Back in the STL

Well I'm back in St. Louis and it's been a busy, but amazing last week. Anna and I arrived last Saturday and picked up our newest member of our Year Team, Kate, from the airport where she flew in from England. We've had so much fun getting to know her and she fits in perfectly with our already formed team. Poor Elijah now has 3 girls he gets to work with every day. Hopefully we don't drive him too crazy!

Soon after arriving in St. Louis, we started a week of training with all the year teamers from the states. We had 15 of us in all from Oregon, Georgia, and Missouri who would meet every day to worship, pray, listen to speakers, and bond with one another. The United States year team this year consists of 11 girls and 4 guys so we got to have all 11 of us girls staying at Anna and I's house. I thought with that many girls in one place it would be crazy and hectic, but it worked really well! We didn't have any drama and everyone got a hot shower when they wanted one so I'd say that's pretty successful!

God taught me a lot through this past week of training and then into the weekend with our Mobilise conference. I have been stressing a lot about what I want to do with my next year of my life and God answered a lot of my questions. I know now that I will be staying in St. Louis for this next year and have a desire to work with the college group here to see them grow in their lives with God. God also this past week instilled a zeal for Him that I've never experienced before. I just have so much excitment for reading the Bible and drawing closer to God than I've ever had. This is a huge blessing, because I've struggled with the desire to read my Bible most of my life. God is so faithful to change our hearts when we're willing.

One last thing that I really took from this weekend was a heart for people who don't know God. God started to put specific people on my heart to pray for. Two things really stuck out to me in this conversation I had with God.

Just share what God has done in your own life. Sharing your faith can be scary, but it doesn't have to be hard. Just be faithful to be honest with the people around you and God will shine out of you and your story.
Plead for their lives in prayer. I was reminded of Abraham pleading for God to spare Sodom because his nephew Lot lived there (Genesis 18:16-19:29). After Abraham spoke with God, God "brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived" (Gen. 19:29). Prayer is so important. Plead for your friends in prayer.

This year has started out so good! I'm so excited to see what God does with the rest of 2009!

Read More 0 comments | Posted by Renee Scott

Christmas Break

Christmas Break has been a great time with family and friends and a great time to relax. I got about 3 weeks off from my internship in St. Louis, so I had a lot of time to see everyone.

Christmas was pretty low key this year. My family traveled a couple hours to Grand Island, Nebraska to have Christmas celebrations with my mom's side of the family, but we did not make the trip to Texas this year like usual to see my dad's side. We'll be traveling there at the end of January to see cousin Brooke get married, so we decided to not go for Christmas. Along with the light traveling, gifts seemed simpler this year too. I loved how our time together was focused on just that, spending time together, instead of worrying about buying extravagant gifts. I guess good things can come from a bad economy when it forces you to slow down and simplify life.

The week of New Years I decided to spend with friends in Kansas City. It was great to see college friends from Northwest as well as friends from Newfrontiers. It was fun to catch up with everyone and see what they had been up to these past few months since we had all seen each other. New Years Eve consisted of good food and a lot of Wii. We all had a great time!

Other than being with friends and family, I've just been doing a lot of reading and relaxing. I read through Twilight again and have also been reading through the Psalms. The Psalms have been so good! Very uplifting and easy to read through. They were just what I needed.

Thursday I start my 3 day journey back to St. Louis, stopping in Ft. Scott, KS and Kansas City on the way to visit friends. My time at home has been great, but it will be nice to get a regular schedule back when I return to St. Louis.

Read More 0 comments | Posted by Renee Scott

A Story in Song

The other day, a group of us went to a grown up playground called the City Museum. The following video tells a story in song about that night. Enjoy the creative genius of the St. Louis FYT...

Read More 2 comments | Posted by Renee Scott

Christmas 360

I've heard the Christmas story every year since I was born. After a while, I started to tune out because it was the same story over and over. I forgot how amazing the story was. It's gripping. A virgin gets pregnant, angels appear, the Savior of the world is born in a stable and laid in dirty hay.

