Moving on

Rough day at work but great weekend in the end. I got the privilege of hanging out with Penny's kids this weekend (they went out of town for their anniversary) and it was great. We watched a movie, J and Aaron played guitar. Hayley and I talked and did hair (typical haha) and then we went to church came back, had lunch and I gave Celine and Hayley a mini voice coaching for the song they are doing in the talent show at church. That got my fired up. I love helping kids with talent go to even the next level with a few encouraging words and suggestions. Talented kids in our youth group!!

Jeremiah is out of town on pastor's retreat and it's hard. I hate being away from him (especially when I am so stressed with school and stuff). So he is gone for a few days and then next weekend I leave for a few days for my best friend's wedding in San Francisco. We really both wanted to go but it was not anywhere near in our budget and I'm sad for that but there will be other things.

I'm excited for her. We have been friends for... wow 8 years now.



I am giving a speech at the rehearsal dinner and everytime I sit down to think about what I will say I start crying. She has been an inspiration to me and I'm so glad she found the man God has for her! It will be a fun weekend!!

Im hoping this week goes smoothly, I have a lot of studying and homework to do. I get Saturday off of work and then I nanny Saturday night for the cutest little boy, Bremer. I just pray I don't have a rough day at work (haha jeremiah won't be home when I get home to let me cry to him).

Thanks for all the concerns about the weekend. I love our church family!!

Bad day

Sometimes I hate the thought that some people think they can say whatever they want when they want.

Bad day at work. I was called some VERY awful names by customers (funny part is that I didnt mess up, they did!)

I started praying for those people and I know that they must be really hurting if they would use words like that towards someone who offered them a smile and their drinks.

Still didn't lesson the sting of the comment. :(

Students are GETTING IT!

This week has been entirely too inspiring for words (ha but somehow I am going to write this blog and explain).

This past Sunday was a Sunday dedicated toward hurting students. I think I forget all too often that despite their smiles as they check in and their clapping during worship, some are full of pain inside and no one takes the time to be real with them (myself included). So this weekend we allowed time for leaders to stand around the room and allow students to get up and go pray with a leader. It was POWERFUL!!

I could tell certain students wanted to get up but they didnt. Satan's words of "everyone will stare at you, you are fine, your problem isn't that big" rang loudly in some of their ears. I pray for those students now, that they break that wall of pride and insecurity in their life. Other students broke down. Some did because they were hurting and holding pain in for so long, others broke down because they finally saw the pain of their friends coming out strong. Whatever the emotion, God was in that room.

I prayed with several girls that Sunday and I was humbled and kind of ashamed of myself that I don't remember enough how hard teen years are. My teens years had some really hard times of hidden pain and sin but it felt like no one cared enough to be real with me and really find out what was going on. I dont want to be that kind of adult to teens. I got a letter from a parent of one of the girls just thanking me for being there for her daughter and that even my few words did not go unnoticed. It was a shock to me that the girl even went home and told her parents about the experience. God is good. He is faithful and He is alive!

So then that night Jeremiah surprised me with "date day." haha a whole surprise day with a date he had been planning for weeks. He is cute. We went to a park in Mesa and he had a whole picnic set up. It was great. It started getting too hot so we decided to go to the Christian bookstore just to look around. We spent like 1 1/2 hours in there just going through youth books and talking about ministry ideas. it was great. And I found out earlie that the whole reason for the date was to go to... THE BARLOWGIRL CONCERT!! I was stoked. I love that band and all they stand for. The tickets were general admission (so they were really inexpensive) and JEremiah knew the guy that runs all the Christian concerts, so he let us in early and we got to sit really close and we got to go to the meet and greet. It was great!

I forgot how much I need my personal time of worship. There were hundreds of screaming little girls for this band but I soaked up all that I could. I was reminded that the sin that I hold inside only stays there because I allow it to. Certain insecurities in my life grow so much because I let them and feed them inside of me. I need to daily surrender those. Great date day babe!!

