West Coast Baptist College student
Archive for October, 2009
More about Open House
Oct 15th
Open House Sunday was one of the most encouraging days in church that I’ve ever seen! I’ve been involved in some big days, but the scale of this was amazing. The week before, about 75,000 homes in the AV (Antelope Valley) were visited and given an invitation to the big day, and the result on Sunday was incredible. I attended the early service which most of the college students and some early birds go to, but even that early in the morning, there were dozens of visitors, and after Pastor’s sermon, many people trusted Christ to be their Savior. I worked in a large Sunday School class during the 11:00 hour and had a great time playing the piano for some energetic kid’s songs. They were playing a variation of musical chairs, but passing a beach ball to the music. A girl on the end of a row had to get up and take it to the other side of the room to the beginning of the next row, so it brought a smile to my face to play as she walked across the entire room, only to see her face great disappointment as I stopped just before she passed the ball off. To quote the teacher: “That was mean.”
I heard that the service going on during my class was filled with hundreds of visitors, and dozens of people were saved! Pastor Chappell’s blog or Bro. Schmidt’s blog have some good articles if you’d like to see more about it. As I said, I’ve never gotten to be a part of something this big before in my life!
Ever time that I talk about events here, I have to resist the urge to keep saying “this is another great reason to come to WCBC” (you know who you guys are!), but this annual event is such a practical way to learn how to impact your community in a positive way. It’s great that LBC has a good reputation here in the Valley, and even if people don’t agree with what we believe, they have to admit that we’ve done so much to help the community. Maybe I should add another category called “More great reasons” or something like that, but I’d probably just end up throwing everything I write in that category.
Country Harvest Days
Oct 11th
I’m going to try to just write about what I’m doing instead of authoring a comprehensive primer on activitues here, but this is something every new student should know: October is a big month here! It’s called Country Harvest Days at church, starting with Roundup Sunday (last week) and ending with the Missions Conference at the end of the month. Roundup Sunday is where everyone wears formal dinner dress… yeah, just kidding! A lot of church people, all of the kids, and lots of college students dress in their western best and come for a morning of horse riding, chili contesting and western stunt show watching. (And preaching too, don’t worry.) No, I didn’t put on any western clothes, do you honestly think I own any?
The biggest day of the year though, is tomorrow, Open House Sunday. (Actually, by the time you read this, it will be today, I’m writing this on Saturday.) This entire week every year, the church and college student body visit every home in the Antelope Valley, inviting them to the big day; there will be just two big services in the morning, with a chicken cordon bleu dinner after each one. I’ll write about it when it’s done, but this week in preparation for that, we took a day off from class, and earlier in the week, as well as Saturday, I got to go out with Dr. R on some visits. (A word of knowledge, if you’re ever waiting for him to leave his office with you, bring some homework, [otherwise you'll have to read the 1999 yearbook] it’ll be a while )
The last month
Oct 10th
The last month of school has been great, and mid-terms are next week, so what better time to pick the blog back up? It’s not like I have any studying to do or anything…
I started taking piano lessons from Mr. Daniel Hopkins, he has been working with me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and add some new things to my arsena- er, toolbox. Right after school started, he also asked me to play with one of the high school ensembles that he directs so that he doesn’t have to play and direct during practice. Ensemble practice is one of the highlights of my week; they’re great singers, and they’re a lot of fun to be around. Theother day we were going through a song that has the piano making a lot of noise during akey change, and it became very evident that I wasn’t watching Mr. Hopkins as I kept playing my heart out a good two measures after he had cut the singers off, prompting some of the ensemble to assist him demonstratively in leading me to curtail the song. Good times!
Fourth grade boys’ Sunday School is my weekend ministry; basically I get to help John McGarry out along with another college guy. We have about fifteen church boys, including a couple staff members’ kids. I had never worked in Sunday School, or for that matter, with kids on a regular basis in ministry, so this is new to me. The first couple weeks, I didn’t do a whole lot besides sit and watch Bro. McGarry and Ben run everything. Now that I’m figuring out how to work with the kids, it’s actually a lot of fun, and it’s great to try to help these younger guys learn more about God while they’re still young.