I wonder how my life will be diffrent next Easter.

2005 at the Saratoga City Center:

I remember walkin in, knowing absolutely no one. Literally. I knew Zack R. but I'm 99.9% sure he was it. By then, it would've been about, maybe, 6 months I've been goin to Northway. I didn't care for the youth ministry, nor the services it held on Sundays. Then for Easter, Honestly, I couldn't have cared less about anything technical about the service, or the service itself! I was too wraped up around in Cross Country, and my friends, and their friends, and their problems from school to really have appreciated such a milestone it was for Northway.

2006 at the Pepsi Arena:

I remember last year at Easter, walkin into the Pepsi Arena with my mom only knowing a handful of kids from Vertical, most of them from my small group, -which was really quite small, only about 6 girls in it, [including me] 1 moved away, and the others don't ever come to Northway anymore - except for a few guys, and maybe a friendly greeting from an adult here or there, I still knew basically no one. I wondered through the area until I found someone I knew, which I believe was Paul...Either him or Josh...I can't remember, but yeah. -I barely knew Caroline, which I do remember her on crutches. I knew Karl, Jordan, and possibly Joey. I hadn't the slightest idea of who Jon or Nic were, nor DaveB, Cherish, James, Alicia, Ashlie, Bates, or Little Jon.- I wondered pretty much the whole time, making sure my families seats weren't taken, and hanging out with Jordan, Paul and my old small group leader, maybe even Sarah Smith randomly. Then when the service started, I remember during worship, seeing the graphics, the lighting, looking up, seeing the spotlights, looking down in awe at the people who actually had the ability to run the sound and lighting board, thinking to myself...whoa, that is really cool stuff.[note: I had NO idea what any of that "stuff" was, I just thought you've must been someone to have the ability to be able to know how to work it.]

[I started to make more friends from church after Easter, and doing even better in running. Although I did lose a few friends in school, I started noticing they only liked me, not because I was their friend, but because I knew people that they wanted to get to know["people" a.k.a: guys] then totally ditch me, then come back when the guys dumped them, or get totally pissed at me. Which is fine by me, because they aren't worth crap to me now. I met cherish, and we seriously clicked. We were friends from the moment Sara introduced us, and only had one [major] fight, which some of you may or may not remember. =P Meeting her was kind of the foundation of meeting everybody else...]

This year at the Clifton Park Campus:

My mom parks in a parking spot, [obviously] as I get more and more self conscious about wearing a white blouse, white with black pokadots on the majority of the skirt, then black with white pokadots as a frilly type thing at the bottom of it, and about 3in high "wedges" also attached was a thick black with white pokadot ribbon that wrapped around near the end of the shoe. It matched SOOOOO well. Before I go on and on talking about clothes...I started to complain about how I really didn't want to make an idiot out of myself by walking in there, and probably tripping and falling on my face in between services in front of everybody. My mom turned to me and said, "I didn't spend that money for nothing you're going in there, and you're not going to trip..." So I got out of the car and walked up to the entrance, not feeling any more confident in myself until I started getting like 5 billion compliments from Libby, Josh's mom, Jeremy[which was shocking, but I think he was only being polite] and several other people, and some people that I didn't even know. =P But yeah, I was greeted with smiles by the Production Team, and by people in Guest Services that I knew, and a friendly shoulder hug by Bates in between services. [I would be mentioning more names if more people I knew came, but there wasn't very many people I knew there...] Although their were a few hiccups during worship for the 1st service, but as I was sitting in front of the video board, looking at the large amount of people, then to the left, then right, then behind me was Dave, then thought of last night, and how I saw all of those people standing in Malta as I was running a camera, then myself last year, and the year before, and how much my life has changed, not only the people I'm lucky to call my friends, and my role in this church, but that I [like to think] have changed as well.

It's so strange how God had changed my life. I never would've dreamt where I am today, 2 years ago, last year, or even 6 months ago for that matter, that I would be so blessed by the people around me. I usually am pretty self-centered, but it's taken me awhile to realize that it wasn't by my good luck that I'm here where I am today. Gods blessed me, of all people, with friends that I care about deeply, and I actually know they care about me too, and that I'm actually depended and relied on to be there every Sunday to do stuff [semi] behind the scenes, and at vertical/nine12 too! All I know, is that I've been having this feeling to serve more, and do more and help more where ever I can, but for now, I just have to be patient [ugh]

[The 2nd service went extremely well, for anyone who cares to know ;]