Concerts and Stuff Like That

Saturday evening I went to a beach on Lake Michigan with my Aunt Rhonda, my cousins Jusin and Melissa and my sister, Jackie to see Michael Skupin from Survivor II. I don't know if any of you watched the show, but I was one of those crazy people who went insane if I missed an episode. Anyway, it was really cool. He talked about how being on Survivor made him think about God and stuff. Then when he started praying "unexplainable" things started to happen. For one thing, there was this one challenge where one member of each tribe had a pole on his shoulders. Kucha chose Michael and Ogakor chose Colby. So each tribe had to fill buckets with water, walk across a narrow plank and attach the buckets to the pole on the shoulders of the guy from the other tribe. Eventually, each guy had 66 buckets of water to hold up, which amazed the producers because they had tested this challenge with guys from the strongman competition and all they could stand was 48. Anyway, as they were standing there Michael was praying, and he just kept repeating a verse in Isaiah about strength. At the moment he thought he couldn't stand any longer, the pole on his shoulders snapped in two. The thing is, they had tested this pole with 5000 pounds hanging on it. They couldn't explain how it broke. Now it's hanging on the wall in Michael's living room. :) Also, when he fell in the fire he only burnt his hands because he used them to push himself up. He actually fell with his face in the fire, but he was wearing a leather hat and sunglasses he only occasionally wore and "somehow" the hat fell over his face when he fell in the fire. It was so cool because he was so real. During the autograph signing there was this little boy that cried when his mother tried to get a picture of him with Michael, (you know, like little kids with Santa Claus at the mall) so the poor embarrassed mother took the kid away from the crowd. A few minutes later, Michael left the table to go talk to this little boy. It was really cool. Talk about a guy with his priorities straight. The main thing he talked about was prayer. There was one occasion when their "Outback guide" told them not to go fishing during the day. He said he'd tried every method thinkable and no fish wants to bite and that time of the day when it's 120 degrees out. Michael went out fishing at like 1:00 with a hook, a stick, a piece of rope, and a bunch of dead grasshoppers. After about half an hour of just talking to God he caught a fish, so he tried again and got another, then another, then another. After a while he said he felt like he was praying the fish right into the boat. He also told about the first time Kucha prayed together. All he said was, "Do you mind if we pray?" It became a common occurrence. Theyd pray together 3 or 4 times a day, just going around the circle. There was one guy who didnt want to pray, because he was an agnostic. Well, eventually he did pray with them. I think it was after Michael killed the pig (which, by the way, was also an answer to prayers). When he finally did pray, he started with "To Whom it may Concern." Michael said he writes the prayer out in his book, its not released yet, but I am so ordering one!!

The awesome thing is that this has really helped my prayer life. I hate to have to admit it, but it was pretty much static. I had devotions, I read the Bible all the time and I was loving it. It was like I was focused on learning ABOUT God and forgetting I could talk TO God. Talking to the Creator of the universe is a pretty awesome thing. :)