Real Like Bob

Last weekend Hershy, Nick, and I went to Mugswigs in Canton for some amazing coffee. They'd been talking about it since staff training and we finally found the time to go. David, and I had gone to Nick's house before hand to climb the silo and watch the sunset; however, the clouds didn't cooperate and so the sunset was blocked from our view. So after watching a plane land, we went to the airport and checked out some mega cool planes. David wasn't up for coffee so we dropped in off at camp and met up with Hershy at Mugswigs around 10:30pm. The place was packed so we all went and played with the giant marble ball thing in Canton and then got our coffee. Since the place was still full, we took our drinks to go and wondered around Canton. We ended up in a random green patch with picnic tables so we sat down. Twenty minutes later a 39 year old man walked up to us and sat down at the table. Over the next two hours we talked to this man about politics, drugs and his experiences with them, sex, his job, and all kinds of things going on in his life and Canton. Before he left I asked him if we could pray with him. He looked quite surprised and said that he didn't know that we were that type of people and how he was so sorry that he'd been cussing so much, etc. We reassured him that we were not the least bit upset and after 10 more minutes of random conversations Bob brought back up the prayer and we all held hands and prayed. After we said "Amen," Bob looked at me and said "I'm going to give you a hug. Do you know why?" I replayed that I didn't and he said "Do you know why? I'll tell you after I give you a hug. I'll give you a hug first." So he gave me a hug and said "Do you know why I gave you that hug? I gave you the hug because you are the only woman who has every really listened to what I said." In my prayer I had repeated some of the things which he had told us and it proved to Bob that I was listening and actually cared. He picked at a Coach key chain that somebody had left on the picnic table and handed it to me saying that I was like a coach to him because I listened to him. All we did was welcome Bob's conversation and listen instead of pushing him away because he was a homeless stranger, and through us God was able to reveal His love to Bob.

I got back to camp at 4am and was stilled pumped about our time with Bob. What happened that night is something that I have wanted to do for a long time and would love to do for the rest of my life. I want to sit and be with people, on their level. To many people sit in their comfortable homes on their comfortable couches, not giving a rip about the people outside their door or in the streets. If they even see the people they brush right past them and ignore them. Excuse me, but we all deserve to be respected and listened to. Stop looking down on people who don't have all of the luxury's you have and look them in the eyes and get to know their hearts. Everybody is hurting in this world, the least we can do is share God's love while we walk with each other down path of life. Besides who wants to spend life walking down a road alone?

Please remember Bob in your prayers as he doesn't yet know Jesus.

God Bless,
Brooke Gugel

First Day of Summer?

oh my, life since graduation...wow
So I chilled at at my Wauseon home for a week, had my last piano recital with Mrs. Bruce on Sunday and headed for Camp Luz as soon as that was over.
For the first week I trained with Everett and Heidi for Outpost camp (Tim is doing outpost as well, but he was still doing school stuff...sad day)! On Wednesday of that week the three of us were joined by some other uber cool people and trained on the Ropes Course --Complete with a test from Mandrew-- Everett also got us all certified in Basic First Aid and CPR from the Red Cross. Woot Woot! Gotta love them there classes.
So when I graduated I was uber excited to be done with schooling and tests for a while...so much for that idea. Add Mandrew's test to all of the Red Cross tests and you come up with 5 tests in one week of summer. But it's all good, many memories compliment the week.
Most everybody else came out for regular staff training June 9. Talk about being mega excited! really missed my camp family and enjoyed the reunion and the time spent getting to know the first year staff.
I had hoped to head off to camp and leave the rest of my thoughts behind me, but God had other plans. My last Wednesday night spent with my youth group was a big thing the pulled me down. Some people came in to pray over and prophesies for us. Most of what they said settled with me, but there was one comment that slid into the mix about my college major that shook me up. God and I spent a lot of time discussing my college choice and major. So that with several other things made my time rough, but good. God has been stretching, bending, breaking, and re-shaping every part of me. With His craftsmanship, this current restoration will be amazing to look back upon in hindsight.

