Meet Emma

Emma is the oldest of the Bean children (there's only two of them, but that made it sound like there's twenty or something). It has been so fun living with all of them, and Emma has definitely wiggled her way into my heart. :) She's spunky and loves making up stories or figuring out how things work or why. There's always a question at hand when Emma's around :)

Tonight, as Sarah and Jason were busy packing, and Caleb had the job of cleaning out his dresser, Emma found me and followed me around. We ended up playing with a beautiful scarf that one of my friends, Nate, brought me back from his trip to Israel. Immediately I grabbed my camera because Emma was being such a ham, and it was a great opportunity to practice my "skills" at picture taking. I had also been toying with the idea of driving to some random spot in Arkadelphia and taking a few pictures before the sun set, as a way to relax from the day, and decided to drag Emma along. :) We ended up at the newest set of dorms on OBU's campus-West Side 1 & 2-and took turns taking pictures around campus. Lots of laughter and fun!

I'm not going to put all the pictures up here because that would take your computer forever to load (especially yours, Mom) so you can find them here on the Picassa Web Album. :)

But here are a few of my favorites:

Just Catch My Breath..

Whew! What a past couple of weeks! It has been more than a little busy around here, but in a wonderful way. :)
I'm a little out of the practice of blogging, and need major sleep, but I wanted to give an update and fill the three of you that read this in on what have been the latest tales in Arkadoo. Especially before craziness commences beginning tomorrow!

So since my last blog post, my life has turned into all things youth and moving. The Bean's (the wonderful family I'm living with for the summer) are moving to be dorm parents on campus this weekend so we have been having picnics on the floor, packing up, and selling all furniture. For the most part anyway.

I've only posted a few pictures, but for a complete album of youth happenings visit the Picassa Web Album Here or the Youth Website :)

[Me, Sarah, and Rachel]

[Youth Band Practice. This was a super joyful time!]

Besides moving, youth are basically all that is exciting in my life. It has been so amazzzing to get to know these kids better! Granted, they come with their drama and add worry to my life, but I wouldn't trade it for the world! God has certainly called me to this ministry for a reason. We've been planning out the next semester and it makes me so excited for everything that will happen in the future of the Park Hill Youth Ministry. I love planning, so the brainstorming has been really fun. Jason and I have definitely thrown out some crazy ideas lately :)

[Meet the middle school boys, and some extras. From left to right: Brannon, Sam, Nate (not a middle schooler, but a college leader), Charles, Quenton, John (not a middle schooler), Hayden, and Adam.]

For some reason the middle school boys love this awful red couch that lives in our youth room. They also really enjoy piling on top of Nate and whoever else is in their way. This was taken last night just before the couch broke. It will be interesting to see how long it continues to stay in our youth room. :) One of the guys, after examining the broken couch said, "anyone have some duct tape? I think I could hold it together with it." Priceless!

[This was taken Monday night as Laura, one of our high schoolers, and I tried to eat dinner downtown only to find Dino's closed early. So we decided to go to the Beehive. the Beehive is one of the thrift shops in town-sort of like Frisco Family Resale for you Frisconians. We had a grand time looking around, but especially enjoyed the Christmas section]

One of the things we do as a youth group is visit the nursing homes on Thursdays. Now, I think that most kids come just because we go swimming afterward, but they have formed friendships with some of the people in the nursing homes. It's been so fun to see ministries of God being extended to His people and to see our youth working as the Body. I took the kids by myself to the nursing homes today, which was crazy! The kids were wired and uber talkative. Which is quite fun, but overwhelming at times (especially for my introverted self :) ). The nursing home part of the day went well and was pretty fun. The kids have formed a special relationship with one lady, Mrs. Dolores (who the kids call the Quilt Lady, because she's always working on a quilt), and she was in a really funny, happy mood today. We had a good time laughing. The craziness commenced when plans began to form about a few of the kids finding the right boyfriend for me. They're apparently scheming to advertise all over campus for the right guy for me. Oi! If they carry the plan out, there will be a problem. :)

I floated the river this past weekend, which was an experience, to say the least! It was really low, so we couldn't just float at every point. And there were tons of Rednecks everywhere. In my opinion it made it more enjoyable, but Kim, Leasha, and Sean didn't particularly enjoy having more beer and smoke in the water than H2O. :) That was a joke. But Nate and I did have a pretty fun time laughing at their reactions to the drunk people. Apparently our sweet friends haven't been exposed as much to that as we have. Especially considering that Sean and Kim grew up in Africa. No Rednecks there. :)

Movies I've seen and thoughts lately:

