Order

Before I became a true follower of Christ things were Wacko!  I mean they were WACKO!  My priority's were very twisted around.  I didn't have really any direction other than to work, eat, sleep, and on my days off vegetate.  Not very fun!  I knew what was missing but didn't really want to bother with the whole religious Christan thing so I just kinda pushed that off till it was more "convenient" for me so I just went on with my life.  But apparently god had a different plan for me and Before I knew it I had quit my job of five years because of a back injury.  I had hit a point in my life to what I would like to call the wall.  Don't get me wrong things were pretty good, my family and friends were very supportive with everything I had gone through, and I was falling in love with my now fiance but the fact of the matter was I just felt empty, and nothing of this world could fill me up.  I was so so so sick of the same old things in my life that I began to kind of get angry and cry out to god.  Why would he let me go through these situations?  Why cant he just pluck me out of this crap and fix my broken life?  What am I supposed to be doing here on this earth?  How come I cant hear your voice like everyone else?  I was ticked and believe me the list went on!  The more I cried out and the more I let God be the center of my life, things started to happen.  It started with Erica (my fiance)  inviting me to a youth conference, I received a word from god there, and my prayers where answered.  That was just the Beginning, god began doing little things in my life that I look back now and I'm like wow thank you!  I believe that the reason my back injury caused me to quit was very much part of Gods plan.  We had went on a missions trip to Nicaragua in July of this year and before the trip I had to be very careful with my back, but about a week before the trip we met at my grandparents house to pray for the trip, and Ive never told anyone this but while we were praying I felt this shooting warm feeling go up and down my back and ever since then my back has been like 100% aside from regular wear and tear its been great!  God Is Awesome!  Also another miracle may I add was how I was able to come on this program as far as finances, I know I know, what finances.  Exactly lol, it was a miracle but we prayed for Gods will and this is very much part of the plan he has for me.  So from where I was before and where I am now is just huge, it wasn't easy and wasn't fast and it wasn't until God became my number 1.  Anyone who feels empty and is just sick of the same dead ends and walls, just put God first, be bold and walk in confidence,hes right there just waiting for you to choose him and take his hand! you will be blown away day in and day out, there are no dead ends and there are no walls with God.  Get things in order.

anybody see the resemblance? :-)


Just in

settling to be cows?

I was driving in to church one morning and saw something I had never noticed before,  it was cows, cows walking one behind another in a zigzagged path they had created over time.  One of the most noticeable things about these cow paths, is they often go nowhere in particular.  Another interesting thing about cow paths is a that once a cow path has been created to get from one place to another, the cows will continue to follow the cow path without question. No cow is ever smart or courageous enough to try a new, potentially faster and more efficient way to the same destination again. They will continue to blindly follow the same route time and time again.  Sometimes I feel like that is how we as humans are, creatures of habit, following the same path day in and day out.  Do you ever get tired of the same old habits we find ourselves committing over and over?  I know I do!  God is calling us not to be safe in our churches, small groups, or whatever the organization be!  But he is calling each and everyone of us to become disciples for him, which means getting out of the beaten habits, comforts, safe zones and spreading the word of god!  Lets quit talking about it and put this into action!

Luke 14:26-27
Psalm 32:8
Psalm 23:1-6
Psalm 119:105
Isaiah 55:6
Isaiah 58:11

Love
Just in

day off.....

its monday right now and half asleep so what im going to do is go to bed but i want you all to look forward to what im going to write about:-0  so its going to be about cows, rutts, paths, and spreading the word.  i am also gonna try somthing.  im not going to mention it till later today.  but hoping it works.....  talk shortly night all

im feeling like this lol this is ben by the way!

hope he doesnt mind

Camping!

 I wont be able to blog this weekend until Sunday because I will be in the wilderness camping!

just thought I would let you know so I don't leave y'all wondering!
 hopefully we don't run into

this!

just messing

but really! :-)


have great weekend
love just in

videos of entertainment...:-)

this is a short clip of metro kids a few Saturdays ago....

Ashley working away. that was about half of the boxes that we had to unpack it was incredible how much material we put together.

pretty awesome how much work goes into the setup of catalyst..

many guitars.... it was incredible

this was sound  check before the main event.

this was Kari Jobe opening for worship it was awesome

this was the opener for the second day at catalyst its like a street band.

the whole gang visiting this last Sunday!

i put this on the back of my phone :-))))))

these guys went for like 10 min  doing diff things it was pretty cool!

this guy gets launched out of a cannon  its insane he was like a couple feet from hitting steel beams, not the best angle but you can get better angles on YouTube.

this is my cool new metal bible!

these pics were in the barn me and ash lead the small group in! very cool barn!

