dreamer

so on sunday, a friend of mine asked me to write down my testimony and talk it over with him at lunch on wednesday. to preface why he did this, let me explain. i'm currently on an indefinite hiatus from younglife. I'll still be attending club but I'm free from any responsibility. I need to be free from things in my life right now. if you haven't noticed by now, i got rid of my facebook. i'm free from it. so yeah.

some of my roommates have been sucking lately. and by some i mean one. and by one i mean joe. i thought he would be the last person to be a hypocrite and start hanging out with the guys from the other house. we joke about how they are the "A" team and better christians. ::JOKE:: but now i feel like he's just dropping me/our house and start hanging out and pursuing them more and more. whatever, that's lame. we already have enough problems in this house and that's something that we don't need. i sleep in the same house with these people, i don't live with them. i'm tired of always having to step up and be the one to do something.

testimony time:
so i've never had an experience when all of a sudden, I knew God was there. I feel like most Christians have some mindblowing experience where they just know. me, not so much. i grew up in a catholic home. these are the "easter" christians meaning that they only go to church on holidays like easter and christmas. i knew who God and Jesus were strictly by all the crucifixes everywhere. when I moved to texas city in the third grade, my parents but my step brothers and sister and I into religious education classes. i didn't really learn much in those years up until i got confirmed in the 10th grade. in high school i struggled a lot with pleasing my peers and trying to do anything and everything i could to look cool. people had their own opinions of me just because of the way i talked and acted. i started drinking at a young age with my cousins because we thought it was the cool thing. shortly thereafter, i started smoking weed with my cousins. I never really liked smoking but i did it because my friends did it. one fateful night, i got caught by my entire family for smoking weed that was laced with crystal meth. this was when i was a freshman in high school. it was pretty crazy. i didn't really know what to think because i was so young. i'm glad i got caught because i didn't want to do it anyway. high school was lame for me, i didn't fit in at texas city high school. i would've done a lot better at a westlake or a friendswood type high school. i mostly hung out with my cousins and the few "friends" i had. i mean, who actually has true friends in high school? so junior year rolls around and it's just like any other year. i had just gotten confirmed from the catholic church so i never had any urge or desire to go to church or R.E if i didn't have to. towards the end of junior year, this new church called CrossRoad Covenant Church had started. a lot of people I knew from school had started attending. they would have contests to see who could get the most kids to come to a youth night or whatever. i thought it was lame because everyone at the church was hypocrites because i would see them on the weekends drinking and getting drunk. of course, i wasn't really going to church so it was okay for me. well, i decided to go to a function and it felt really weird, it was a youth group sleepover and all the popular guys from school were there and wasn't really feeling it. they were all lame anyway (including cotton :)) well i went to a sunday service and witnessed something that i had never before seen. people were raising their arms when they were singing songs that sounded like they had just come off of 104 KRBE. this was the first time i had experience worship. it was interesting. well, summer before senior year rolled around and i started to hang out with some of the kids in the youth group. i had worked with some of them so it was kind of a entry way into the group. i meet the youth pastor and his wife who are amazing! i started going to this megachurch that cotton's grandparents started in houston on wednesday nights. this church was crazy ridiculous. they worshiped in a way that i only heard about. they were giving their all every worship service. pretty soon I learned that that's what i needed to do lol. i started to find out more and more about this man named jesus that gave everything for us. i started making changes in my life. i totally stopped drinking and i started to hang out with my youth group. we would have tons of fun and not drink. we would hang out, play poker, watch movies, go on scavenger hunts and have a weekly bible study. i became a leader in Glory which was our youth group on campus. I even spoke on time. senior year was going great until april rolled around. all of a sudden, in just one night, everything changed. cotton dowdy, the perfect child in all of texas city started drinking. at this time, i had started to become close with cotton. so when he started drinking, i began doing it again as well. things took a turn for the worse. my group of friends started to drink and it was being noticed by everyone. people tried to front us out about it but we were so young and stubborn, we didn't stop. well we drank together (alone) that entire summer. a couple of us worked together as lifeguards and that didn't help either. so i went to camp that summer (by myself) my friends were supposed to go with me but they decided not to. they were lame. i had a great experience there with God and knew that I needed to change my ways. i came back, sort of on fire and of course i get sucked into my dumb friends again. just me being not strong. so we end up all leaving for college (austin) and hang out with each other every night and get really drunk every night. i knew coming into college that i wanted to be in BYX and i still wanted to. one night, while wasted, i checked my myspace and noticed that a friend of mine went to a byx party and wrote about it. i asked him everything he knew about it because i really wanted to do it. a guy who went to my church was in byx so i sorta knew him. long story short, i became a byx pledge. we weren't allow to drink so i was kinda happy about that. little by little, i learned what it meant to follow Christ. he started to move in my life through other people. i stopped drinking and i knew that i needed to stop hanging out with my friends who were bad influences. this was when i found out about younglife. i got into a bible study and it was awesome. some of these guys i met here are still my good friends today. freshman year was awesome! i became a younglife leader which meant that i had to stop BYX. it was okay because i knew that that's where i needed to be! I had the opportunity to work at a great Christian camp called camp ozark that summer where i was blown away by amazingness! it was soooo great getting to pour into those kids each and everyday! i had so much fun! i was on the right path, things were going great. I was pursuing the Lord and becoming sooo fulfilled on a daily basis. it was great. that leads me to today. i'm getting tired of typing so this is where i will stop. you know my life well enough to know what happens after that.

thanks for listening, you're awesome
hector

whaaaaaa?

at 12:08 PM on October 22, 2007, i deactivated facebook.

get over it.

we'll see how long it lasts.

i need to be free from stuff.

statues

so i've been obsessed with this song lately. i've been listening to it over and over. i even learned how to play it on the piano. i'm just entranced by how it flows. i love it

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9pKujuTgtL0

so i can't put it on here but I can give you the link.

so I thought i'd post on here (for you BW) because I haven't written in a while. life has been...up and down, I should say. Life itself is going great. I'm playing club volleyball (even though I'm currently not starting setter) and it's going great. I love the team and playing. I'm doing pretty well in school which is encouraging. sorry about that, i got off task by facebooking. well, anyway, back to life. on the other hand, spiritually, i have not been pursuing the Lord at all. I'm settling. pray for that. I haven't read my Bible in one month. i need some encouragement. I love my roommates to death but they don't do a good job in pushing me to pursue the Lord more and more. I don't even know if they are in the Word day in and day out. Ultimately, when this occurs, everything that we need/want in our life will be provided by the Lord. This isn't a one-sided relationship. He wants us to want Him as much as He wants us. I mean, I tell myself everyday what I need to do but end up not doing it.

i need prayer. i need something BIG to happen, soon.

we went to dallas this weekend for TEXAS/ou. here are some fotes...i just noticed that i didn't take any at the game so, knock yourself out

pictures!

so i just learned how to put pictures on my blog. thanks chris jacobie
this is one of my favorite pictures. my friend took this in alabama and it's awesome. let's see how it looks