 students, Micah planned for a slight increase of 15 or so. We never expected so many to show! The greatest part? Almost half of these kids are not church-goers. So for many of them, this could have been the first time they heard the gospel message! Yes, among all the activities, we found the time to squeeze in a short presentation of God’s word. That is why we do what we do, right?

After starting at our youth building (with a line out the door and wrapping around the parking lot!), we brought the students to CiCi’s Pizza for a nice, healthy meal (ha ha). After consuming a few hundred pizzas, we loaded up the buses and headed to Pump It Up, an inflatable games event space. This was a HUGE hit. One kid had a tooth knocked out (complete with a whole lot of blood), but everyone else was loving it!

From there, we headed over to Times Square, an all-purpose entertainment space. Between bowling, arcade games, laser tag, billiards, dancing to music videos and DDR, the students stayed entertained for hours. I think the ice cream sundaes at 3 a.m. also helped!

Right when we were all starting to crash at 6 a.m., we loaded up the buses to go back to the youth building for breakfast. Doughnuts, cat-naps, basketball and video games rounded out the “night” as parents arrived to pick up their suddenly-tired children.

If you’re interested in seeing a couple hundred more pictures from the Lock-In, click here!

Whew! Now that it’s all over and we have caught up on sleep, we can enjoy a Memorial Day barbeque with some good friends!

-Laura

Seminary and such

This weekend I feel like we’re both in seminary. Micah is currently working on his second 15-page Old Testament research paper. To make matters really fun, the computer that he had saved the first one on was fried by a sudden power outage yesterday. We don’t know if we’ll be able to get that computer up and running, but THANK GOD he had printed out one copy of the completed paper already. If worse comes to worse, then we can simply retype the whole thing – an inconvenient, but relatively easy fix.

We took a break and saw “Angels and Demons” Friday night. After we both read this book twice, the movie was a little disappointing. Maybe it would have been better if we hadn’t read the book… Director Ron Howard changed the story to a sequel instead of a prequel. Kind of an odd switch, but maybe it just felt right since he made a movie out of the DaVinci Code first. I know condensing a 500 page novel into a 2.5 hour movie is probably a challenge, but I wish all the details would have been included. Oh well. I feel the same disappointment after each Harry Potter movie – I love the movie, but hate that they left out little crucial scenes.

In other random weekend news, this morning was senior Sunday at Tallowood. A few of the seniors who we’ve gotten really close to were over here last night and earlier tonight. They are a great group and we’re going to miss them when they all head off the Baylor and A&M next year! But, we have a busy summer ahead of us and they’ll be part of all of it! 

Speaking of the summer, Micah is leading the Junior High Lock-in this weekend, which is the official kick-off to the Tallowood summer. Crazy that it’s already here! 

-Laura

Louisiana sampler

We had such a great weekend that I thought I’d share a little more. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the camera with us on Friday when we were running in to familiar faces left and right. But, we kept the camera lens busy with shots of family and scenery…

We gave my mom her Mother’s Day and birthday presents Thursday.

Friday morning we took a 6 mile walk with my mom around the LSU Lakes. We started at City Park, which has been cleaned up and enhanced. The playground, golf course, tennis courts, walking paths and the Raising Cane’s-sponsored dog park all look great!

Friday night we went to the new Alex Box to see some LSU baseball with my folks (These pics aren’t mine).

Saturday we went out to Tony’s seafood and bought a feast!

Micah and my dad picked out an ice chest full of frozen Louisiana goodies for us to enjoy at a later date. They travelled well on the journey back to Houston.

Back at home, we dug into our little Louisiana sampler. Everything was delicious (the best gumbo either one of us has ever eaten!), but our favorite was, of course, the boiled crawfish! 

 

On our way out of town, we stopped to purchase a few LSU goodies, and took some pictures while we were at it.

And then I couldn’t put the camera down, so we wound up with some cool shots on the bridge.

-Laura