I was planning on leaving staff training Friday evening to be ready to leave with my youth group Saturday at 7:30AM; however, that did not happen. My mother told be to head back to camp and wait out a bad storm that I was going to have to drive in from Wooster to Norwalk (Wauseon had awful storms that whole week, some with 100mph winds. She didn't want me to be caught up in a similar storm). So I made a u-turn and headed back for camp. washed my laundry, packed a lunch, and all that jazz. --Side note, thank you to whoever folded my laundry, that meant a lot to me, and lifted my spirits.--So I left Saturday morning at 4:15am after 2 hours of sleep for a 3 hour drive that ended in the Church parking lot. I stopped for coffee, but nobody would come to the counter to take my order so I got back in my car and used good-ol' water to keep me awake. My wonderful parents came to the church to say say hello and goodbye and off I went with my youth group to Reading, PA.
We spent the week at New Hope Community Center, a church that is being refurbished. I will admit, I did not want to leave camp and go. Hindsight, even though the week was quite unorganized, God worked. We did a little work in the church, cleaned a park and some streets, and enjoyed some street ministry, but what I loved the most was just being out in the city with the people! A group of us went out to find ice cream and after asking several people for directions found the place only to discover that the store clerks only spoke Spanish, (which didn't surprise us, we lived that week in a Spanish-speaking area, and were the minority) God placed one man who spoke a tiny bit of English in the store and he translated for us. I asked him which flavor was best and he recommended the coconut...it was quite tasty! The ice cream was tasty and only $1, so several of us happily found our way back to the store for more ice cream. Our translator was there again and this time I had some cheesecake, and then a short conversation with my new friend!
God placed Melanie, my youth pastor, all around me that week and enabled her to help me process and let go of the prophetic words that were weighing heavily on my spirit. One tid-bit of wisdom that helped a great deal was "if it doesn't settle with your spirit; it isn't from God." She reminded me to test the words against the scriptures, and then my own heart. Thursday evening Ralf, the local youth pastor, shared with several other men, and a woman, adding their wisdom. At the end they had some prophetic time as well. I sat in my seat most of the time just watching and not wanting to go forward and be hurt again. I was praying to God telling Him that I did not desire to spend 3+ weeks working on clean up again. My filter of truth was in place and I just sat back praying and watching. Tessa approached me and said she was sent to comfort me. I wasn't going to stand by myself and take another hit from something that was/is suppose to be of God. Tessa and a few others offered to stand with me, and they did. The words spoken settled with my soul, as I carefully fed them through the filter God and I set up. God is good.
We woke early this morning and headed home, after 10 hours in a Van, with a 2-year old that was running a fever (God, please bring peace to Becca) we were back in Wauseon.
This weekend has sleep, laundry, graduation parties, and Libbey's benefit before I head off to Camp Luz again!
God Bless, and happy first official day of summer!

'08 Graduation

Guess who finally graduated!! Woot Woot! Nicole and I carpooled in my amazing '91 Civic with some amazing music pounding out of my system. We found that the song "Whatcha gonna do with it" by Family Force 5 sounds mega amazing coming out of my speakers; it sounds almost like it was created for my car. ;-)

Saturday night I was running a fever and felt like crap, the later it got, the worse I felt. I went to bed praying that God would help me make it through the graduation ceremony and my party. In the morning I still did not feel to hot, but I couldn't skip church because I was being commissioned for Camp Luz. I got up, took some medicine and got ready for church. I had a headache most of the day, but I was at least better enough to smile and pretend to be healthy! Nicole showed up to my party with 9 herbal pills she got from her mom that were suppose to help me get better. I definitely felt like a giant pill popper when I took them, but they did seem to help! Yeah herbs!

My family and I estimate that over 200 people came to my grandma's for my party. I felt loved and honored. I am also quite thankful to my Iowa cousins Lisa and Tasha who served that tasty soup and delicious ice cream roll. Thanks ladies!

Ethan showed up in his promised yellow shorts that had believe written on the butt. They were mega amazing! After he, Jeni, Nicole and I saw Juno Ethan told us that he had shorts like the runners, which had made me burst out in laughter every time they came on the screen, and he promised to wear them to my party! I think what made them even better were his tall argyle socks. hehe, way to be Ethan!