So random and off subject but, I was on skype with my dearest last night and asked her what to blog about? because I don't want to be repetitive,  So shes like well, just write about experiences throughout the your days. So I thought back to Monday night when me and Ashley had to babysit at the nursery,  there were about 5 kids there but there was one little girl who was about 16 months old, her name was Mackenzie and she had shaking baby syndrome.  she is blind and has some developmental problems but, she about brought me to tears every time I looked at her.  Her sweet little  smile whenever I would whisper prayers into her ears or when I would touch her head, she is precious!  I know its not very much as far as blogging but if you could just pray for Mackenzie please.

And also I just wanted to announce that I recently got a brand new laptop given to me from my host home(the Millers)!! they are amazing people!  God is amazing!

So I will be blogging more now that I have full access!  I don't have excuses anymore! ha ha

Love

Just In

the long wait has come to an end!

first and foremost this was before youth united room 

and after........

pretty neat the transformation that took place..

I'm just going to add a whole mirage of photos and videos, not necessarily in order but I will explain each picture...

beginning of metro kids

bible study at metro kids

group that I was with and hung out with at metro kids

 its gonna be sweet!!

youth united....

praise and worship

opening day at The Oaks (Riversides other campus)

Nate one of our new good buds...

chillen in a big oak tree 

i told you it was big

Ashley putting together packages for Catalyst

enough said

Yep

nice view ehhh

human cannon ball shooter ma jigger

yeah my new ride... hover craft this thing goes 70 mph 

in the arena first day at Catalyst

tim anderson chillen in my new ride 

tear down after catalyst....

after catalyst....tasty cal

my new arm band

oh and if you didnt know FALL is coming yey!!!

this is viana the judds puppy dog so cute.

awesome comedian .....michael junior..

There has been many great times over the past 2 weeks, actually just too many to list all of them.  I'm not going to go into deep discussion because i really don't have words to describe the things that God has done and is still doing in my life in just this short period of time.  The only few things I want to touch base on is how important it is to have a relationship with Christ, A REAL RELATIONSHIP! not just the every Sunday church doers, but to actually live the life Christ wants us to live, walk in his will, go out of the normal, reach out to hurting people, not only to the ones we live near but to people all over the world.  We were created to glorify god, and to help lost people come to Christ!  I guess I cant really describe the way God has moved me without bringing tears to my eyes, other than to say that he is now the center of everything in my life!  Not that he wasn't prominent in my life before but there were definitely things holding me back from receiving the fullness of him.  I am very excited to see everyone soon for the upcoming holidays and am excited to share more stories.  All in all I wish I could really put into words what its like having a relationship with God but once again there are none.  So i just really really want to encourage everyone that reads this to just strive for God in everything!  Involve him in everything!  You will be blown away!  Just take that first step and grab his hand!  He's waiting!

This song sums up what i'm trying to get across.......

Nothing Compares

much love to all 

just in :0)

ps: prayer for me and ashley as we go for a big test saturday, just pray that we will retain the info as we study and that we do good on the test...thank you

Compilation coming tonight!

The new stuff is coming tonight be ready it's gonna be intense!!!!!

Forgiveness

The title is alittle extreme for what I'm about to write but forgive me for not keeping up this week. Our team literally has had about 10 hours of sleep all week, catalyst is crazy awesome I'll have many stories, pics and vids.... Just haven't had 2 min to myself yet... Hope y'all have a great day and remember no matter the situation god is with us!
Love to all of my peep! :-)
Love just-in

can we say inquant?

