Oklahoma 07: Part 9 – Sunday Recap

Posted on September 30th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Here is how things went on Sunday:

The girls are staying at a house of one of the local ladies in the church that has moved and has her house on the market. Us guys are staying at Springs Of Grace Baptist Church, the church that we are ministering at while we are here.

We were able to get to bed around Midnight but we had to get up and be presentable by 9AM since that is the time that folks start showing up for church!

First up was Sunday school where our team split up into different classrooms and sat in on the different lessons for all ages.

Next up was the service, which was pretty cool. There are quite a few large families with lots of kids. Some of the kids have special needs so it makes for an interesting time during the service. It was pretty noisey. However these folks have learned, unlike most people I know in California, how to ignore distractions during the service. For me it was really difficult to get through the service not becuase of the noise but because of the kids with special needs. My heart is very soft for those with disabilities and it is very hard for me to be around them for any exteneded period of time and still function normally.

Second was a family style potluck lunch. College students + Home cooked meal = HAPPY!

Third was canvassing the neighborhood and passing out flyers for the activities this week. Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday is the kids Vacation Bible School. It all culminates on Thursday with a community wide block party where the church will have a chance to reach out to the community that is immediately around them.

Our final task for the evening was to help run the youth group that meets on Sunday nights. We played lots of crazy games and had a blast fellowshipping with the kids.

Tomorrow is going to be a planning day as well as more canvassing except this time we are going to the projects. I have a feeling that our team us up to the challenge but will be pretty shocked by what they see tomorrow.

Oklahoma 07: Part 8

Posted on September 30th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Right now we are at the youth group playing youth group games. Today has been a great day and I can’t wait to tell you about it but blogging ok the iPhone can be pretty hard when you have a lot to say. Internet is sketchy here so I haven’t been able to blog on a real computer yet. Sorry if the posts slow down a bit.

Oklahoma 07: Part 7

Posted on September 29th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

WE MADE IT!!! Time for bed! More tomorrow!

Oklahoma 07: Part 6

Posted on September 29th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

We are in Texas about 200 miles from Oklahoma City!!! We should be in Tulsa in about 4 hours or so. Today’s trip has been uneventful but long. Keep us in your prayers as we are on the home stretch.

Oklahoma 07: Part 5

Posted on September 29th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Well we are back on the road and are 131 miles from Albuquerque. If I get a chance later I’ll post some road trip pictures.

Oklahoma 07: Part 4

Posted on September 29th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Well we are here in Gallup, New Mexico. We’ve checked into the hotel and we are gonna get up in approxamatley 4 hours. It’s been a long night. After my lasst blog we stopped at a gas station in the absolute middle of nowhere and one of our teammates accidently locked the keys in the car! Yep it’s been that kind of trip. We made it the rest of the way without incident but we’re all pretty tired and ready for some sleep.

More tommorrow…

Oklahoma 07: Part 3

Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

So there have been some set backs and we are just now on the road for real this time. Our main SUV broke down about 8 miles from the college. We were able to get alternate transpiration but it definately took a while and some convincing. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to convince someone to let you borrow a vehicle for 9 days and for 3000 miles!! Anyways, I’ll try to post a video tonight if we have wireless at the hotel.

Oklahoma Journal Fall 07: Part 2

Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Well we are on the road!! More to come!

Oklahoma Journal Fall 07 Journal: Part 1

Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Well it’s the night before the big trip and I am doing laundry. The Pelican Case for Iron Eagle arrived and I had fun plucking out the foam. I took a little road trip with my RA to “West Hollyweird” to pickup the tape I needed for the camera. The batteries are charged. My digital camera is charging now and the memory card has been cleared and is ready for whatever comes our way. This trip will be well documented digitally and I am very excited about that. I will definitely be posting as often as I can. The limits of my iPhone will be highly tested on this trip I can already tell. It’s starting to feel more like a tool every day.

