hi guys welcome back to my vlog first of all I want to say thank you to all the
people who've been watching so far I've been getting a lot of encouragement it's
just good to know that people enjoy watching these so this blog is gonna be
a little different because this past week I didn't film it very much so I'm
just gonna share what happened I do have some footage that I'll be inserting here
and there so this past weekend I was in California Anaheim California for a
conference with InterVarsity InterVarsity is a nationwide Christian
Fellowship for college students the conference is called ambition it's a
conference to empower and encourage and inspire students staff faculty at the
universities or colleges like community leaders to reach every corner of campus
to spread the word to all campuses but I'm not going to be sharing too much
about the actual content or what was shared at the conference because that's
all free on YouTube which I will link below
everything was livestream so I guess yeah I'll link to all those videos and
especially the ones that impacted me the most so first off I was not very
excited to go yeah I was kind of closed off to the idea of going I mean I said
yes to going already but I was just like and it's just gonna be a conference like
I'm gonna be tired they're gonna try to make it - I'm just gonna be like
whatever is fine I'll just you know we'll just go through it and then I'll
go back to school and that's it but it yeah it actually ended up being really
good and I was very surprised there are some kind of crazy stories I feel like
they're crazy to me I actually missed the first day of the conference which is
only a three-day conference my flight kept getting delayed and I did talk about
that a little bit so check that out hey friends so I am in my hotel room
at Anaheim California my flight was supposed to leave Dallas at 1:10 we
actually took off like seven o'clock they kept pushing back the flight
because of plane maintenance it's been a long day so that was the first night the second day that more
next morning my mood was like okay I feel better I'm glad that the traveling
debacle is all over with but I am still kind of like my heart is very guarded or
closed off and just like he's still like man whatever in a morning session I was
just like man again and this is the first part of my story where my story
starts I guess background for the past few months I have been thinking about like where
I'm going to go post-grad okay I'm not gonna get too much into that it's too
much stuff to share basically my options the options on the table for me where
I'm gonna stay in Austin which is where I am now or I'm gonna go to the Arkansas
whenever I tell people that they're like why Arkansas that's so random though
that's a different story if you want to hear it you can let me know
yeah those are basically my two options throughout this past year there were
times when God is really poking at the idea of Arkansas God was kind of saying Arkansas
like that in the background and so I'm like oh my god the weekend before
California I was actually in Arkansas to visit I was like maybe I just need to
see the place and that isn't my previous vlog which you can watch going into
ambition in the conference I just didn't want to think about that because I was
just at Arkansas and I felt pretty fatigued thinking about it so I'm like
I'm not gonna think about it I'm not gonna engage with it even though I don't
know the answer yeah I'm just not gonna I don't wanna I don't wanna deal with it
okay so the first session there was a speaker who led us through this thing
called storytelling or imaginary prayer the audience we just like close our eyes
and a leader would lead us through kind of this like story that happens in our
head supposedly like God or the Holy Spirit kind of like a reveal to you
something through whatever popped up in your head basic storyline was you're in
a room it's cozy it's comfortable so pay
attention to like how you're feeling what are your thoughts like there's anything
going on then all of a sudden Jesus walks in through the door and he comes
up to you and he says something to you something that he's been wanting to tell
you so what does he say and that's kind of like where your imagination takes off
and so for me I don't know why Jesus kind of looked like a lumberjack and I
was kind of like in a log cabin kind of thing I don't know if that's important
but she came up to me and he the thing he said to me was go to Arkansas
immediately when that happened I was like I got like my guard kind of went up
because I was like that's just me it's in my head cuz I was just there I've
been thinking about this and it doesn't feel super spiritual anything so like it
just feels like it's me so I kind of disregarded it I still like kept it in
my mind by I was like whatever so that was the first thing happened I would say
I was still pretty like closed off until like the afternoon session I went to
this session called the empowerment experience which is about asking the
Holy Spirit to lead us in spiritual gifts to serve other people okay so yeah
I was just like yeah spirit gets like this is probably gonna be very like
