Testimonies

Another great day at project, no surprise! I got us this morning at 7 and went on a nice 4.5 mile run with one of my team leaders and alumni class mate Van. Came back and got in the word for 30 minutes. The reason I specified that was because Last night we made goal sheets, and one of my goals was to spend at least 30 minutes in the word with God. Because the Word is God so I got to spend 30 minutes with my maker this morning, awesome! After that I got ready for work and went in from 10-5. I learned how to use the cash register today, a little overwhelming at first, but by the end of the day I had it conquered. Tonight was a great experience. Once a week we do something called D group. It stands for discipleship group. Our room leader is considered our Disciple leader and we are his disciples, it sounds weird but its really not. Tonight we all went around and shared our testimonies, all 5 of us.... for two hours! It was great and 100% confidential, so sorry no juicy stories. Seriously though, it was an incredible experience to be completely open and honest with each other. We all shared our whole entire life stories and secrets, nothing was held back. It was so awesome and encouraging to be able to open up to these guys and have them care and relate. It was great to hear that I wasn't the only one struggling with certain issues and to get and give advice was awesome. I am so pumped to have 4 other guys now who will hold me accountable and ask me tough question not just for the next 8 weeks but hopefully for a long long time. The bonding is incredible and I can't wait for each and every day. On top of all that Natalie is coming tomorrow! If you don't know who that is she is my amazing girlfriend and I can't wait for both of us to grow in the Lord for our future. Pray for her safe trip and arrival to Panama City Beach. Keep up the prayers, they are working.

Serving Him,

Daniel

Stewardship

Today I got up early and me and one of the staff members did a nice 30 minute swim in the ocean. 15 Minutes out and 15 minutes back, just to let you know it was intense. Came back and got ready for Sunday school and church. Sunday school was good, we had half of our team go to one room and the other group go to another room. Our teacher was a high school football coach and a really great guy. I enjoyed Sunday school. Church was ok. There was a guest speaker as the minister and he just didn't do it for me. So hopefully next Sunday's service will be better. We then had the rest of the day off till 7 to just do whatever we wanted. The whole team went out to applebees for lunch and then we hit the beach. A fun filled day of volleyball and frisbee. Then we went to our talk of stewardship training. I really didn't even know what a steward was. So in case you dont either it is one who manages another's property finances or affairs. In Genesis 2:15-23 God calls us to be a good steward. He explains throughout the Bible that we are to be stewards of everything because nothing we have is our own. It all belongs to God. You're money, girlfriend, wife, it is all God's and you need to treat everything that way. Because in reality it really isn't yours, so take care of it as if God is always watching you, because he is. We then briefly talked about the difference between dreams, visions, and goals. All of us sat down and wrote our spiritual, physical, and financial goals. When you write down a feasible goal that you can measure and have it documented it makes it that much more real. I recommend doing this. Put things in perspective, because it is impossible to be a Godly steward without the right perspective. Perspective is the lens we look through and life at. It affects our actions, and most importantly our attitude. For a Godly perspective read John1:3-5, Psalm 100, and Psalm 51:16-17. The only way to get that Godly perspective is to pray for it and reflect on our Lord, savior Jesus Christ and His perspective. Powerful stuff! Keep up the prayers!

Serving Him,

Daniel

Prayer, Bible Study, and Memorize Scripture

Well since I did my post this morning I had to cut it a little short because we had church, but I will talk about that when I post tonight. After evangelizing I cooked dinner for the room. I made a garlic tomato basil chicken with salad. Then we went off for more training. We learned about the importance of prayer and why we need to pray. First was to follow Jesus' example like in Mark 1:25 and Matthew 6:9-13. To also be obedient to His commands like in I Thessalonians 5:16-18 and Ephesians 6:18-20. To worship God like in Psalm 34:1-3 and Hebrews 12:28. God acts when we pray, read Matthew 7:7 and *John 15:7. Prayer is extremely important and there is so much we can get from it. Next we learned about the real importance of studying the Bible, Why? It is essentially our link to God. It is one mode in which God reveals Himself. It cultivates our relationship with Him. The goal of the Christian walk is to know Him and the only way to do that is get in the word. Memorizing scripture is just as important. It will help you transform into the image of Christ, it will help you triumph over sin, it gives you comfort and counsel, it helps you with your witness, It's a form of worship, and it reminds us more about the importance of the Gospel. So every week we have 3 verses we have to memorize. Which is awesome! They are 2 Corinthians 3:18, Galations 2:20, and John 14:21. So wish me luck and keep praying.

