LONG Weekend

My goodness, I've done just about as much this weekend as I would in and entire week, which is pretty insane. So as I had said before, Laura and I went to Alyssa's house on Friday for her birthday, but we ended up not going to Mall of America since Laura wasn't going to be able to go. I was sort of expecting it to be a little ackward, but it wasn't, for the most part. We acctually had a conversation about homosexuals (I think because our Health teacher from middle school just officially announced that she was a homosexual) but it was kind of encouraging talking to her, because she didn't seem to talk about it like she was in favor of it. She almost seemed a bit uncomfortable with it, which was cool, because that isn't RIGHT. So I've been praying for her a lot lately, and really feel like I need to be talking with her (which is what Piper's sermon was on last night, and I'll talk about that part of my weekend, just not right now) but I'm not completely sure how. The thing is, she's heard the basic story of Jesus, so I'm not entirely sure where to start. And there's no possible way I could ever justly describe how amazing Christ is and what He did. So if you could be praying for that, and praying for Alyssa, that would pretty much be amazing. :)

So on Friday night, we stayed up until 3:00 in the morning (which was not smart, but they started watching a movie and if there's a movie on, there's no way I'll be able to fall asleep... especailly if I haven't seen it, which I hadn't) and I had to get up at 7:16 (I like setting my alarm for unusual times :) ). I acctually ended up waking up around 7:00 because Alyssa's younger siblings were playing Blues's Clues on the computer, and there computer was about 6 feet from where we were sleeping, and they were being quite loud about it. So anyways, my parents came to pick me up at 7:40 because I had Solo Ensemble. I played around 8:30ish and was SUPER nervous- to the point where I was shaking. I messed up so many times it was insane. One of my friends came in to listen because she was there to play with some other saxaphone players and had just finished and wanted to hear me play because she never had. Afterwards, she said that she thought it was really good, and my parents said that they thought it was good, but I thought that it was terrible. It turns out that Rachel (one of my friends who I've talked about with some of you), who played later in the day, checked what I got when she was there... and it was a two. Which is what I expected, but it was still kind of dissappointing. This is the first time I've gotten a two, so it's kind of a bummer. Especially because I thought I was pretty prepared... I just freaked out and got nervous. Oh well, I'll live.

Yesterday, the Van Goors, McDermotts, Murrays, Julie Webber, and our family headed out to Minneapolis around 10:00 because we were going to see the sports show. The women (besides Bekah, Hannah, and I) opted out and went shopping while everyone else went to the show. Bekah and I went off on our own after about half an hour because the men were walking too slow. After about half an hour by ourselves, we figured it might have been smart to bring one of the three cell phones in our group of people and went off looking for them. We pretty much spent the three hours looking for them and wishing we had money to buy ice cream. We all got back together at 4:00 and then found out that they did all of this really cool stuff that we never saw, so it was kind of a bummer, but oh well. After meeting back up with the ladies, we went over to Bethlehem for their Saturday night service. Piper preached basically about evangelizing. He spoke from 1 Peter 1:23 (I think?) to 2:3. I think my favorite point he made was when he was talking about how people talk too much when they're drunk. So then he went into how when we're learning about God and growing in our relationship with Him, we should keep wanting more and more and more until we're so drunk that we can't shut up and that we should constantly be talking about Him. There were A LOT of really great things said last night, but I think that was what stuck out most to me.

So that's pretty much my weekend in a nutshell (even though looking at how much I wrote... it's kind of a lot). And now I've got to go finish taking some pictures for Photography (since I haven't been home all weekend, and now have to do it today) and then I have to read 4 more chapters of Pride and Prejudice for English... but I don't really consider that homework because I love that book and probably would end up reading it today anyways. :) I hope you guys have a marvelous rest of your day of rest!