charismatic but it really wasn't actually and so in
this session is when my heart kind of opened up to the rest of the weekend so
this is one of the really interesting stories of pay attention so we're in
groups of three I was with two students who are from my region so I've met them
earlier that day one of the things so we went through three things but one of
them that we went through was praying for healing I have prayed for other
peoples' physical healing before and nothing's happened and so I've always
kind of been like I believe the Holy Spirit allows people to heal other
people you know the prayer and stuff but I was just like that spiritual gift is just so rare
your life I definitely don't have it and I definitely could never like the Holy
Spirit could never use me to do that so that's just kind of the mindset that I
have about it oh yeah so one of the friends I was with her name is Kennedy
she has scoliosis and so she was saying that she always kind of pain in her
shoulder and lower back so we're like oh wait perfect we totally pray for that
we both prayed for her just a simple short and then once both of us just
prayed for her back to back then we asked her on a scale of one to ten how do you
feel and she's like oh well I feel like the pain is like a 1 and she was
surprised we didn't ask her like what her pain level was before but she said
it always hurts and it was hurting earlier in that session and so the fact
that she was surprised it was like whoa so she wasn't expecting that she knows
what her pain is like I know something must have happened so we were all like
woahhh kind of like cool but still skeptical a little bit and
so we're like okay we're gonna pray for you again so let's just pray maybe
something will happen me and Andrew both pray for her again did the exact same
thing and then we asked her so yah how do you feel and she's like oh my
gosh the pain is like zero and she's like I'm shook and we were all like oh my
gosh I can't believe it yeah so that was like really eye-opening thing for me and
the thing that kind of helped my heart to open back ups like oh yeah God does
work even when you don't care or even when you don't really expect Him to
yeah you can hear what Kennedy has to say after that session
Kennedy!!
she just got healed
tell me how your back feels
my back feels over 9000 it feels really good right now
and i don't know how to feel about that
yay even though her scoliosis is still there but I think it's just amazing that
in that moment God just took away all her pain well so we asked her like
throughout the weekend like oh yeah how's your back how's you're back and she's
like I feel okay about it was hurting again typically I am like really
skeptical of it like when it comes to if I was involved in praying or like it was me attempting to be healed
but I don't know I'll just like very encouraged by that that whole encounter
with God so then whether whatever your spiritual religious convictions are like
you can believe what you want but the basic thing that came out of it for me
was that my heart became open again - just like experiencing receiving and
of whatever God has a store the next morning session yeah so there's this
testimony shared by a couple Beau and Kristina who are InterVarsity staff in LA
and they have been in California for a really long time
they bought a house they're ministry is thriving on campus
their church community is great their family all just moved there to be around them
and California's amazaing obviously
um but so they were sharing a testimony and how despite all
this you know how their life is so perfect God was calling them to move to
Louisiana sounds kind of familiar yeah so God was
telling them to plant InterVarsity in Louisiana and I think the feelings that
and the experiences that they went through when they're sharing resonates
so much that's exactly how I feel except for them it's you know probably on a
much way much higher scale I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lie like they're
like moving the whole family they've kids moving a whole family and California
and Louisiana I think is a lot more different than Austin and Arkansas after
after that I was like okay I won't push back anymore it's a whole time I was just
trying to find loopholes and trying to yeah make excuses or whatever
yeah
surprisingly like after that conference I was okay okay with going like I think
my answers have been prayed or my prayers have been answered because I've
been asking God to like make my heart desire what his heart desires for
at least me being in Arkansas or whatever like His heart is for the campus or his
heart is for his kingdom then whatever part of that like I've been praying
He would make me fall in love with that yeah in that moment [prayers were answered] and I
was like okay I'm gonna go to Arkansas If they can go to Louisiana I can go to
Arkansas so that was my weekend I hope you guys
enjoyed hearing about it yeah now I'm just gonna show you some random clips
that happen throughout the day because I did not record very much but here it is
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