Maybe that title is an understatement. At least for me it is.

Kristen and I (Zach) announced this week that we will be moving to Knoxville, Tennessee on March 20th. We’ve been a part of The Branch for 4 years and now we step into something completely new. Completely foreign.

What am I gong to do on my Tuesday nights now? I won’t have any middle schoolers saying strange things (“Never have i ever milked a hippopotamus” – Billy Piazza) and I won’t have any loving death threats from high school girls that don’t want to hear a joke because their day was the WORST!

In 6 weeks we’re going to pack up a horribly overpriced moving truck and drive 10 hours south to a new city, with new faces, a new home, a new church…

We’ve never done this before. Stepping down from a youth pastor position and saying goodbye to the people that we’ve grown so close to. It’s sad. But at the same time, it’s exciting.

It’s exciting for us because we know we’re doing what is right and following the path that God put us on. It’s exciting for us because we’ll get to be near family again after 4 years (we’ll have a free babysitter).

And it’s exciting for The Branch. I know that God has big things in store for you guys. The leaders of the Branch are awesome and love you guys and are going to take this thing to the next level. Help them with the transition. They’ll need your energy and muscle and input and encouragement (and participation, for all you homies that try to not play our awesome games).

That’s that. The news is out. Now we all count down the days. Let’s hang out and have some fun before we take off. Maybe we can eat some good food or do something stupid before we go.

Hey everyone, it’s Ryan here! Today was a great day for, not just me, but everyone it seemed. Saratoga is becoming more and more like home everyday. We had a fun day today. In the morning we got up, had breakfast did devotion (talking about God’s gift for everyone), and met some new friends that we could work with. They are Teen Challenge. Teen Challenge is a program for those who want to turn to christianity and make a new and better life for them. It is an amazing program and they are all awesome. We get to see them tomorrow also.

We planted a garden (Andraya, Kimmy and I), we painted (Abby, Chris, Angela, Josh, Zach and Kristen) and the Teen Challenge guys worked on taking down the attic and the old office. They are all done exactly how they should be. With planting, we watered all of the plants around the church, pulled rocks from dirt, raked, put new dirt down and made a whole new garden! It looks amazing. Oh, and I had to make up a song which I am sure you’ll hear when we get home. It was about mulching. The painting team did awesome! They painted the front and back porch. It seems like they had a great time and actually grew closer. I feel like yesterday, new people became friends in our own youth group and it was really cool!

After working, we had a meeting with the All American festival on the fourth of July. We are gonna be doing some awesome things there! We are all very excited. After our meeting, we had a huge dinner! It was spaghetti with meatballs, and chicken. They had Alfredo sauce, and Marinara sauce and cheese sauce. All awesome and home cooked sauces. They provided us with so much food last night that we are having it for lunch. Trust me, there is no need at all to worry about us not getting enough food, we are getting plenty. The people of the church provide with great meals.

It was a great time after dinner. We got ready and went downtown. When we got down there, we went to Congress Park. We took pictures there then we split up into groups of three or more and then we were able to go and check out around the really cool stores they had. It was like an outdoor mall! Super cool. They had some cool stories when they came back. I guess there was a group that looked like a “gang” so Abby was saying “come at me bro”. Obviously not to there faces but, who knows if she would or not? Then Katie, was singing along with a group to Glory to God as Abby was saying this. Really funny! So when someone is messing around with people and says “Come at me bro” or “Imma punch you”, we start singing that song. Then Andraya was taking a picture of Chris with a shopping cart- if you ask me why, I don’t know -and when they walked away, it went toward a bunch of cars, but Andraya sprinted for it and stopped it. Fun night.

When we got back here, we were gonna go shower but the leaders were tired (which I can totally understand). I was dirty and can’t sleep like that so I had to improvise. So, I took a shower in the hose. Andraya ran the water for me. I cleaned up and felt good. Then, some guys walked by and said that was the way to do it so I told them we were missionaries. He said “Well, you do you, and imma do me, and someday we’ll meet up in the universe”. Weird…….. I guess we made some new friends??? Well, you can see my “How Missionaries Shower” video when we get back.

We are having such a great time and can’t wait to see you all back home. Saratoga is great and we are having an amazing expierience. The food is really plentiful and the congregation is really pulling us through. Without some of them here, this would be a lot harder then it really was put out to be. Can’t wait to see everyone. Ryan is out! :)

Hey everyone!! Caitlin E. here to update you all on how the mission’s trip in Sarasota Springs is going :) We arrived on Friday around 5 p.m. Then we had an awesome meal of pizza and went over some rules and etc. on what we would be doing during the week. Of course we had to practice our human video and band because we were to perform the next day. Anyways, after all of that everyone was about to cry because we all wanted showers. So Mrs. Joyce was gracious enough to take a small group, while Zach, Kristen, Abby, Josh and I practiced for band. Around like 11 p.m. We finally decided to go and take showers when everyone else made it safely back. So funny story…we were told it would take 20 minutes just to get to the campgrounds to take our showers. From it being night time and getting confused on directions, we ended up driving for 2 hours until we decided to stop at a bar and get directions lolxD. So that was fun, we were all satisfied after our showers and Kristen was about ready to pass out since it was 1 in the morning.