*Jason, Sarah, Nate and I watched The Box with a few of our youth one night after youth. It was terrible. Don't see it. Ever. It just never got happy and was pretty creepy. Good idea and good cinematography, but not executed well. Bummer.
*A group of us went to see Inception. AMAZING! Kind of intense, but way worth it! You have to give it time to fully appreciate it.
*Nate and I took some youth to see Despicable Me, which is Hilarious! Great story, great quotes and overall fun for the whole family. :)
*A group of our college Sunday school class went to the A-Team. I really enjoyed it! Kept me captured the whole time.
*Top Gun, A Few Good Men, and Runaway Bride are a few flashbacks that we have enjoyed plenty! It seems to have been a Tom Cruise summer so far. Not complaining at all!
*Jason and Nate and I saw Salt this week. It was intense, but great!
*Lastly, because of all the action films lately, I declared last night a chick-flick night, and we watched Enchanted. Such a happy, lovely film! Nate and I both left in singy moods and smiling. Great relief from the drama of youth the hours preceding the movie :)

So, there's my life. Not super exciting, and I'm not sure how to sum up everything that goes on, but that's the attempt. :)

Things to look forward to in the next week:
-I'm about to head out with Emma to play around with my camera.
-My parents are coming this weekend!! It's quite time for family time and a vacation!
-Moving lodging locations about four times in the four nights...nut
-Going to the grandparents in East Texas this next week. Adventures to come. (Hint: Bees/Honey. Get excited because I sure am!)
-Going home after that, and to the Inter Milan/F.C. Dallas Game!
-Relaxation!

I hope everyone has a great, relaxing weekend!

~Brittany Nicole

Oh Weekends! What a Great Relief!

I love Fridays! Since I work at a church, technically Sunday is a work day, so we have Fridays off. This Friday, pretty much everyone in Arkadelphia was out of town, so I had the day to myself. Needless to say, I didn't do a whole lot. It was lovely! I wouldn't want to do it everyday, but it was nice. It gave me time to catch up on some of my favorite blogs and websites and read. I read a lot! I also got to edit pictures and play with my new camera. I bought a Nikon camera this week, and Thursday I went to test it out around OBU. I'm excited to learn how to use it well. :) Complete set of pictures from the shoot can be found here. It's just a test run, so hopefully I can take pictures around the same spots later and the pictures be even better!
Here are a few examples, and some of the huge changes that have been happening on campus. Pretty exciting stuff!

[the new camera!]

Happy 4th of July From My Family To Yours!

In the rush of things, I haven't been able to give a proper account of my 4th of July weekend and following. I can't think of a better way to do so than by showing what happened, rather than just talking all about it. So enjoy the pictures with slight narration :)

I went home as soon as we got back from camp, and had an amazing weekend with my family! We didn't do a whole lot, but I think that was my favorite part about it.

[Mall fun. Love my crazy family!]

[This is what happens if you give us a full bowl of fruit. Silly faces and an empty bowl will result in about eight minutes!]

[the makings of ice cream! Excitement hangs in the air!]

[We made homemade ice cream for the first time in Brady's life, and he loved it so much that he couldn't smile or pose for a picture until the bowl of ice cream was gone :) goofball! But it was delicious! Next time we're going to make mint chocolate chip ice cream! yum]

[Mom was super excited too! :) ]

[Some of the great treats we made! Strawberry Shortcake, homemade rolls, and ice cream]

[Celebrating the 4th with the Hamiltons! What a blessing to have such great friends!]



Highlights of the weekend includes:
*Going to the mall with the brothers, Mom and Amy
*Seeing Knight and Day with the family for the second time
*Decorating the non-strawberry cake like an American flag with my brothers and ending up eating two cartons of blueberries and strawberries!
*Celebrating with my family and the Hamiltons
*Catching up with different friends at church on Sunday
*Having Starbucks with Kelly
*Sonic Blast run and catch up with my youth pastor, Chris
*Getting to watch the world wake up and a gorgeous sunrise as I drove back Tuesday at 5:40 a.m. for staff meeting

[It was taken while I was stopped, I promise Mom!]

Since I've been back, highlights have been:

*Getting to make dinner with Nate for Sarah, Caleb, and Emma! We made Chicken Parmesan and Peppermint Pie! So great! The same night Nate and I went to a game night get together with our college Sunday school class and then to see the A-Team with some people! All was insanely fun!
*Seeing Spain win the World Cup Sunday! We had a viewing party in the student center at OBU and about 30 people were packed in there rooting for the two teams. So fun!
*The back to school isle is back at Walmart!
*I had a nice little conversation with some ducks at the Lake when Leasha, Sean, Nate and I hung out. We then went to see Knight and Day! Amazing. I highly recommend both the lake and the movie :)
And the rest can be read in my last two posts about Sunday and Monday night :)

Introducing: WUPR

We decided about a month ago to have weekly unplanned events that were somewhat planned, so we could just completely hang out with kids in organized, but not structured settings. Originally we were thinking bringing a party in a box over as a surprise to some random youth's house, but it progressed into our weekly Bible study instead. So WUPR-Weekly UnPlanned Rondeivou (which I'm not sure how to spell, and have looked in multiple dictionaries) happens on Monday nights. Tonight, being Monday, was the kick off!