Senior Prom

1. Yeah, so prom was May 3, it was super amazing!
   I took Rachel (my fall roommate)! Nicole took Taylor, who fit into our group like beef on a cattle farm! The four of us went to the Barn restaurant to eat before hand and had plenty of people staring and complimenting. One lady actually came up to our table and asked Taylor how he managed to get 3 ladies to dress up for him....I'm not gonna lie, we all thought it was a bit awkward, especially since none of us actually understood what she said for about 30 seconds. Rachel hid my purse while I was in the restroom..darn woman, what kind of date is she ;-) just kidding, I am SO GLAD SHE came with me! haha, her off the wall stuff really cracked us all up. For example, While we were eating Rachel stops and stairs at the wall, which is covered with antique tools, and after a bit declares "I have a random question.." Taylor and I looked at the wall, then at each other wondering what kind of question she had. Then she stated "Why did we choose to eat at the Barn instead of some place closer?" Haha, well, maybe you had to be there Taylor and I were quite confused for a second. Then I realized what was going on and pointed out that if we wanted to eat at a place between our house and prom we'd have to eat at the Country Dip, which is a small ice cream shop with picnic tables.
   Prom was at the Valleywood Country Club in Swanton. A very nice place, except someone felt compelled to make sure that there were enough chairs around tables so that everybody could sit down at the same time. Which was silly because, well, we did not eat at prom therefore the table and chairs were basically irrelevant. Wait, they did hold our party favor gift bags (which could have just as easily been put somwhere else). This year one person at every table received a garder in their gift bag, if you look at the picture with Josh you can see he was the lucky winner at his table. I really thought it was a weird thing to give out a prom....but whatever. : ) Our DJ was great! While he did play a lot of rap songs; however, he was the most diverse DJ I have heard at an Evergreen dance. He played some rock, country, and of corse Techno! Nicole, Taylor, Rachel, and I squeezed onto the super small dance floor (which was made bigger after the first song because several people decided to push some of the tables away from the floor) and partied all night! The small dance floor filled with thousands of crazy dance moves that made the place crazy hot! Every 4-5 songs we would squeeze our way off the floor and head for the porch to get some cool and refreshing air. Man, I do not think I have ever danced that much, or that crazy, before! None of us are fans of the grose "all over eachother" dancing, so we started our own crew, and dropped our own moves with the rythm! Haha, we all busted some great moves!
   Rachel had to get to work at Subway by 11 the next day, so she and I got up for 1st service which starts at 9:00am. That was brutal! After prom we all headed to the high school for after prom (imagine that). After doing their inflatable obstacle course, money machine, and a few other games we headed to the media center and played Would You Rather for.....a long time. By 2:30am none of us had enough energy (all that dancing) to remember our first option so each card had to be read 3-4 times before we all could make a choice. I became slap happy and was unable to stop laughing for more that 45seconds. We tried to play Battle of the Sexes, but none of us wanted to read the directions. Whatever we did kinda worked because we had a grand time. A few other people dropped in to find out what the excitement was (there was a hypnotist in the gym and 2 other people were not interested, so they joined us and had WAY MORE FUN), still the boys were unable to tell the girls what a colander was...According to the guys a colander is some article of clothing/accessory that girls wear. After after prom was over (at 3:30am), we went got into Taylor's spiffy BMW (okay, so he borrowed the car) only to discover that the battery was dead! We did not leave the lights on, or do anything that would cause the battery to die, Taylor was later informed that the car just didn't have a good battery (Hey, thanks for the heads up)! I got out of the car and headed back into the school to find someone with jumper cables who could jump us (it may have had cables in it, but none of us knew where). Bethal jumped us and we got back home sometime after 4...morning came too soon! But it was an awesome sermon by Ron about the simplicity of being saved, seriously it was good. Sunday I got home picked up a blanket and went for a walk., my destination was my favorite place and a good nap! Haha, what I wanted--and needed--was sleep, but I could NOT waste the beautiful day God made, so I enjoyed them both! I only slept an hour though, I was awakened by a cold that my date gave me (thanks Rachel)! Haha, I should have known better than to take a sip of her mountain Dew when she said that it tasted a little weird....oh well, I am pretty much over the cold now. Basically, prom was great, and I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT!

change?

Looking back a year, I've changed so much.

First it was finishing my Jr year and moving on Camp Luz. Here I re-discovered my faith and God. Devotions everyday, fellowship, loving campers, deep conversations that stirred my theology, and learning how to be me. Everything was amazing, and I loved where I was in life.

Then I headed back from camp and began my senior year of school. That was rough, I've had senioritus since late august, and it has been getting worse and worse since late October. Yeah, honors English last semester taught me a nice work ethic and all that, but this semester is so worthless. I do not need any of the classes I am taking to graduate, if i would have know back at Christmas how much I was going to cringe this semester I probably would have graduated early. I do my best to focus on the tops, you know the amazing Musical, My Favorite Year, and track (the best decisions I've made all year). My view of life has changed I don't really care about much at all. It is not that I am losing faith or doubting God; in fact, he and I have been quite imitate for the past year, it is amazing.

Doc, a good friend of mine who keeps tabs on me just as I keep tabs on her, told me recently that I've changed a lot. It really didn't sink into me then, but now that I look back at who I used to be I guess I have. Wednesday on the way to swing dance lessons Schafer brought up the fact the he and Doc had been talking about me earlier that day and I guess I've changed enough that it is worrying them. My bad, sorry guys, I don't mean to worry you.

I've gone through a lot this school year, stuff doesn't get to me the way it did. I also have a kind of "bring it on" view of life.