Jubilee Church is doing a 3 week series called Christmas 360. It looks at the Christmas story from the perspective of The Shepherds, King Herod, and Joseph. It was great to hear the first installment this morning and get a new, fresh perspective on the story.

I encourage you to check out Christmas 360 by either listening online or visiting us at Jubilee Church the next 2 Sunday mornings if you live in the St. Louis area. Get a fresh perspective. Give the Christmas story another chance.

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The Things I Love About The FYT

(FYI, FYT = Frontier Year Team)

1. Taking pictures in Photo Booth on our Mac.

2. Jam Sessions.

3. Good convos in the Roy.

4. Trying to read in the Roy and having at least one of us burst out in laughter so that none of us actually get anything done.

5. Spontaneous games of Foosball.

6. Worshiping together.

7. Meeting with amazing women of God.

8. Trying to get every visitor who comes to the building to come down to play foosball and then beating them. :)

9. Sleepovers with Anna.

10. Dinner times at the Hein Household.

11. Spending an 8 hour work day together, eating dinner with each other, and then hanging out till midnight. Those are good days.

12. Making impromptu videos on the Mac.

13. Singing out hearts out to the Lion King Soundtrack on every road trip we take.

More to come as the year goes on...

Read More 2 comments | Posted by Renee Scott

Put your hand in front of your face...

These last couple of days I've been really stressing over the fact that I don't know what the next year of my life will bring. Will I get a job teaching? Where should I live? Who will I marry? I expressed these frustrations to my mentor here, and she told me to stick my hand in front of my face. It seemed a bit odd, but I respect her, so I listened. She told me that the distance from my eyes to my hand was all I knew. God has given us today and that's all we need to worry about. I believe that God speaks and He directs my life, so why am I worried? God will reveal to us what He wants us to do next, we just need to focus on today and make sure we are living today as we should.

One of my good friends lost her Grandpa this past week. Her blog about his life and death really spoke to me. I want to look back on my life and be able to say that "I fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7). I want to help people, to reach out and show them the love of Jesus. I can do that no matter where I live and no matter what job I have.

I'm going to trust that God has a plan for my life and let tomorrow worry about itself.

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 7:34

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future'" Jeremiah 29:11

Read More 1 Comment | Posted by Renee Scott

Week in Joplin

I spent the last week in Joplin, MO for a week of training and it was amazing. It was great to see the other young people who are doing this same internship as me from around the state of Missouri. We grew a lot in our friendships over the week and had some great times of worship and intense conversations. It was a long week, but I would say everyone came away with a deeper understanding of God and themselves.

For the weekend about 70 other college aged people joined us and we went out to serve the community. The Joplin area was hit with a tornado in May and there were still some families who needed a bunch of help rebuilding and clearing debris on their property. Where I went we spent all day just cutting up fallen trees and hauling them to either a pile of firewood or a pile of brush. The property we were on was out in the country and from what it looks like had a good sized forest behind their house. We estimated that we cut up 25 trees in the time we were there and still did not completely clear this family's property.

When we arrived I got to have a great conversation with the woman who owned the house. She told me the story about that day the tornado hit and I was amazed at the fact that her and her family survived, let alone that their house was still even half there. Even if she didn't realize it, God was definitely there. She told me things like "I don't know why, but I just had a feeling that the roof was going to collapse in a certain area, so I yelled to my cousin to move to a different room and sure enough a tree fell right where she had been and the roof caved in." She also told me about how they hadn't gone to the basement (the place where you would normally go in a tornado), but stayed upstairs, and that actually saved their lives. I guess a door had been blown in downstairs and if they had gone down there the suction would have pulled them from the house and into the storm. Things like that aren't a coincidence. God was moving there and he was saving them.

Now I'm back in St. Louis and into the flow of normality once again. I hope that I can remember God's power in what He displayed through those storms now in the every day and apply all I have learned this past week to my life here.

Read More 0 comments | Posted by Renee Scott

Renee Marie

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Back in the STL

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Week in Joplin

Renee Marie

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