Nathan Neighbors
Follower of Christ, Husband, Father, & Youth Pastor
This week was a blur. It was the performance week for Anderson’s school play. He played the part of one of the mice and I played the part of the sound guy. Since this past Monday, we’ve had seven practices and performances. It was a ton of work, but a wonderful experience. The teachers at Pine street are great and they do such a wonderful job with the kids. I was very impressed with how professional it all looked for an elementary school production. Click here to see photos taken by a staff photographers from the Spartanburg Herald Journal.
Just thought I would share some of the art work that our oldest son, Anderson, has done recently. He calls them his, “projects.” The first is an American flag that he drew in his kindergarten class this week while learning about American history. The second is a picture he drew this morning is Sunday School when they learned about Jesus calming the storm while he was out on the boat with his disciples. Ashley asked him if that was a picture of Jesus and the disciples on his boat and he said, “no, it’s me and Ellis…see the lightening is hitting me.” Haha…at least he’s listening well to God’s Word and drawing such wonderful little pictures. (If you click on each of the pictures you can see a larger version)
Tonight I challenged the students at church to give up drinking anything but water for two weeks. I called them to fast from what they normally drink (sodas, lattes…) and only drink water (preferably tap water). This isn’t going to be easy. Around 10am tomorrow my body is going to be crying out for a diet cherry pepsi. But in the grand scheme of things that seems pretty petty. I mean, desiring soda, when millions around our world don’t even have clean water.
As we begin the time of Lent this week, often people give things up as a way of reminding themselves of the great sacrifice Christ made on our behalf. In a way, this is a two week fast from any of our normal drink choices except water, but in another way this is a call to action to help those around our world who don’t have clean water. Did you know that every 15 seconds a child dies of diarrhea or other water related sickness? I had no idea. I am utterly astounded at that fact. I put out the challenge to our youth tonight to take up the challenge this season with thousands of others around the US. It’s the H2O Project. The idea is to take two weeks during Lent and only drink water. During the two weeks keep a log of all the times you chose water over what you would normally drink. If it was instead of a coke at a restaurant – write down $1.50 – or maybe a Starbucks latte – write down $4. At the end of the two weeks count up all that you didn’t spend in drinks and give that money to Living Water International. This organization has a powerful ministry of bringing clean water to those across the world in need. They do tons of drilling projects every year. They say that a simple gift of $14 (only $1 per day of our fast) would give clean water to three families for one year. For more info, check out the videos below and join our two week project. Also, check out their website: www.water.cc
Nathan Neighbors 