Tonight’s Bible study was really great! We’re going through a video study on happiness by Sean McDowell, which is pretty good. It has some questions and a guide for Bible study sessions that it suggests going through. Well, since I’m in charge of planning these Monday night WUPR’s, I had watched the video a couple of times, read through the study guide twice and prayed and prayed about what I was going to talk about. For some reason I didn’t feel quite right just going through the guide. I guess it seemed a bit shallow. It has good questions and ties in Bible stories in with the video which is about people’s lives that are teens now. I just felt that our kids would give the usual Sunday school answers and that I would tell them things that they’ve heard all their lives, so I was a little unsettled about how this evening would progress. Well then I found out that Jason announced that the evening would last from 6:30-10:00. WHAT?! That’s a really long time for me to entertain and do a Bible study. That would be a long time with youth no matter how great the speaker! So I was praying about what was going to happen all day today, but mainly as I was doing errands. Driving is my favorite time to talk to God. That may be weird, but in the car and in the shower are the best times for me-maybe because I’m completely alone with just Him, without distractions. Anyway, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t do anything really well unless it was God doing it, and I threw my hands up. I would rather go into any situation completely unprepared and not knowing what is about to happen with my hands up and God leading me, than be in control. Because when I’m in control then things fall apart, but if I throw my hands up and let God lead me, no matter how stressful, He’s got it all under control. His ways are far bigger than mine and I don't ever want it any other way.

So, tonight went really well. The video lent itself to its own questions and I didn’t have to look at the guide once. Discussion flowed like a rippling brook and important things were talked about. It was good. God is good, and it is good to be in fellowship with Him and His children.

A Little Journal Entry

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This morning during Sunday school, I experienced one of the coolest things that has happened to me in a while. We, as a college Sunday school class, are going through a list of questions that one of our fellow students at OBU has given us from a Muslim standpoint, because she is Muslim. She has about 7 Word document pages over things she has searched out in the Bible and struggles with to comprehend in our faith. It’s awesome to hear from an outsider’s perspective, and to be challenged with questions that I, having grown up in church, have never thought about questioning. It’s been such a great study throughout the summer.

Here are a couple of examples of her questions:

1. John 1:20-21- “… ‘I am not the Christ.’ They asked him, ‘Then who are you? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the Prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’”

Who is “the Prophet” they were referring to if it was not the Christ or Elijah? Who else were they expecting? (Note: Some Muslims say it was Muhammad)

2. John 5:41- “I do not accept praise from men…”

Since when does God not accept praise from men? This seems like another refutation of divinity by Jesus.

3. Matthew 12:39-40- “He answered, ‘A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

“Good Friday”, the death= 1 night + Saturday= 2 nights… “Easter Sunday”, tomb is empty. 1+1=3? I’m confused. Many believe this was later added to support the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This would explain why Mark simply says:

Mark 8:12- “…Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it.”

Some questions take us back a little and stump us, and others we can easily look at the context or the culture of Jesus’ time and clarify things (like the question of Easter-the Jews counted days differently and counted part of a day as a whole day and because it was a holiday weekend they had different ways of counting when the day started, that’s why it clearly fulfills prophecy for Jesus to be in the tomb three days) (Sorry for the side note.)

Today’s question was:

Mark 15:34- “… ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

Why would Jesus say this? Did he honestly believe God had forsaken him? Can a perfect being lose faith in God? Can God lose faith in himself? Why did Jesus, who seemed to know what he was in for previously, start questioning now? It’s possible that he simply said this out of despair but would God exclaim things he didn’t mean out of despair? Would a perfect man exclaim things that he didn’t mean out of despair?

This is one of my favorite things that I’ve learned while at Ouachita! Mark 15.34 is what Jesus cries out when he is hanging on the cross, just before He cries, “into thy hands I commit my spirit.” This seems like a cry out to God in lost faith or something like that, but if we look closely that’s not the case at all. There’s a little footnote in most Bibles that tells us how this is so. Mine says “^aPs. 22:1” which means it’s also referenced in that part of the Bible. Back in the day, Jesus’ day, they didn’t have cute little pocket Bibles to carry around or even huge ones that they kept in their houses. The Jews rarely saw scripture and when they did it was in the temples, until the apostles began writing parts of the New Testament. Therefore, good little Jewish boys began memorizing parts of the Torah when they were very young. Most boys had the first five books down, at the least. Many would go on to memorize more, and if the didn’t, they would still hear tons of scripture often in the Synagogues. So when someone wanted to reference scripture, they wouldn’t say, “please get out your Bibles and turn to 1 Samuel 16, which is after Ruth,” they would begin citing large chunks of scripture so that the people would recognize it and know what was being talked about. So when Jesus says, “My god, my God, why have your forsaken me?” He is really referencing Psalm 22. Most learned people who would have been at Jesus’ crucifixion would have recognized the citation at some point. It may have taken them until later to recognize it, but they would have known a little about what Jesus was talking about. We, being not of the Jewish culture or heritage-praise Jesus!-loose some of what went on during that time and in turn, end up missing a lot of what was meant when Jesus was talking to Jews.

