Worship

The last few months have been chaotic with lots of travel. Adventure, culture, friends, conferences, trainings... all good things! 

This week, I'm currently at another conference with 600+ attendees, representing JESUS Film.

The first night, I joined the conference in their worship set. Again, I was reminded how much I love singing! As a college student, I was apart of the worship band at Grand Valley State. It has been too long since I've been apart of a servant team like this.

With all my travel, I don't always get to partake in corporate worship with other believers. So I'm SOAKING THIS IN! I feel like the last time I was able to experience something like this was this summer out in Colorado, at Cru's All Staff Conference.

Please enjoy and maybe take some time to worship through this song: 

[Chorus]

Bless the Lord, O my soul

O my soul

Worship His holy name

Sing like never before

O my soul

I'll worship Your holy name

Remedies for recovering from having your wisdom teeth out

Last week, I joined the "wisdom-teeth-out" club. Did you know it exists? Well, it does - I mean, at least it should based on the things you have to experience! (I don't recommend Youtubing 'Wisdom Teeth Removal' - though, truth be told, while I did find it gross, it was also fascinating! In another life, I think it would be interesting to be a surgeon.)


As I know my roommate in college, Kaitlyn would despise it, I won't go into gory detail of the surgery (partly because I don't remember a thing as I was completely knocked out). I do want to note some life lessons and remedies I might offer to those who have this journey ahead of themselves.

Note: post surgery, I don't think I did anything like this:

 
Anyways....

DO'S

• Do have ice packs on hand. I might suggest 4 so you can swap them out in pairs as you cradle your face to ease the swelling. 

  

  I would wrap the ice pack with a paper towel for my face, and hold it with the towel so my hand didn't freeze.

• Do buy 'soft-food-groceries' the day before. I purchased soups (Cream of whatever - you can eventually "graduate" to soups of substance like Chicken and Wild Rice - though I did not eat the Chicken), yogurt, Jello and pudding, fruit and Kale for smoothies and, if your careful, popsicles.
   
  
  
  
• Do rent or gain access to movies - library, Netflix, Hulu, etc. Reading was a hard option as usually both of my hands were busy holding the ice to my face. 
• Do download the app "Over Drive Media". At the recommendation of my sister (heyyo Liv!), I did download this awesome FREE app. It connects you to your library to virtually check out audio books! I've been listening to the Hunger Games (one of the movies I watched) :).
  
• Do take it easy! There would be moments of pent up energy, that would be spent all to quickly doing the most basic things - like changing my ice packs. This was probably the hardest for me to do/be patient with/learn.
• Do take Ibprufen to help with swelling! I...I...I have been a chipmunk for 4 days and wish I would have taken these more often sooner.
• Do rinse your mouth with salt water. For me, it at least made me feel like I was cleaning the area of possible food.

DON'TS

• Don't take your antibiotic and pain medicine (usually Vicodin) at the same time! It causes explosions in your stomach and vomiting will occur. Trust me, I know. Alternate every two hours between the two pills. And need be, cut the Vicodin in half - that helped me a lot!
• Don't eat solid foods. You will miss them but just don't.
• Don't use straws! The vacuum/sucking action of your mouth could cause the sockets in your now empty gum cavity to re-open and not heal as quickly. Praises I avoided that!
• Did I mention don't take your antibiotic and Vicodin at the same time? Cause it's the worst.

Looking back, I really thought I would be in more pain post-surgery. Coming off a busy work schedule this past month, and as inconvienet as having teeth pulled is, I'm pretty confident God knew this would be the best time for me to do it. It forced me to rest, to do nothing, which was hard for me to do. But very needed.

Hola Panama

A picture of the whole conference

Panama was such a fruitful time in meeting staff as well as students of Latin America. So many relationships were built - I've even been invited to speak and train staff and students in El Salvador!

My teammate Gabe and I shared about the history and purpose of Jesus Film Media and all that is encompassed in our digital ministry. I went through an app training of all the ins and outs of app features. I am thankful God chose to use me train over 100 people from 21 countries in this revolutionary ministry tool.

Part of the Jesus Film Media team

As the week progressed, Gabe and I fostered a team of Latin American staff and students, as they dreamed, strategist and planned ways to use technology to reach the digital work - specifically those in Latin America. Those who chose to be on our team, did so because they saw great value in using The JESUS Film clips in their ministry. It was great to work with them and be encouraged by their passion and charisma to share Jesus with people in their scope of ministry.

Countries represented: Costa Rica, Panama and Venezuela

..The taste of death...

Yes, it is something for the mind to truly chew on. (Note: this really isn't a dark post.)

Since June, I've experience great loss: my generous Grandma Booth, my sweet Great Aunt Doris (both of whom had personal relationships with God) and my favorite childhood dog, Rocky; all passed away. Each of them left a great impression on my life ...and I won't go on to comment about animals after death... but I do want to talk about death.

Tonight, I was reading in Hebrews 2, and verse 9 caught my attention:

"...But we see Him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone."

Death really isn't something everyone experiences. Death is eternal separation from God - which yes, happens when someone passes away, but only for those who never chose that personal relationship with God. Unfortunately, our world has perfected its art of distraction when it comes to keeping people away from a relationship with God.

Death was the agony Jesus truly felt when His physical body was dying on the cross - not really the physical pain. Because, out of this crazy love for us, He took on all sins of all man of all time as He hung on the cross, separation from the Father was a must. God could not and will not be connected to sin. And because of that, with all foreknowledge for both of Them, Jesus had to be separated from the Father.  

Death.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel! Which is the whole purpose of Jesus' life - which we are about to celebrate His birthday in a few weeks...

He came to taste DEATH so we didn't have to, and so we could truly live! And that is what one thing I want to keep in the foreground of my perspective this Christmas season.