Merry Christmas!!!

Thought this was pretty interesting. Just goes to show you where we've "progressed" as a country. We need to get back to what CHRISTmas is really about!!!

Annual Dinner/Quiz Awards

We were blessed to have over 50 people attend our annual dinner and Bible Quiz Awards night. We had a lot of fun and Kim did a wonderful job with the Mexican dinner that we served. Pictured on the right were six of the top seven quizzers. They are from left to right: Abby Sunde, Emily Harder, Dan Chojnacki, Andrew Skinner, Morgan Thompson, and Brittney Zettler. Brittney finished the year as our top quizzer and Morgan finished in second place and was the rookie of the year. Please be praying for our quiz ministry as we are contemplating major changes that would hopefully make us much better and more competitive nationally. As always with new things, it’s a little scary, but I believe that it will turn out to be a very good thing for our league.

Family Vacation in the U.P.

We had a great time getting away over Memorial weekend. Here are some pics of the trip!

New Posts Coming Soon!!! (really they are!)

Hey everybody, I've been really slacking on getting things updated as of late. Look for new posts coming soon!

First Night in Tomahawk!!!

We had an awesome time in Tomahawk on the 6th as we kicked off our club there. 15 teens and five adults came out to help us get things started. The exciting thing is that there were five different churches represented St. Paul Lutheran, Grace Lutheran, St. Mary's Catholic, Vineyard, and Northland Bible Church! That was our goal when we started to get as many churches united as possible and God blessed us with a great start to that! Vineyard has let us use their youth building which as you can see in the pictures is top notch. We started out with the ever popular "Full Contact Spoons". There was rug burns, blood, and for the first time a broken finger! It definitely lived up to it's name this night. The teens all loved it and I'm proud to say that in the group that I was in I dominated Tim Nelson to take first place!!! (Make sure to check out his picture below, the red eye makes him look REALLY intense!) Next we played the game "6". This game you get into a circle and everyone has a piece of paper and there is one dice and one pen. Everyone takes turns rolling the dice and when it lands on 6 you start writing from 1 - 100. Whenever someone else rolls a 6, they rip the pen out of your hand and write as fast as they can. It was a riot, although I only rolled one 6 and got up to 10 before the pen was ripped out of my hand! My lesson was titled "God's Pruning Job" and was based out of John 15. I talked to the teens about times in their lives when they feel God has allowed them to go through tough times. Times when they might have thought that He left them. I encouraged them to rely on God even more during the tough times and realize that He is always there, even when we face trials.

I was so encouraged by the excitement and turnout. It was a great start to what I feel will be an awesome ministry in Tomahawk. Thank you for your prayers and if you are in Tomahawk, come on out and see what's going on!

Christmas Party in Rhinelander

We had a blast on the 17th at our Christmas party. It included the festive sounds of classic Christmas songs such as "Feliz Navidad"! We had a great time with the gift exchange. My "gifts" were a headless Bob the Builder toy that played the most annoying music and the arms and legs moved. I also got a pair of Ponch Poncherello sunglasses (nice little reference for all the old folks out there!!!). It was a great time and my lesson was on the true meaning of Christmas and how we need to tell others about that as well.

Junk Food Night

Yesterday we had our "Junk Food Night" in Rhinelander. Things started out with "bobbing for worms in chocolate pudding". It's a relay race where you have to run up and dive into a bowl of chocolate pudding covering gummy worms. Then you grab it and spit it out into another bowl. I'm not going to brag or anything, but MY TEAM WON!!! After that game we played "Junk Food Relay". It's the same as the food torture relay, but with more edible food. It was a great night once again and a neat development is in our worship. I was joined by Ben Guzik and Eric Kirby and the worship felt much more alive! It was great!!! The topic of the message was trusting in God no matter what the circumstances. I really feel that a lot of Christians and some churches believe that when things are going great that you are in God's will. But what happens when things go bad? Does that mean that you aren't in His will anymore? Sometimes that is the case, but more often than not it is God's way of shaping and molding us into the people that He wants us to be. Or He might use trials to develop the character trait that we are the most lacking in. Whatever the case may be, I wanted the teens to know that God is ALWAYS in control and that He has a plan for all of us. The sooner we trust in Him to get us through the hard times and give Him the glory in the good times, the quicker we will see what He has in store for us. Even better than that we have someone to go to when things are falling apart all around us. Someone that we know has us in the palm of His hand and won't give us any more than what we can handle!