This spring too many people around me have passed away, and I learned today that yet another car accident happened around here taking the life of another person I know, he graduated in '05. I quit going to my school's FCA meetings Thursday mornings because it was so spiritually dead and it seemed that nobody cared or wanted to change. Psych class is so frustrating; I really enjoy the stuff I'm learning; however, some things have happened which make it difficult for me to respect the teacher and being in his classroom for 90minutes a day is not a fun way to start out everyday.

I don't want to say farewell to dance

Well, I could be working on my psych or Spanish project, and probably should be, but I don't want to sooooo, that can all wait until later. I am going to enjoy myself for a little bit. : D For the books senioritis is getting the best of me. I am quite looking forward to my last day of school which is now 18 days away. Graduation follows on May 25, yeay!

Yesterday we had a track meet at Patrick Henery against both PH and Liberty Center. The girls took first (boo-ya)! Personally I did pretty well. I took 4th in my open 100 heat (which really isn't much because it was the slower heat) but I did run faster, 15.3, which made me happy, because at the last meet I got my worst 100 time, 16.1 ...boo! Yesterday was also my first time running the open 400 (I've been signed up to run it, but I have had to leave the meets early for various, yet important reasons). I took 1st place in my heat with a time of 74! That made me quite happy, I had only ran 1 400 in a race setting, and that was at a practice a couple of weeks ago, so I did well. Pole Vaulting is fun, but I have not taken it to a meet yet. None of us are ready to compete except Devin who pole vaulted at his old school several years back. He has helped us out a bunch, especially since this is Evergreen's first year pole vaulting and the coaches are newbies too. I also have some glitches that I need to fix, but none of us are quite sure what I am doing wrong. Oh well, it's still fun.

This Friday and Saturday Jessica and I are dancing at Waldren High School in our last dance recital ever. I love to dance and have done acrobatics for the past 14 years of my life, so I have mixed feelings about this recital. Performing on the stage is thrilling and great fun, but once Saturday's show is over who knows when I will dance on a stage again. I am hoping to find a studio in Findley or Lima; however, that is not quite as simple as it sounds. Many studios only have little kid classes, and I am not to hip on the idea of starting ballet over at square one. Not only is my ballet and acrobatics over, but my church dance is done meeting for the year. The other 2 senior girls and I (as well as 2 senior guys who were game to join us dancers) are going to dance May 19 for senior commissioning to the song Pure Flow by SuperChick. I am not completely finished dancing yet; in fact, tonight a swing dance class started at the FCHC rehab center in Wauseon. My buddy Josh Schafer and I have been wanting to go swing dancing since 10th grade and have finally found a place that fits our schedules and wallets! It'll be fun, Josh is like a brother to me and who knows when we will be able to hang out again.

rock music

I finished reading Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock by Andrew Beaujon a few weeks back, yet I haven’t had a chance to write down just a smidgen of my ponderings. The man has some good points about how mediocrity is accepted in the Christian music industry, still he does point out that is has come a long way from its beginnings. In the midst of writing about the countless awful bands he saw and listened too, a few good bands he came across, and numerous interviews he had with bands, labels, and other big wigs, Beaujon opened my eyes to quite a bit. For instance a few years back I read a short note from the editor of CCM in which he was responding to readers questions on why Swtichfoot had not been placed on the cover yet for their new CD. He wrote that the band (or its manager, either way) had kindly asked not to be put on the cover; he then went on to state that he understood and respected their decision not to be put on the cover of a Christian magazine. Me, I didn’t get it, and at the time I remember losing a lot of respect for the band, viewing their decision as one made because they were too greedy or good for the front of a Christian magazine. After reading the book I now can look back and kick myself for being so narrow-minded. Switchfoot, as I am sure you all know, is played on mainstream and Christian markets. The band has great music and lyrics, if they would have agreed to have their picture on the front of the magazine sales on the mainstream market could plummet. People would view the band as a Christian Band solely playing music in order convert its audience, instead of viewing the group as Christians in a band. So what’s the problem? The band isn’t denouncing God and writing songs about pimps and hoes or cussing and hating, they are simply getting their “positive” lyrics and rock music to a larger audience. If you still don’t get it, I can talk to ya later; however, you are entitled to your own opinion.
Maybe to others it will seem that the book only made me more critical and opinionated towards Christian music, and more open to bands that ruffle feathers for not following a norm, but even if that is the case what is the problem? If the band is good, give them a chance. Don’t knock ‘em down for playing on certain venues or not doing something the way so many mediocre bands do, they probably are making a bigger impact on society rocking the way they do.