So this is my very long answer to Brooke’s question, and in Sunday school, we tossed around a few ideas of what could be the answer to the question before I brought up this reference. One other guy that was there was actually about to bring the same thing up, so I’m not just making this up, I promise! It was so insanely fun to see my peers come to understand this truth and to realize some of the “secrets” that the Bible holds for us if we just dig into it! It really wasn’t me telling them anything new, it was God revealing Himself more and more to us. It was pure awesomeness! We ran out of time this morning, but I wish we could have discussed the matter in detail. Maybe next week. J I hope I didn't confuse you or make you bored, but I was almost bouncing out of my seat from excitement. Seeing others come to understand truths has really become a passion! From children at VBS, to youth, to my peers, it has been an exciting ride so far!

A Catch Up In The Life Of Park Hill Student Ministry

Where to begin with the past few weeks? They've been a whirlwind of greatness and activity! God has done such amazing things! My life has been a full order of youth with many spurts of friends and dashes of family.

VBS went off without a hitch. Not one. Best VBS that I've ever been a part of, I believe. We visited Egypt and Joseph while he was in prison and his trip to the palace and return of his family. The kids loved hearing his story and dressing up in costumes from what we tried to make as the time of Joseph. :)

It was great to see young children worship Jesus without reservation and completely in their element! I wish we could have that happen more often.

Nate played Joseph, and definitely got into the part...He shaved his head to become truly Egyptian-complete with a hieroglyphic Ictus (the Christian fish symbol) on the side of his head. :)

I really enjoyed watching out youth get involved with the young ones, and getting into the Egypt scene. We had a blast hanging out each night after all festivities! Sardines, Underground Church, and Minute-To-Win-It games all ensued!


One of my absolute favorite things so far this summer: The Mystery Adventure Trip.
Our Mystery Adventure Trip was a huge success! We had talked up the adventure for months, had made videos, and kept it all a secret. I didn't even know what we were doing until about a month ago, that's how much of a secret it was. :) So as the trip came around, packing lists were made and passed out, permission slips had been turned in, guesses were thrown out, and excitement hung in the air. We took 18 kids and loaded up in the van and my car with only us 3 leaders knowing what was going on. Mystery was the theme of the entire week. We headed out to Shady Lake to meet up with Dr. Jackson (a professor at OBU) and his crew who would be holding the camp all week. Dr. Jackson has a ministry that is really neat called Outdoor Discipleship Ministry, and they hold camps for groups and take them canoeing, rappelling, hiking, backpacking, etc. We met them at Shady Lake and had camp. It was just our youth group and the ODM team out in God's creation for an entire week! I loved every minute of it (minus the sleeping on rocks and coming home with around 300 mosquito/chigger bites). I think one of my favorite things was getting the kids out of the norm of Arkadelphia and away from distractions. I know it was good for me to do that as well. Another favorite from the trip was the third day that we were there. We had team building games/activities for the kids, and I was blessed with the opportunity to watch our youth perform different tasks. Most of the activities had to be done silently and it was amazing to watch how they worked together to get the task done and include everyone. Their personalities definitely came out and the kids shined at their different positions within a team. It's quite hard to explain, and I wish I had it on video. Awesome. :)

[Here's a few of the pictures from the week]

[team building]

[after rappelling]

[caught in a huge thunderstorm while canoeing; we stopped to let it pass, but it was absolutely awesome to see come in and be in the middle of]

I have too many pictures from the trip to put up, but to see full albums click here for VBS and here for Mystery Adventure Trip photos, or visit our Park Hill youth website. :)

So that's pretty much what is going on in the life of our youth group right now. We're starting a new Bible study on Monday nights, and are going to be going through a video series with Sean McDowell on Happiness. So if you could keep that in prayer, I'd be grateful! We also do a nursing home ministry on Thursdays, which is a huge stretch for me! If the kids didn't enjoy going, I might bail real fast on that one.

God is doing mighty things in our kids and in my life. We had a great couple of weeks at VBS and Camp, but things are still messed up in a lot of these kids' lives and some are hurting pretty bad and others making rough decisions. I pray that somehow I can be used by God to bless their lives and bring honor and glory to His name. I pray that these youth will be shown Christ and His love through me and the other youth workers.

[tomorrow i shall write a continuation post, just so we're clear that this one isn't done] :)