Classic Game Night in Rhinelander

Last Monday night we had our classic game night in Rhinelander. We played the "classic" games of Four on a Couch, Whomp 'em, and Full Contact Spoons. It was a blast and there were only a few minor injuries, which is amazing!!! Four on a Couch your goal is to get four guys or girls (depending what you are!) on the couch. You start out with two of each on the couch and everyone has a slip of paper with a name on it. There is one empty chair and the person to the left of that chair calls out a name. That person then goes to the empty chair. The game gets harder when we have the teens switch the names when they are called. It was a lot of fun, and of course the guys won all three games!!! The next game was Whomp 'em and it is exactly what it sounds like! One person stands in the middle and has a foam bat or other object. Then another person in the circle starts by saying their name and another person's name. The person in the middle then tries to hit that person with the foam bat before they can say their name and someone else's. It's a lot of fun!!! (If you are in the middle!) Then finally we played Full Contact Spoons. It is just like the other version except the spoons are placed at the end of the room and you have to run and grab a spoon before they are gone. You can watch the video and it shows Alex and Kriby in our championship match.

We had an incident earlier that day in our new house where the plumbing backed up and flooded our basement. All the boxes and furniture got soaked pretty good. I was able to use that as an example of our lives in Christ for the message. The owners of the house had redone all the plumbing up to where it meets the old plumbing that goes out to the street. I was looking for leaks all over the new plumbing until I saw it pouring out of the old stuff. Turns out that the old pipes had roots growing in them and plastic bags were flushed down completely blocking the flow of water. I likened that to all the messages that were given up until last Monday. We've covered a lot of topics and dealt with a lot of issues, but if there is an underlying sin or disconnect with God, the messages won't have any power or impact. Because of that problem everything will look good on the outside, but what's deep in their souls will cause things to "back up" and stop the flow that God desires in their lives. I asked the teens to "get real" with me and God and write down what that sin was. I was blown away by their honesty and sincerity and I pray that I will be able to help them get these things right with God. What a great evening!!!

Kristy's 1st Quarter Awards

Kristy had her first quarter awards assembly a couple of weeks ago. She received the super attendance award for not missing a day of school. She also received the Principal's Award for doing great work and being a good student. She just had lunch with her principal today. This morning she said that she didn't want to go to school and we didn't know why. Then she said that she was scared to have lunch with her principal! Well she went and had a great lunch! We are very proud of her!!!

Kristy's 6th Birthday Party

Can you believe it? Kristy is now a six year old! We had a good time with the family (next year we promised Kristy that she can have a party with all her friends - not ready for that headache yet!!!). It was a High School Musical theme - her favorite movie.

Bible Quizzing

Bible Quizzing is going great. We have nine teams this year from Merrill, Tomahawk, Rhinelander, and Edgar.

Crandon Sr. High

We recently had our "Iron Chef" night in Crandon. What an awesome night! If you read our newsletter, you know how great a night this was! The teens were given tons of ingredients and had to make three different dishes with one common ingredient - biscuit mix! There was pizza, some nice desserts, and of course the ever popular pigs in a blanket. The dessert tasted really good, but I did notice Emily Boodry start laughing hysterically. Watch the slide show and look for the picture of the three of us bent over the trash can. I won't tell you what she put in it, but it was REALLY gross!!!
This was the night where there were a lot of new teens. Praise God that He worked that night and seven teens accepted Christ!!!