Today the service in church went well. We all got up around 6 in the morning to get ready and had a delicious breakfast :D Pastor Todd’s sermon on resurrection was pretty awesome. Overall, the human video did great with Chris acting very enthusiastic while playing Jesus. After church, we did some physical labor and tackled down some walls (not literally…but we did break them down). While I was downstairs picking up debris and what not, Abby and Angela come down from upstairs working, covered in pure dust. Apparently Zach had a good time seriously taking walls down and Abby had fallen victim and received a small injury, but don’t worry I came to her rescue and was her paramedic ;)

After all of the fun of hard work, we took a break and went to the campgrounds to go swimming and canoeing in a paddle boat in the lake. I had never canoed before, so I had difficulty on putting on the lifejacket lol. Nonetheless, we got it on to be safe from the murky, dangerous, water below with bullfrogs and who knows what. So I got into the paddleboat safely, with Ryan and Kimmy. The paddle boat was malfunctioning for some reason because it didn’t like to turn the way we wanted it to…so we were going in circles in the middle of the lake like in the Little Mermaid, the bullfrogs were amusing us by singing us a wonderful croaking song. When we got tired of going nowhere, Abby wanted to join us, so we back paddled all the way to the dock since we couldn’t go forward. I was in the back of the boat so I tried to grab onto the metal part of the dock, and while Abby was trying to join us on our adventures of circling, the boat crushed my hand against the dock. Thus, leaving a swollen hand..and second injury of the day. Might I add..we’ve only been here one day and we are already having injuries hehe. Around 7 or 8-ish, we all gathered around the campfire to sing a campfire song…or two..maybe three. As we sang and had a devotional on what it meant to worship. we also had some s’mores. What would be a campfire hangout without s’mores right? Containing Chips Ahoy cookies, and many marshmallows. In conclusion, amazing day and nightttt.

Now we are back safe and sound in our humble abode, ready and pumped for our Day 2 tomorrow of being a blessing in ministry and helping in serving to the church and community.

We’ve cracked open the cover to our new series called “SUPER: How to Use Your Powers.  Without the cape.  And funny underwear.”  Come on out for the next couple weeks as we take a look at how to be a hero through finding the gifts God has given us and how to  follow Jesus by serving people with those gifts.

Also, July 13th the student ministry will be getting together for food, an off-the-wall challenge, a top-secret Wes and Zach video premier, and some jamming on the guitar and keys.  Also, missionaries to the Netherlands Chris and Rebecca Green (Kristen’s brother and his wife) will be hanging out, and sharing a little about their life as new missionaries.

You don’t want to miss it.

Also, check out the Green’s sweet website.

www.allwillsee.org

So we just finished out week 2 of our mission series. it’s been going so GREAT! This week, we talked about homelessness. The night started off by splitting up into 2 teams and building “homes” that could withstand the weather and provide some sort of warmth for the entire “family”. It was quite the feat but every one did so good.

It’s amazing to see these guys really get passionate about how to help their community and world. People have such low expectations for young adults but really–these guys know what’s up. I asked them to come up with a solution for the statistic of 40,000 homeless teenagers in America. The things that they came up with were so innovative and creative. I think if put into action, their ideas could seriously do some damage to the homeless population. In a good way, that is. Angela said we could build a home for them and have doctors and dentists come in regularly and have a tech school that they have to attend so they can earn a trade, get a job and get off the street. Adam said we could get them jobs at farms so they can learn how to provide for their family and take care of themselves. Ryan said we could start a church for them. CC suggested we get people to make soup and distribute it around town. Abby and Kendra said the government needs to the WPA back in business and reinstate the New Deal. (I think they just got finished with the Great Depression curriculum at school-haha.) Needless to say, I was mighty impressed with these guys. I’m so proud to be a part of their lives.

Hi there. Kristen here. I’m back from India, but haven’t quite got the Indian out of me yet. This past Tuesday night I cooked an Indian meal for our Junior High crew and we ate it Indian style–on the floor..with our right hand. (Not your left hand, mind you! That’s just NASTY.) It was an awesome night! In addition to the Indian-ness of it all, I also introduced our new series that’s starting next week. ‘Mission’ is a series that challenges us to go deeper in our walk with Christ and to extend ourselves past our comfortable version of Christianity into something much more meaningful. We’ll be studying the Gospel’s and finding out what Jesus had to say about social justice and injustice and how we’re supposed to act in our community. We’ll be going out on the weekends, serving in the soup kitchen, cleaning up some parks, singing to some old people… etc. etc. And concluding the whole shebang with 30 hour famine. Want more info? Check out http://www.30hourfamine.org

Thanks for reading guys!