This morning was See You At The Pole and we visited a couple of schools and it was awesome to see our youth kids standing up for Christ and praying for their school. Jeremiah and I were blown away by some kids that prayed and stood out in front of their schools only with like 1 or 2 other people. They were bold and they are living for Christ.

I LOVE SEEING STUDENTS "GETTING IT!"

Glorious Morning

So today I did not have to work at 4am!! It was just delightful. I stayed up past 10 last night (haha ok so not too much past it) and I slept in AFTER Jeremiah. That never happens. I got up at 8 and did some homework, watched the news, ate breakfast (Not a starbucks drink... finally!!) It was just amazing. I feel so refreshed today. I have class and stuff until 5 tonight which means I wont get home til after 6 but I love not being wiped out by 2pm.

Tonight J and I are gonna go on a walk and it's just a great day. I like when God reminds me that I can find refreshment in Him and He can bring peace amidst the craziness. :)

Hope all of you find that refreshness given by the Lord.

Happy Thursday!

I can do it!

So despite what many people think, a young married girl can be stressed out. It's true.

Ha granted I usually get stressed if I'm not stressed because I am wondering why life isn't crazy. Well this is my last semester of college and it's really scary. Next semester I will be student teaching (and Lord willing, not working too much outside of that) and it's scary and SO thrilling to think that I will get to focus on ONE thing truly. I won't have to worry about several classes, homework, deadlines, music to learn, tests to study for and papers to write. Teaching will bring on a whole new set of lists to do but man it's what I LOVE! Sometimes I wonder if I am majoring in the right area. ALL I hear from people is "well hopefully they wont take music out of schools totally." Ha the words of very encouraging people. Whether I'm teaching voice lessons out of my home, full time teaching music to little kids, or directing choirs (my ultimate dream, oh man I love directing. If it didn't require endless amounts of music scoring, I would get my Masters in conducting... haha many of you have never seen me conduct and it's like a whole new love for me) I will be doing something in teaching music.

I got my first voice student this semester and it is a BLAST. My voice teacher (former professional opera singer, she is incredible) encouraged me to be confident in my voice teaching and obviously I am still learning but man it is so fun and I love helping people achieve their goal of singing better. I am not the best singer in the world but I LOVE teaching music and helping people achieve their best. This proves to me that I am in the right area of life and that makes it all worth it.

So this weekend I took a break. Friday we went to Derrick and Kim's for dinner and game night and it was a blast. It's funny how little we are around other adults unless it's at church or work. It was a great change and we had fun. Thanks Logans!!

Saturday i worked all day (ha 5:30 am-2:30pm) and it was nuts. Normally I would get a 10 min break early in the morning, a 30 minute lunch break mid morning and another 10 min break in the afternoon). We were so busy that I got my first break at 11am and that was all... needless to say I was exhausted. So I came home, rested for an hour and then went to church. I skipped the second service and we came home and this morning I slept it. It was great. Tomorrow I am sleeping in a bit and we took a nap this afternoon. This coming up week is going to be VERY long and busy... i work everyday and have classes everyday so it was nice to catch up on sleep this weekend even amidst the craziness.

I pray that I prioritize and get things done. This semester will be hard... but not impossible. I can make it!!

Scorpions! Oh no!

So we moved into our new house and never got it sprayed. Then we started noticing spiders here and there, other little bugs... now we have SCORPIONS! Ugh, killing a spider is gross and scary, and other bugs are just annoying but scorpions KILL! We found one the other week, a bigger one (so not as harmful... ha it was Jeremiah's first time seeing a live scorpion)... so we got a little worried. So after that we are conscious to always turn lights on and watch our steps as we walk an wear shoes as much as possible.




Last night I was being paranoid as usually looking at the ground and found a BABY scorpion. The most deadly. It was SOO tiny and I would have stepped on it had I not been looking cuz it was just crawling around the kitchen. Now we are more actively calling pest control people... we dont want to be in a monthy contract... haha don't have the money for that right now, but we just want a one time spray inside and out just to get them gone. We also might to buy a black light because a lot of ppl recommend that we go outside at night with a black light to find them and keep killing them!

