sickkkk.

I'm sick, and it totally sucks.

Tuesday was an awesome day, but I woke up with a sore throat thinking to myself, "Oh goodness, I hope I'm not getting sick." I went through the whole day feeling pretty good, and we even practiced all of the skits we learned last week!

Without any notice, Justin just said for everyone to gather in a P.O.D. (prayer over drama) circle together. We learned that every time during a missions trip or outreach that we perform our skits and dramas, we will be starting out in the P.O.D. This means that before/after/in between skits that you perform in, you pray for the people currently performing and for the crowd that is watching. We basically went through a full run of each skit and even practiced the 2 minute introduction, 2 minute transitions between skits, 5 minute testimony, and the wrap-up after the "Everything" drama that serves to explain the drama and tell people how to accept salvation. We were pretty nervous to go through it all, especially since we only learned and practiced half of the "Everything" drama. We thought Justin might skip that one, but we had to do it! The first time through it all, I didn't do any of the skits, I just did a 2 minute transition explaining Upon A Stage and introducing Catch-All. Justin and Cadre watched and gave us a pretty harsh critique after the entire set. We were a little bit discouraged because we were being "graded" so harshly even though we had only performed the skits once each and hadn't even learned all of "Everything."

The second time through, Justin said he wanted everyone to switch up their parts, so that no one would play the same part they just did. Since there are only 3 girls in 24/7 that were given the part of the main girl in "Everything" and the one who knew it best had just gone, I had to do it next. I was SO unprepared and nervous! But it actually went pretty well, thanks to the other people knowing their parts! My part basically mimics all of the others roles at some point, so I rely on their cues to figure out what I'm supposed to do, and my group did pretty good considering how little we had worked on it. Cadre said it wasn't too bad, and then told us to basically create an "all-star" cast for each skit and do the whole set a third time. This meant that they wanted the people best at each role to play those roles, even if that meant they did more than one skit. The first years picked me to do "Everything" again! This time each skit was SO good because the people who knew what they were doing were the only ones performing, and when it came time to do "Everything" I was nervous again. But that is SUCH an emotional drama and every emotion that the girl is supposed to convey comes so naturally because I'm literally putting myself in her place. It was SO much fun, and if you watched the video of it that I posted, you can see that at the end she lunges toward God time and time again only to be beaten and pushed down by the other "evil" characters. So now the entire right side of my body is covered in bruises from being slammed on to the floor repeatedly.

But I LOVE IT!!

So after another amazing night at Venue and talking to everyone in sight, my throat was killing me, and I hoped to sleep it off and wake up feeling better on Wednesday. I was so wrong. Wednesday I reported to the church at 5:30am for Scripture Memory CT, then sat through morning prayer feeling sick to my stomach. I was dismissed from work-out and told to go home and rest till 1pm. I came back at 1 and was dismissed AGAIN because of how sick I looked/acted/felt. I stayed in bed for the rest of the day and night.

So this morning I woke up feeling just as horrible as yesterday, but I have my heart set on having a good day! I did CT at 7:30 with everyone else this morning and had a good time during morning prayer. The reason we reported so late today is because Justin's wife, Stefanie, just had her baby yesterday!! Justin is a daddy! :) So we were all going to go to the hospital to see Baby Bentley after morning prayer. However, sickly people like myself don't get to see and hold newborn babies, so I am stuck hanging out and doing homework in the youth auditorium while everyone else is at the hospital meeting Bentley. :( But Bentley is gonna be around for a long time, so I'm sure I'll get to see him. In the meantime, I just want to rest up and get better!

Praying that God gives me a great day today and helps me feel better by tomorrow.