Letting Your Light Shine: The Matthew 5:16 Project

When I got back from camp, there was such a light inside of me.  Everywhere I looked, there was God.  He made the beautiful desert canyon, the smiles on people's faces, and the hilariously ironic moments of my life.  Above all else, I learned and grew in the idea that God has a sense of humor.  So much so that it would cause me to laugh throughout the day at the little things that He would do to put a smile on my face.  It almost felt like a really happy dating relationship, without that getting too weird of a concept ;)

But that's the thing about coming back from camps or conferences that focus on your relationship with God.  Your heart is soaked in His message and your mind is zoned in on focusing on being more Christ-like.  While at camp, I had the opportunity to relish in prayer and conversation with Him.  He spoke to me through prayer and the dialogue we had was amazing.  It was refreshing and wonderful.  My friend, and fellow YL leader, Rhonda spoke about how she sees God in everything.  From the beauty of nature, to smiles, to babies, to everything good in life.  That mentality and the goodness of that week was so enriching for my soul.

Cuz I'm HAPPY: Spreading Seeds of Happiness

Over the weekend, Brittany and I decided to explore more of the downtown area.  At a great store called Dragonfly Drygoods, we found these quirky and fun trinkets called Seeds of Happiness.

  

Seeds of Happiness was born out of an act of kindness. Mark Borella, a sculptor, created small smiley faces from left-over lumps of clay. He gave these to his friends whose young son was dying of cancer. He told them: "I know there is nothing I can say or do to make you feel better so I thought I would bring you some smiles to help you get your smile back. I call them Seeds of Happiness." Sharing the Smiles continues to grow as our customers plant Seeds around the world.

An Exercise in Personal Values

Last week I had the opportunity to be a part of a group that was doing a trial run of an ethical decision making program.  It was created and hosted by one of my favorite leaders, a chaplain from the Reserves who is visiting from Texas.  Her presence is so neat because she is the first female military chaplain that I've ever met and she's also very awesome.  She created a program that was not only awesome, but it wasn't a death by PowerPoint that, well let's face it, most military briefings are like.  We sat down to do the trial run and were introduced to a personal values exercise and a choose-your-own-adventure exercise.  What what! Yeah, it was that fun.  I hadn't done a CYOA since I was like in 4th grade.  The personal values exercise was what I wanted to focus on in this post because it was not only fun, but it provided a point of clarity.

On a sheet of paper were several 20 values and a blank space to add your own.  The values had their own descriptions and the exercise involved putting a plus sign next to your top eight values that you feel are most important to you.