Christmas Tree Time

For our first Christmas together, we decided to cut down our tree. The day after Thanksgiving, we drove to Petersen Tree Farms in Anoka, MN and cut down a balsam fir tree together. Here are pictures from the farm and the finished product

Thanksgiving in MN

We had Thanksgiving here at the Currie's (the director of COM). We ate outside because it was such nice weather. Here is the picture of us with their five kids

Men's retreat

We had a men's retreat for NW students this past weekend at a farm about an
hour north of the cities. We called it D-Quad (Dudes, Dating, Discipleship,
and Dark Night Games). We had 31 gus come on the retreat. We watched a
sermon by Mark Driscoll on dating Friday night, followed by a game of
capture the flag in the dark. Andrew Knight and I talked about Christ
increasing in us (John 3:30) and the Kingdom increasing through on Saturday
morning. We talked with the guys about coming on our Christmas Conference
http://www.chicago06.com We also had a "Paul Bunyan" contest to see who
could chop down a tree the quickest. We actually bent the axe. That is the
picture below. Jennifer is going on the women's retreat this coming
weekend.

Leaders Time

This is a picture of our leaders at Northwestern College. (We are in the picture as well). We had a time a couple of weekends ago where we gathered our leaders to talk and pray about what it means to be a leader in our minsitry. We saw God sharpen the vision of so many of our students. Our director, Ken, came and shared what it means to be "poured out like a drink offering," as Paul writes in 2 Timothy. He talked about the significance of the term "drink" offering. When you offer a drink for sacrifice there is nothing that remains once it is burned up. Grain or animal sacrifice leaves ashes, but the drink offering leaves nothing behind. What a great picture of how we are to live our lives here on earth. We have already seen how God has used that weekend to help make our students more intentional with their time.