I can already see the spiritual battle starting, so please be praying that we will stand firm in all we do. Getting there and back again is half the battle so be praying for the long road trip as well.

I am really excited to be going outside my safe little comfort zone. Don’t get me wrong… THIS IS SCARY! But it’s a good kind of scary. God has placed great leadership in place for the team and has provided our team the opportunity to go where there is a real need right now. To borrow the expression, time is short, hell is hot and so we are charging forward with nothing but a water pistol.

*Please note that this special series of blogs will include guest posts from other team members as well as short audio and video clips so check back often! We may be posting more than once a day!

TMC Journal Fall 07 – Part 5

Posted on September 26th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Two words…

FIRE DRILL!

Oh what a beautiful morning!

Posted on September 23rd, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

This morning I woke up and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise. I’ll post a picture later, but I love mornings after it’s been raining. It was a good start to the day. Anyways, Brian Howard is getting ready to wrap up the sermon so I better pay attention.

EDITED: Sunday 8:43pm

Here is the picture I promised :

Moms, Oklahoma, Parties, Coffee and Rain Oh My!

Posted on September 22nd, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Whew! What a day! My day started off in chapel today. It was quite possibly the best musical worship that I have ever experienced in chapel before! A team of international students did a tremendous job leading us in musical worship this morning. It was very emotional for me to realize just how much God has blessed me this past year. About a year ago we got some terrible news about my Mom that left us wondering just how much time we had left to spend with her. Today we had lunch in the cafe at school. Something that I thought a year ago would never happen. That just goes to show how little I know about God, His will, His plans and His way.

After I said good-bye to Mom I went to meeting for Outreach Week. Here at TMC in the fall classes are canceled for a week and the students are sent to different churches for Outreach Week. Last year because of my Mom’s illness I ended up serving at my Home Church and sticking close to Mom at the hospital. This year, because Mom has been healed, I am going waaay outside my comfort zone and traveling to Tulsa, Oklahoma to minster at a church there. I will be making a documentary about our team as well as helping put together a media campaign for an inner city community center the church would like to raise funds for and build.

Later in the evening I went to a party at one of my Professors house. He decided to have a party to welcome all the new Communication students since he is the head of the communication department. I really enjoy his parties not only because of the food but because I get to sit and have conversations about intellectual things and not be looked at like I’m crazy. As communication students we all have a lot in common because we’re all suffering through the same classes and we’re all subject to the wishes of the head of the department. He is very demanding and the students in the Communications department are expected to be intellectual, readers and writers at the very least. Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t discuss O’Henry and Faulkner the whole time; we did digress to feeding each other grapes and discussing the finer points of male female relationships.

After the party I headed off to the off-campus dorm of Cornerstone to visit with one of my buddies. We had a great time going out to coffee and hanging out. As we were sitting there rain began pouring from the sky. I had to walk back to my car in the rain without a jacket or umbrella and ended up getting pretty wet! It was awesome! It is the first rain that I’ve experienced in a long time. Even though I was uncomfortable at first I finally felt that rush of getting into a car, being soaked to the bone and enjoying a good laugh with a friend.

Needless to say, it has been a long day but a good day. Things have been very busy here and I am sort of behind on some of my work. Today was encouraging because I felt the joy of the Lord through-out all that I was doing. Tomorrow will be nose to the grindstone again, but today was important for many reasons. Among those is that I have had the opportunity to learn about enjoying today and not worrying about the next day.

“31′Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ”What shall we eat?” or ”What shall we drink?” or ”What shall we wear?” 32For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34″Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.’”

