What a day!! We took a tour of The Refinery, the new student building at Saddleback. Then spent the day connecting with each other, working through the re-write of PDYM, talking technology and other helpful sites used for ministry, then Bowling and food at Lucky Strikes. So much fun. I am very tired and excited about tomorrow. Here are some pics from today! Enjoy.
Awesome weather, sunburned forehead, great friendships, and lots of laughter would be words that would describe today. Spent the morning at Hunnington Beach. Walked around Main Street and the Pier. Watched surfers and beach volleyball. The sign said the water temp was 60 degrees. No wonder they wear wetsuits.
The Gathering officially started today with lunch at In-N-Out Burger then dinner at the Fields house! It’s it so good to see friends, catch up on life and ministry, as well as meet the newbies, people that haven’t been to the gathering before! Looking forward to a great week! Here are some pics from today!
We landed in the OC Sunday night at about 8:00pm with really no plans but to get our car and find our hotel. While waiting at the rental car, we got upgraded to a convertable because they didn’t have any of the premium cars on the lot. Way cool! So needless to say we had a great time Monday driving with the top down in So-Cal.
It was fun just to hangout with Stephanie, kinda weird not having kids with us, but we really enjoyed the time. We spent most of the morning at the Irvine Spectrum, since it was rainy, ate lunch at PF Chang’s, then headed to Laguna Beach. The sun came out and we took some pics and just relaxed. It was so nice. That evening we went to The Cliff’s for dinner and literally had an ocean view as we ate and watched the Sunset over the ocean. What a great first day. Here are some pics.
This video has made circulation lately on blogs because of it being played on The Soup and Best Week Ever. But today I was reading Ben Taylor’s blog and saw that David Crowder did a cover of it also. Much shorter and a little easier to watch. Enjoy!
Well last week was a week of sickness in the Gould home. It seems like this month has just been an unhealthy month for us. On Monday Night Jackson was throwing up, Wednesday Night Josiah, Thursday should have been me, but I hate throwing up, but Saturday takes the cake. I felt like death. Couldn’t even move without wanting to vomit, then Sunday, guess who, yep Mom (aka Stephanie was sick) So all of us have had it and hope it stops there because I don’t want a repeat!
However, the weekend services must carry on and they did. Lucky for me, we are developing a teaching team in Fusion and I was able to pass the baton to Marti late Saturday Night and she did an awesome job!!!! We started a new series on Habits encouraging students to start some. From what I have been told is everything went well. Worship was great and students paid attention for the most part. I’ve been told there were two that were really a distraction. If you are reading this you should feel bad and repent! You know who you are!!! 🙂 Anyhow, attendance was up and God is moving! Its so awesome!!! If you are a teenager you should come check it out, if you are a parent of a teenager, you should encourage them to check it out, if you are a random reader of this blog, well, pray that God would give our ministry a passion for Him like no other!
We have set up a youtube account to start posting our video since more of our students are blogging now. Our hope are that you will post them on your blog also! This is the latest one from our B2S Retreat all of them can be found under the user name: thefsmshow enjoy
Tonight, we officially started small groups for grades 6-10th. I have the privilege of being the 9th grade coach. Tonight we had 15 ninth graders at our host home. Here are their pictures as they walked in.
What a good night! The topic was Guilt. Guilt is a hard topic to talk about and makes us feel uncomfortable because it hinges on actually having to share our faults with others. We asked these three questions in Small Groups
Doug Fields shared two things about guilt that I think are pivotal to overcoming it. If we aren’t proactive in temptation we will live our life being reactive toward guilt and situations. Here are some steps to take.
If you will do these things you will be able to experience freedom from your current situation!
My office has been invaded by my youngest son Jackson. Right now it looks more like a daycare than and office. Jackson spends from 12:30-2:00pm with me Mon-Thurs until Josiah gets out of school. Here is what he is doing right now!
I am not used to the quiet!
Join the conversation – Have you ever had to take your kids to work?
This truly was a great weekend but lets not let it be something we look back to as and event but as a start to a great journey of reaching our friends for Christ!
Well, it’s been over a month but here they are . . . Mexico Mission Trip Pictures from Fusion. I was hounded this weekend at our B2S Retreat, which I will blog about tomorrow after I get some rest, to post these pictures. I will tell you this much about the B2S Retreat, it was an awesome weekend!!!!!
Enjoy the pics!
Dan Gould 