Post-TCX

Well, I got back from TCX yesterday. I ended up having to drive because we were short one driver from Milwaukee, but it ended up working out alright. I had never driven that far by myself, so it seemed like a long drive. Anyway, TCX was so awesome this year! Well, it's awesome every year, but I got a lot out of it this year. When I got there, I (as well as most of the seniors) noticed that we didn't know a good majority of the people from our campus!! We had 50 total people, and there were only about 14 juniors and seniors combined and the rest were underclassmen! I'm not going to lie, I thought it was going to be kind of awkward and a little divided with there being so many underclassmen, but it was just the opposite! The theme of the week was "I AM", but most of the speakers didn't focus on specific names of God in their talks, like I had expected. But they were still really good. One of the main things I took away from the week was just a greater understanding and realization of how good God is. Of course, I had always heard "God is good" and whatnot, but a couple of the talks just really made me realize the extent of his goodness. One of our speakers talked about God's goodness and sovereignty, and mentioned that God is good, even when things don't go the way we want them to. He doesn't always promise things to go well, but His overall plan is good all the time. He doesn't promise things to prosper and be great all the time, but we can rest assure in the fact that He will use everything for His good plan. I think this is a really good point that most people don't realize. God doesn't plan good things to happen, but only allow bad things to happen. He plans everything and uses everything to help us grow and as part of his plan. An analogy that this speaker used really stood out to me. He said that God's plan is like a cross-stitch. From below, it looks like a mess of threads that don't look like anything or seem to connect. But from above, it looks like threads forming a beautiful picture. How true!! From here on Earth, God's plan doesn't ever seem to make sense and nothing seems to connect. But from above, all God sees is a beautiful picture being woven together by the things that happen in our lives. It was just very reassuring to realize and helps me to see things in my life from a different light. Rather than moping about things that don't seem to be going well (like my finances right now), I can be confident that God will take care of me, comfort me, and use this for the greater, perfect plan He has for me.

Another highlight of the week was the cheer competition. I'm not going to go too much into it because it's a long story, but they have a school cheer competition and we went into it this year holding the championship title from last year. We found it hard to top our cheer from last year! This year's wasn't quite on the same level as last year's, but it was still pretty good! But only because some of us seniors spent many a late nights thinking and talking about how we could make it better. Our biggest rivals, the University of Minnesota, were our biggest competition, with about twice as many people at TCX than us. Their cheer was decent, some parts were better than others, but they still walked away with first, and we got second. The cheers were judged based on applause/cheering as well as people standing up. Clearly, with the most students there than all the other schools, they were able to make a lot of noise. However, we had a ton of other people cheering and voting for us in addition to our own school. We all think it was unfairly rigged, because they probably didn't want to let the same school win twice in a row. It's not our fault we're that good!! :P All in all, it was a ton of fun and we know deep down inside that we had a pretty dang good cheer!

Lastly, I got to see some friends from project this week!! It was great to see them and spend a little bit of time with them! I even got to see my discipler from the summer and we got to chat and spend some time together, which was great. Speaking of friends, like I said before, us seniors didn't know many of the underclassmen that came. But, what made this year different, was that we walked away with a really good bond!! Adam, one of our staff guys and the emcee for the week at TCX, had to give the last talk of the week, which is usually the most intense, but was feeling really inadequate and like he couldn't do it. If you don't know Adam, you have to know that he is the type of guy that can just get up there, speak from his heart, and deliver a funny as well as really meaningful talk. So it wasn't like him to be experiencing so much doubt. Anyway, it was decided that we should have a prayer for him all through the night before his talk, as well as during lunchtime the day of. Just the act of prayer together really bonded us. But it was so cool to see Adam's talk that night because it was SO good, his personality just shined though, and everything we all prayed for happened. Adam later told us that he still felt so much doubt until right before he spoke, but when he got up there, he said that he felt instantly like he was being carried through it all. So cool how God came through!! Anyway, like I said, prayer together bonded our group, as well as the time the women spent together in prayer after women's time and the times we all just hung out.

Well, I'd love to tell more TCX stories, but I need to take a nap before work. Only a couple more weeks of this job...I can't wait to get back to Madison!!!