-Matthew 6:31-34 (ESV)

TMC Journal Fall 07 – Part 4

Posted on September 13th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Tonight in my Intro To Mass Communications we watch a video of John MacArthur explaining some interesting facts about the Geneva Bible. From what I could gather it is a bloody Bible, sometimes literally. Protestants and those that sought to translate the Scripture into English were burned at the stake. In this video John MacArthur described a Bible he once saw that had been dipped in the blood of a martyr. It led me to think about how carelessly I treat my Bible and the Scriptures. I don’t read near as much as I should and I own at least 5 different Bibles that are in a sad state of disrepair, and not because they have been read. But because I casually discarded them somewhere in my room only to be stepped on or shoved to the side for some new electronic gadget. There are men who shed their blood so that I could freely read the word of God in a language that I understand.

I can also think of someone else that shed His blood so that I could freely be a part of God’s Kingdom and experience Amazing Grace.

“21For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

- 2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)

Something else I was thinking of was the fact that in Genesis 2 God does something amazing with mankind.

“7Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

- Genesis 2:7 (ESV)

But He does the same thing with His word as well.

“16All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work”

- 2 Timothy 2:16-17 (ESV)

The same breath of life he breathed into man is similar to the breath of life He breaths into scripture. An eternal breath. A living breath. A unique breath that is only given by God. So why is it I treat scripture with such disregard on a regular basis? Why is it so hard for me to have that desire to constantly be in the word? Why am I more excited about reading the latest press release from a computer company then I am about reading the Words of the Living God that He has breathed life into?

My Memories Of 9/11 – Redux

Posted on September 11th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Since some of you are new to this blog, here is a link to my post from last year on my memories of 9/11/2001.

Link To Previous Entry

TMC Journal Fall 07 – Part 3

Posted on September 10th, 2007 by Cliff Ames Jr.

Thank you to all of you who have responded to my previous post. I’d still like to hear from more of you so drop me an e-mail.

So one of the things we get to do here as students is participate in 2 church services a week. In the morning I am at Copperhill Community Church doing work study and in the evenings I like to go to Grace Community Church where the illustrious John MacArthur is the Senior Pastor. There are things I like about both churches and there are things about each that bug me.

What bugs me about Copperhill is the people are just so darn friendly. I can’t find a mean person in the bunch. Not a one. It’s funny. Ever since I started going there a year ago I’ve been trying to find something wrong with this church. They teach from God’s word, the worship Jesus, they treat communion with respect and they baptize people. I suppose you could say I, knowing that churches are made up of broken messy people, am waiting for the honeymoon to be over. I don’t think it will be any time soon.

Grace Community on the other hand is everything that Copperhill is not. They are a large mega-church that has been around for a long time and are steeped in tradition. You can’t walk into Grace Community and not know that you are in a conservative church. The ushers wear suits and ties. Even the band looks very professional. They take everything that they do there seriously. Sometimes too seriously. So here is my one complaint about Grace Community. At their Sunday night service this past week they started with a song called “Holy Is The Lord” by Chris Tomlin. The opening words to the original song are “We stand and lift up our hands.” However at Grace Community, someone lifting up their hands in worship is a very foreign concept. I understand that there are those that would probably be distracted by the raising of hands in their church, but Grace Community has gone so far as to change the lyrics of the song, so as not to encourage such an outburst. “We stand and offer our praise” is the new lyric that they abide by and frankly I think that’s a mistake. If a church thinks that a lyric in a song isn’t fitting with their style of worship then don’t sing the song! Why go through the hassle of changing a lyric and throwing off others who know the true and original lyric? What does that say about what you think about an artist that created that lyric for God’s glory? Drop the song from your repertoire but don’t change it. Even more distressing is the fact that the lyric wasn’t even theologically questionable. For a place that places so much authority in Scripture for everything they do I know they’d be hard pressed to find a verse or a passage that commands Christians to not raise their hands in worship!

All this is to say, Sundays are very interesting for me. In the morning I go to a church that has no tradition except that there is no tradition. And in the evening I go to a church that has tradition for the sake of tradition.

Don’t even get me started on my home church!;-)*

*Just so there is no misunderstanding, I love my home church and have been going there for 16+ years and will continue to go there and be a part of that family for as long as God wills.