The Gathering.

Wooow it's been a long day! Haha!

I picked up John at 7am (really 6am) & we went to the Kenosha building to pick up my drums & haul them to Pleasant Prairie. He made a pretty good roadie. I appreciated the help. Got all the drums inside & set up in a reasonable time & then ran through all the songs for the morning with the team. I wasn't nervous at all, & I had a few slip ups here & there, but ultimately it was a great time of worship, & everyone in the congregation was really excited to have drums back, so that was encouraging!

Went to lunch with Kate, Becky, Stef, Dan & John at Panera, then came home & caught an hour-long nap before picking John up again for The Gathering. We rehearsed all the songs & everything went smoothly. Man, it was SO encouraging to see so many different youth groups from so many different denominations meeting together & worshipping. I wish more cities would have meetings like that for the youth. It's so amazing to see so many high school students just really wanting to go deeper with God. Awesome. After everything finished up, one of the baptist youth groups invited everyone on the worship team back to their coffee shop till 9:30. I hadn't planned on going, but something about it felt right so I went with everyone else. As soon as I got inside & sat down at a table, I saw a girl by herself sitting on a couch nearby. I thought I should go talk to her, but had no idea what I would say...then I saw some other people approach her & promptly leave, so I could tell she was in a bad mood, & why would me going up to her change that? But God kept speaking to me about it, & finally I figured, what have I got to lose, right? So I introduced myself & just started chatting. She actually opened up to me about alot of stuff...family, school, friends, church...stuff she likes & doesn't like about all of the above, problems & struggles. And at the end of it all, I gave her my phone number & told her to look me up on Facebook, & she goes, "Do you ever feel like sometimes God sends people to everyone ELSE right when the need it, but never to you?" I said I used to. And she said that I was an encouragement to her & that she would look me up on Facebook. I hope she does. So much of what she said almost exactly paralleled how I felt when I was going through some of those same things. It's awesome to see how God works...what if I had never gone over to her at all? Just goes to show that stepping out in faith really is worth it.