Easter and livin' the life

I hope that everyone's Easter went well. I was privileged enough to give a message at out bi-monthly Saturday night service, on Holy Saturday leading up to Easter Sunday. While I went in quite nervous about delivering one of the bigger sermons of the year, I believe the message I gave went very well. I received a lot of positive feedback and really believed that God lead me in what to say. Up until the morning of that Saturday, I was still wrestling with what to say and how to say it. After reading one of my friends' blog posts that same morning I was inspired by some of his stories and was able to proceed with a new sense of clarity on the meaning of the Resurrection. I took this picture that same day around 4 PM. I did so to document a strange phenomena that I've never been a apart of. It rained (although only a small amount) and was still 100 degrees outside! That's crazy.
The second picture is from taking some of the youth leaders to a local hotel for a day or relaxing at a pool on one of their days off. If you can't beat the heat, I figure you might as well swim and try to enjoy it. As I being to get prepared to leave I have tons of work left to do with the youth group, as far as end of the year retreats, banquets, and more. And Thursday night, I'll be DJ'ing the high school Prom. So I'm already excited about playing some Tom Jones and Airsuply for that. Not really, but I would like to play Tom Jones, but I don't think that's what the kids are dancing to these days. What a shame.

Ben leads a Seder?

Last Friday night I had the privilege of leading a group of the youth group students in a Seder. I would not consider myself trained in doing so, but I was able to use a program one of my professors from college has used before. It was designed as a follow up to the mission trip we took in October. This is because our Bible teaching focused around the exodus from Egypt. So these students were able to get a better understanding of how the Jewish festival of Passover works. The program I used has been modified in a Christian sense though, so several of the aspects of the seder dinner, which allude to the coming Messiah were actually explained through the coming of Jesus. It was a great night overall. The kids learned some new aspects to the Passover story and had some good fellowship. Meanwhile it was fun for me to lead something like this and stumble through my rusty Hebrew pronunciation.