Serving Him,

Daniel

Evangelism

First I would like to start out saying I'm sorry this is a little late. I normally will send my blogs out by the end of the night, but the internet was down all day yesterday and when I went to bed it was still not working. Yesterday was a great day. I went for a nice long swim in the ocean and then we had Evangelism training. Evangelism is the act of sharing the gospel. Why do we need to evangelize? In Matthew 28:16-20, God commands us to. Romans 10:13-17 challenges us by saying if we don't who will? In Philemon 1:6 it explains how by doing so we get to experience God. How might you go about doing this? Acts 1:8 says to receive the Holy Spirit, just open your mouth and God will lead you, then challenge the person your talking to. We then practiced evangelizing with each other and then went out to practice it. We went out to the beach in front of our hotel the share the Gospel. We decided to invite many people to come and play in a volley ball tournament out front our hotel. A good group showed up of about 10. It was a pretty rough crowd and for me an intimidating and humbling experience. It can be very difficult to share your faith. Why? It shouldn't be, but it is. I also realized that my overconfident personality was good for talking to people but not good for going in unprepared and not taking it seriously enough. I didn't pray before I went out or REALLY put my faith in God. I relaid on myself and that will never work. But it was day one of evangelizing and there will be much more opportunities to share the good news of the Lord.

Serving Him

Daniel

The will of The Father

Today was great again, I got up this morning and went on a nice 45 min run. After a refreshing shower I went into work for my first day on the job. My roommate Sean and I are the new cooks at the bamboo grill. We basically grill burgers and hot dogs and basically just sweat in the un air conditioned small tiki hut. Either way, we had a blast! After that I went to the gym, of course, and then we went to our talk for the night. John Muhler gave the talk tonight which was based off of Matthew 7:21-23. Basically we learned that there are two types of people, those who will not enter the kingdom of heaven and those that will. The will of the Father is very clear in Mark 1:15; which basically says repent and believe. Repent, means to turn around, look at Isiah 64:6 and/or Romans 5:8-9, very powerful stuff. Believe means to accept something is true, read John 14:6 and?or Ephesians 2:8-9. These verses in a nut shell are just like the theme, turn away from your sin, truly repent and believe that Christ died for you sin. Think back in your life, just like we did tonight. When was your turning point, there has to be one. When did you make that decision to live differently and believe in Christ, truly believe. Mine was a long battle, but my turning point was this past January, and it is growing ever stronger each day. If you are reading this and you have not yet had that turning point, maybe it's time. Thanks for all your prayers, they are definitely working.

Serving Him

Daniel

Image

Today started out slow but ended out being a really great day. William Owen, another Citadel grad, went on a 30 min swim with me in the ocean and then we went to job orientation at one o'clock. So I officially start tomorrow morning at 10am in the kitchen of The Holiday Inn Resort. After that we had our first meeting tonight and learned the theme for project. "Image" is the theme and the verse is II Corinthians 3:18 which is; "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." The speaker, Max, spoke about how we are made in the image of God, and how we represent Him. He talked about Image past, present, and future. We then came back and broke up into "teams" and played an ice breaking game. The bonding has already begun and it is great! I'm really enjoying my time! Please keep up the prayers.

God Bless

First Day

I left beautiful HHI this morning a little before 8:30 am, and started my 7 hour drive down to Panama City Beach Florida. It was a nice ride and thankfully a safe and ticket free journey. I arrived and got all settled in my room, and then went to my job interview at The Holiday Inn. I got hired and start work, training, tomorrow. I will be working in the kitchen, along with one of my roommates. My four roommates name are Graham, Josh, Sean, and Mark. They all seem to be pretty awesome guys, and with all five of us crammed into a room, I'm sure we'll get to know each other pretty well. After the job interview we came back to the hotel for a beach cookout and first night party. There was fried chicken and all sorts of cook out food. Then once everyone was nice and full, we all played beach volley ball, threw football, and just had a good time. Once the sun set all the roomies headed to Super Wall-Mart where we loaded up on groceries. The room is now sufficiently packed with snacks and food. This is my first day and my first blog ever. So i promise they will get better and will definitely give you more insight on what I am doing. Keep praying for me and my new roommates. We're all looking forward to this journey ahead!

Test

Just seeing how it all works