Family Outing

We recently went as a family to Bradley Park in Tomahawk. I know, WOW hugh? The cool thing is that ministry has been so busy and we needed a little family time together. It was a beautiful fall day and we went for a long walk out to the point. On our way back I used the opportunity to teach my daughters about creation vs. evolution. We had a time of prayer and the girls really enjoyed the discussion.

Fear Factor Nights in Rhinelander and Crandon

Always a crowd pleaser, our annual gross out night known as Fear Factor was just held last week. The first event is the Happy Meal Smoothie! Trust me it's as gross as it sounds! I have two volunteers come forward for the seemingly harmless task of eating a happy meal. Putting out the fries, cheeseburger, apple dippers, and drink (no I didn't make them eat the toy) they were still feeling pretty good - until I brought out the blender! Everything, except the toy, was thrown into the jar and I hit "frappe"! I've had this before, but the thing that made it so gross this time was actually the apples! They didn't blend up all that great and were pretty chunky!!!

After that we had our food relay. We had 13 different items in paper bags ranging from pretty good to down right disgusting. The teens had to run up and grab the bag closest to them and then eat/drink whatever was in the bag! The good consisted of jello snack packs, bottle of coke, and chocolate. The bad consisted of SPAM, oysters, beets, artichoke hearts, and baby food. Not really gross but extremely hard to get down was peanut butter (chunky of course), frosting, and a whole lot of crackers.

The games are always fun, but we also had an awesome time of worship and learning last night. My message topic was on Faith and I used Abraham as my example. When God called him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham had so much faith that God would provide. I used that passage to give a good example of faith. Then in Mark 6 the people's lack of faith in Jesus resulted in Him not performing major miracles or amazing teaching. We looked at how we need to "rest" in the grace of God and trust Him to do what He says He will do. We ended the night with an invitation for the teens to let go of their fears that have been holding them back. We did the trust fall - where you stand on an object, cross your arms and fall straight back. Before and during their fall I instructed them to think about where their faith was weak and give that over to God. Three teens came forward and did the exercise and it was pretty powerful.

Lock-in

On the 19th and 20th we held our annual lock-in. 121 teens attended and more importantly, there were 27 teens who came forward and made salvation decisions!!! Another eight teens rededicated their lives to God as well. One other highlight is when we had volunteers come forward and pull nylons over their head. After that we had their partners attempt to shove a banana through the nylon! I think the grossest part of the whole activity is when I walked around from team to team and heard the loud sucking sounds as they tried to liquefy the banana to allow it to go through the nylon! We had the usual events such as bowling, basketball, volleyball, swimming, video games, and sumo suits. We also had a local band play for part of the night. It took a couple of days to recover from this event but praise God for the results!!!

Kayla's First Haircut!

After two and a half years, Kayla finally had the experience of her first haircut! We did the annoying parent thing and cried and said, "Oh this is our last first haircut".

Flag Football

Our flag football season is all wrapped up for another year. We had five teams competing for the prize of supreme domination - which of course didn't go to my team!!! After a plethora of groin pulls, blown out calves, achy joints, and extremely bruised ego's - one team was left standing. Congrats to Vineyard as they now have won back to back championships. Can you say dynasty????

Cow Tongue Football!!!

You haven't lived until you have played "Cow Tongue Football"! We had a blast with the teens in Rhinelander. It's amazing how something that is as rough as sandpaper can slip right through your hands! The grossest part of the night is when the tongue was thrown high into the air and one of our Jr. High girls let it go right through her hands and wrapped around her face!!!

Rhinelander Bible Club

Things are going great in Rhinelander! We're averaging around 11 teens a night and growing. God is definately being preached and the teens are growing in their knowledge of Him.

Hello to all!

Hi everyone,
Here is my first attempt to do this Blog thing. We will be posting as much as possible, or as often as I remember to do so! Check back again and see the pics of our youth ministries and hear what God is doing in our lives!