Catching up

Hey everyone! Life's been crazy since my birthday! I've been so busy and then on Sunday, Grandma Ginger passed away. She was such a wonderful great grandma! I will miss having cookies at her house and having girl talks about the 'young men' in my life :) I know she is now in heaven with the Lord!

Right now, cloud is making a nest in one of my drawers and i guess she is going to sleep there....weird cat.

ANYWAY! Before I get distracted, I just wanted to let you all know that I have stuck to my no computer until I read the Bible thing, and I have already learned so much! Reading the Bible everyday makes me feel refreshed, happy, and ready to cheerfully start the day! Spending time in prayer is also great! I've been seeing God work in my life and in other peoples lives because of prayer!

Wow! It's now midnight! I'm going to camp today! I am going to a training camp for this summer called RSI (Riverside Servanthood Institute) I went last year, and basically what we did is run all of the camp events with the least amount of help from the adults as possible! It was quite fun! I can't wait to go! :) Last year I went to RSI but wasn't able to do summer camp...but this year, I'm going to summer camp for 3 weeks! I am so excited! I want to be a cabin leader so that I can help mentor girls and help them fall in love with our Prince, the Lord Jesus Christ!

Sorry I haven't been posting much! I'm hoping to be more active in my posts once I get back into the swing of things! (I'm still recovering from spring break...hehe)

~Cana

Looking back....

Looking back to a year ago, my sixteenth birthday, my life has changed so much! God has shown me so much this past year! I thank God that He didn't desert me when I was choosing not to follow His will. Even though I was deliberately living in sin and I knew it, God never gave up on me and chose to work in my life! He was and is so faithful! I knew God didn't want me to date, but I went down that path anyway, thinking it was okay because this situation was 'different'. So for a couple of months, I was living a lie. It felt good in the moment but deep down, I knew this wasn't what God wanted. He never gave up on me though! My wonderful parents eventually found out about my double life and grounded me. For a while, I was mad at them, God and everyone, and I just sat and felt sorry for myself. After a couple weeks, my punishment laxed up and I took advantage of that and started up with my double life again. This time was different though. I started to feel a tug at my heart that was trying to pull me out of my double life and back to God. But I resisted, and resisted and still stayed in my sin for a couple of months. Then, I went to Ballet Magnificat and came back challenged and changed! I still hadn't given everything back to God, but I believed that's what God used to finally break me. A couple of weeks after I got back, I was having a particularily rough day and I decided to relax and play my guitar. I chose to play the song "Whatever your Doing" by: Sanctus Real, and as I was singing, I broke down because of what the song was saying. It was saying: " It's time for healing, time to move on. It's time to fix what's been broken too long. Time to make right, what has been wrong. It's time to find my way, to where I belong. There's a wave that's crashing over me, and all I can do, is surrender..." And it goes on. As I was singing I started to realize that I needed to surrender my life to God! By the time I was done singing the song, I was practically sobbing but I had to pull myself together because my sister was saying that we had to leave for a boating event with youth group. So we went and on the way home from the event, I felt God was telling me that there is so much more to life than what I had been living, and He will provide for me if I give Him my all! So, as soon as I got home, I did it. I gave Christ control of my life once again! It was extremely hard, but oh so worth it! The biggest thing I learned that year was that anything worth doing in life is going to be hard. So, that was probably the most significant change in me throughout the year, but that was only the beginning! Since giving up my whole life to Jesus Christ, He has been so faithful and I have seen his work in my life. I was continually searching for more and more and couldn't get enough of God and His Word! My cgs family kept me encouraged and I have grown so much from Cgs! About 5 months ago, I started doing dicipleship with the lovely Erin Neises and I have grown so much with her too! I love you Erin! haha...so yeah basically I grew a ton in my faith over the last year! Just really recently, I have been being challenged to go even deeper. I'm aiming to live a set-apart life and I want to keep giving everything to Christ! My favorite scripture is Phillipians 3:8: "Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. For His sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him." I'm praying that as I go throughout the next year and the rest of my life, I will keep my eyes fixed on what is important and count all things as rubbish so I may be found in Christ! I want to thank my parents, Steve+Steph, Erin, all of my other youth leaders, and my friends for encouraging me in my walk with God. I love you all!

WOW Today has been quite a day...

SO! Today was day #1 of no computer until I have had my quiet time with my Prince and the Lover of my soul, the Lord Jesus Christ :) It worked out good! I was cheerful, kind to Haley, motivated, and just plain out happy! I think I like this plan! After my quiet time, I didn't even feel like I had to check my websites first thing. I put away my laundry, did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. The only think that I have found that I don't like about being motivated is that I run out of things to do in the day! But there is a good side to that. I don't have to feel guilty when I want to go do something like write or read or go on the Susie forum. I really hope I will be able to keep this up! I'm hoping you readers of my blog will help keep me accountable when it comes to this!

Today, as I was reading some magazine articles in Set-apart girl, I stumbled across this place called Ellerslie. I started reading the brochures about their leadership training and my heart started beating really fast, and i was shaking! I was so excited about it! haha I think I may have found what I want to do after I graduate! They have two options. 1 semester training or advanced training which goes for a whole year. I will definitely be praying about this option. I think it would be a very healthy thing to do to shape my future! Maybe I can do the dance YWAM montana thing and then go to Ellerslie! Or something else like that. Anyway I was super excited to find this!

This afternoon, me and Haley went to the Christian book store and spent some time looking around in there. I had two gift certificates I got for my bday, and Haley just wanted something to do lol! I found the book "The Lost Art of True Beauty" by: Leslie Ludy and I bought it! :D I'm so excited to read that after I finish re-reading "Set-Apart Femininity". I also found a really cool journal that I want called the "Amazing Grace Journal". Haley got a Journal that was made for girls and it has some really good uplifting stuff in it! Also, we found some stuff that we think we should get mom for mothers day!

Tonight was the first meeting of a Bible study that we will be doing with a couple from my old church. They are an awesome couple! We will be meeting Monday afternoons at 1pm. I'm really excited! Also, I asked Haley if she would like to have a devotional time with me before she goes to bed at night and she things that would be a good idea too! It's not going to work tonight though because she is watching a movie with Dad and is about to fall asleep.

I have a really early morning tomorrow (7:30...not early but early for me ;) so I better go to bed!

~Cana~