We should do a reality show called Scorpion Hunters!!! :)


So that's the new exciting adventure in the Hann Home :)

date night!

Well since our wedding, we have had very few date nights. I think only 1 other "true' date night... haha but now that i'm married i understand that there is no "true date night" compared to when we were dating. Ha money wasn't an option, we did crazy things... now a date night might include a movie at home :)

but I wouldnt change that for the world. I love spending every day with my best friend.

God blessed us and my mom gave us a gift card to the movies. So.... WE WENT.

I made dinner at home... we went to starbucks and got a little drink on the way and went to a 9:15 movie. hahaha thats big for us since we are usually laying in bed by 10 or so... but this morning neither of us had to get up so we figured we would go to a late movie.

It was a blast, we dressed up and really enjoyed ourselves but needless to say, we were exhausted by the time the movie got out haha.











Any other creative ideas for cheap date nights out there??

Encouragement

Ever been talking to someone (or a crowd of people) and feel like you needed to hear the message you were telling them?

Well that's what happened this week. Darius called and asked if I would give the gospel message this weekend. It was a recap weekend of the past few weeks and we were talking about the One True God and he asked if I would give a 5-10 minute presentation of it. I said 'sure' as though it was no big deal, I know this "speech" in and out.

So i wrote up a few notes and Saturday night came and I got up there and almost felt guilty. Who am I to tell kids about who God is, about His love and how they need to be fighting for their friends to know who He is also. Amidst the chaos of change in life (marriage, last semester of school, moving, new job, most of my friends are 50 miles away) I lost my passion for the Lord. I lost my deep connection with Him because of "busy-ness."

I left that stage just dreading the next 3 services because I felt like a fraud. I told them that God loves them SO much and He doesn't care how much you have messed up, He died for you to go to heaven despite your imperfections. Why, before that, didn't I fully get that God, despite my "busy-ness" was waiting to have me back. Waiting for me to get SO exhausted and worn down from life to come back to Him???

I had a few classes that I had still not taken, and my biggest fear in and out was that God was punishing me for being busy and not going to let me finish classes this semester. I am already taking 21 credit hours (which is almost death to most students) and doing a senior recital for my voice major (ha basically that means that in 4 weeks I have to have an hour worth of opera, classical, jazz and musical theater music ready to perform and be graded on before I can graduate). The ONLY way I would be able to be done with classes this semester is if I were to take a test to pass those 2 classes. GREAT.. 2 tests will determine if I endure classes for another semester and prolong my LONG waited student teaching semester.

I go in to take the easier test first... Analyzing and Interpreting Literature (ah!) and 2 hours later, I hit "Complete" and my score reveals that I PASSED (WAY about the minimum score)....

So I think... ok... this could be possible.

So my second test I go in a few days later... College Mathematics (Ha so i met up with a friend who is a high school music teacher and she was stumped on many of the practice test questions.. GREAT!)

I figured... $80 and I can take a shot at passing the last test and finally breath... so i'll do it..
I walk into the testing center (the AC had gone out because of the huge storm)... I muster through the 2 hour long math test.. I hit "complete" and the it AGAIN reveals that I PASSED!

God is telling me to stop tip toeing to the future He has for me and to trust that His timing is PERFECT.

That message hit me as I gave the message to the youth kids all day Sunday. I felt discouraged that if I didn't "get it" that how could any 15 year old get it.

It wasnt until I was leaving the parking lot and got a text from one of the girls that was there that morning. She wrote "Amber thank you so much for sharing that message today. I look up to you so much and know that I can always come to you when I am hurting or need help. I love you."

I cried. I thanked God for His constant encouragement and for using a sinner like me to reach even 1 student that morning.


God is good... I pray He continues to reassure me that He will do what's best for me.