OK so we arrived in ATL at about 10:00 AM on Monday, with about 3 hours of sleep.  Inquant described our day Monday perfectly... Catalyst has about 13,000 people annually, those 13,000 people also get a bag of literature, so that's what we did all day Monday was put together these "attendee bags".  its very repetitive and makes for a long day but they feed us breakfast, lunch and dinner and we had met some new people and made some great new friends so I'm not complaining.  Its really cool and encouraging seeing so many people my age living their lives for and with god....very cool, so anyways we were able to get out of the arena around 6:00 pm and get over to my aunt and uncles house to crash.  We had to be up extremely early today to finish the 13,000 bags, finding out that on Monday we had done 2,500 bags for the special labs people, so we still had 13,000 bags to go but with much more people.  So again we made some great new Friends and had a very long and repetitive day but we had great food and great talks so it makes up for  the repetativenesssss :-)
So what has been on my heart lately.... well before I became a true follower of Christ I had always kinda looked up to people and really just relied on them setting standards for how to live, whats ok, whats not ok kind of thing, so basically i was a follower.  Recently pastor Corey did a sermon on running hard and falling,  so i began to think about all of the people i looked up to and realize that they are just people and they do fall and they do have faults and they are not perfect, so what I'm getting to is that I feel God has slowly became and now is my role model, my leader and my idol.   I want to not only be able to just learn from all of the wonderful people that I have met on this program and will be meeting but I also want to impact the lives of everyone that I run into.  I know that I can and never will be perfect but i will strive to do my best to become the person that God has called me and wants me to be.

God is good all of the time

I miss my fiance, my family, and my friends and my perfect little puppy :-)

Food for thought comment if you will....

How often do you feel Gods peace in your life?

Define Brokenness.

ATL here we come

Great news I did not yet post... Me and a few others will be attending Catalyst(convention i'n Atlanta GA) we are leaving on Sunday and coming back next saturday it's going to be a blast. We are going to be staying with my uncle Derek and his family which was set in stone fri, and am very excited to see them but if you could pray that we have safe travels we would appreciate it:-)

Love just in

Happy sat more to come tonight!:-)



So try this.... If someone wants to give u a high five act like your gonna do it back but instead make a fist and put your thumb up and put your fist i'n the palm of their hand and say turkey!

Happy highfiving Lol

So much To write with such great news!

I know it has been a whole week without a blog but it's very hard with limited time and sleep, and also very small screen... It's very tough to blog daily :-) next thing I get will be an iPad lol. Where to start.... Metro kids last saturday was amazing and sad but in a good way the kids that live In these Taft homes are wonderful yet hardened kids it was a blessing to be a part of their lives I'm looking to many more saturdays with them. I have pictures of alot of things this past week has consisted of it's just I have no way of getting them on here... So once I get around a computer or iPad I will post them sorry... Sunday was a more laxxed day, involved morning service and relaxation then headed to Austin and Shannons house for dinner he is the worship pastor we had a great talk about our historys and come to find out there kinda similar, so it was pretty neat hanging out with such a cool couple and their kids. Monday was my day off so I slept I. For the first time while here with no alarm ooo yeah amazing. I did my laundry and cleaned up a bit and got ready to go to think tank to brainstorm ideas for wed night youth group. Tuesday of all days was the worst ever! I was horribly sick and had to be up at 530, and didnt get done with everything until 730 at night bad day, so I'm just gonna leave that one in the dust! Lol. Wed I felt quite a bit better but, Ashley and I had been informed that we were going to be in charge of getting everything except for the message setup and ready so we spent all morning and afternoon getting ready for the youth. I will be posting a video of what we did, it consisted of 7 acts and was very distracting lol you will see it shortly, the message was about staying focused on god, it was very cool. Thurs we helped with the hope store and just helped out the oaks which is if you didn't know already riversides 2nd campus church, their grand opening is today (sat) and there is tons of stuff to do so we have been trying to help out there as much as possible. And on fri we helped again with the kids program(reaction) with visitor bags and setting up things at the oaks ... I know everything is kinda vague and summed up but with pictures I can go into detail alittle more. I will keep up with my blog more consistently. This week has just been crazy with being sick and such, sorry. All in all God is doing great things in such a small time period that I've been here it's just absolutely mind blowing! He is speaking into my life more than ever and I'm able to just focus on what he has to say it's so great. Thursday morning I was looking through my devotional bible my mom and dad had gotten me and, found a note they wrote to me that just really pushed my emotional envelope lol I kinda just thought back and relized just how ignorant I was to everything that involved god. I look back now and shake my head at the person I used to be and laugh.. I'm just so mystified at how people can't or won't believe. I feel so blessed to have the people I have in my life. You all are amazing thank you for your prayers and support! I'm going to be putting pics up tonite so watch for em:-)
Just in is officially back i'n action ha ha

Oh and the verse my parents wrote to me was proverbs 3:5-6 and I'm not going to type it out because I'm encouraging you to open the bible and read:-) do it because it's words of life:-)
Love Justin

I had to write this on my iPhone so ignore spelling errors and punctuality there's no spell check...