Bayside Bowl is SATURDAY!

I hope you all get a chance to come to our Bayside Bowl this weekend. It is Saturday from 11am-3pm. Come for football, games, pizza, and more! We look forward to seeing you there. I will post pictures and results on Sunday...

Mistakes

We had a great night last night at youth group. Glad to see all of you that were there. If you weren't there - we missed you! We had some human tic-tac-toe and we talked about mistakes. Anyone willing to post about the worst mistake they ever made?

Also, here are some more pictures as requested.

This first picture is from youth group back in October:



And here is one of youth leaders Annie, Tom, and Grant. Not sure what is happening here but I think we can all assume!



Hope everyone had fun last night. We'll see you Saturday at the Bayside Bowl!!!

-PT

What do you feed yourself? What do you desire?

On Sunday Pastor Mark preached a sermon about feasting on the word of God. There was a part where he focused on a very important truth for us to remember. What we feed ourselves is what we desire. He talked about when we feed ourselves with junk, we will desire junk. And when we feed ourselves with the word of God, we will desire the word of God. In Sunday school class we discussed this further and talked about how important it is to choose wisely what we feed ourselves, so that our desires will be after God, his word, his will, and his way. So my questions are this, "What do you feed yourself and what do you desire?" How do these two relate? You can share your thoughts in a comment or email me at baysideyouthgroup@yahoo.com

-PT

Bayside Bowl IV is next Saturday!

We are one week away from the fourth annual Bayside Bowl! It is going to be an awesome event and you don't want to miss out on the fun. We will begin at 11am and it will go until about 3pm. There will be pizza, a snow football tournament, video games, foosball, ping pong, and dodge ball! There is something for everyone! So invite a friend and plan on coming next Saturday, January 30.

For the football tournament we are expecting the 2-time defending champions to return in an attempt to win the Bayside Bowl again. However, I am hearing of a few different teams being formed that could give some competition to the defending champs. I can't wait to see how it unfolds. Each year we have had more teams than the last year. For the inaugural tournament we had just three teams. The second year we had four teams. And last year we had five teams. My hope is that we will have six teams this year! That means you have to find some friends and put a team together.

So my question for everyone reading this is: what are you most looking forward to at the Bayside Bowl?

I had to put a new picture in here...

After seeing my ugly face with my prison picture on here, I decided it would be best to post a new picture at the top. Last night we had lots of fun at youth group. We played some serious "Bin" ball, which if you don't know is a variation of dodge ball but with large trash bins that you try to score the ball in. It was lots of fun. Then we had Nate Steel as our guest speaker. He has spoken at youth group a couple times now and will continue to do so periodically. I think he did a great job on his talk. What was the most intriguing thing that you took from what Nate said last night? You can post a comment here or email me at baysideyouthgroup@yahoo.com

Also, enjoy the pictures:

Falyn and Erica getting serious about a game of ping pong!


Erick, Luke, and Ryan make a great totem pole!


Aaron, Philip, and Tyler just hanging out!


-PT

Bye Bye Beardie

Well as many of you have seen I shaved off my beard. Every winter since I was a junior in high school (1997) I have grown a beard beginning around Thanksgiving and lasting sometimes until the end of January. As I have gotten older I have adjusted how long I have kept it, and also Sarah has had her say in it as well because she does not like my look with a beard. I started growing this beard back in early December, right around the time we went to California for vacation. So it lasted for a about a month. As I was writing this I remembered that two years ago I had Sarah take a before and after picture of me when I grew my winter beard. So I looked in my computer and found the pictures. Here is my beard in January of 2008:



And below is a picture that was taken immediately after I shaved off said beard. Also, notice that I cut my hair too.



So what do you all think? Do you like the beard? Do you like the normal look for me, which has historically been a goatee (and Sarah's favorite)? Or do you like a clean shaven look? Let me know what you think...

-PT

Help

Well I have received some emails from students about different things to post on the blog. This particular one was a student looking for help from any and all of you that are a part of Bayside youth group. It involves a friendship that is hurting and many of us have experienced situations like this. Any advice or suggestions that you have could be helpful to this student. Please take a moment to read this and then make a comment to help this student out. Here is the situation:

I'm having a little trouble with one of my friends from school and I'm not really sure what I should do. I've been friends with this person for about 9-10 years now and for the last two years things haven't been that good between us. We've had times when we haven't talked and times when we are constantly fighting. We've "made up" many times but I just don't feel that we are the same best friends because now whenever I try to talk to them about something that upsets me that they have done, they will bring up all the mistakes that I have made in the past instead of just saying, "You're right, I'm sorry." The problem is I don't know what to do and I'm not really sure if our friendship is worth fixing because I'm always the one making the effort to fix the problems so it seems one-sided.

Never Give Up

Tonight at youth group we talked about never giving up. It was encouraging to see so many students there and I hope you all had a fun time. The topic is certainly one that all students can relate with as all of us at one point or another have given up on something. So here is my question for you: When was a time that you gave up on something and what have you learned from that situation since then and through what we talked about at youth group tonight? You can comment on this post or send me an email at baysideyouthgroup@yahoo.com

Also, don't forget to tally your vote for our weekly poll about your favorite NFL team. I hope you all have a great rest of the week.

-PT

Picture of the Week

Just wanted to start another weekly feature on the blog. I want to make sure we have plenty of pictures of you guys and girls on here, because with all these words it can get boring! So here is this week's picture of the week:


This is a picture taken back in October on a Wednesday night after youth group. This is the senior high small group. We took this picture and it was the cover picture of our church bulletin on Sunday, October 25. That was the last Sunday that I preached at Bayside. In the picture it is Erick Tunell, Luke Tunell, and Zach Brookmole in the front row. Kaylee Labounty, Sam Almond, and Nate Johnson in the second row. And Taylor Christner, Jessica Xiong, and Ryan Paulson in the back row. Great picture!

-PT

Poll Question for this Week

Well the results are in from last week's poll. I'm hoping that more of you will get a chance to vote, but since we just started this blog thing I'm going to give it some time. There were 16 total votes and it looks like your favorite event from 2009 was the Winter Retreat. It was a close one though as 6 votes came in for the retreat (37%), while 5 came in for the Encounter Lock-in (31%), 3 for the New Year's Eve Lock-in (18%), and 2 for the Bayside Bowl (12%).

Since we are deep into the football season and craziness of the playoffs in the NFL, this week's question is "What is your favorite NFL football team?" Since MOST of us root for teams from this area the choices are the Packers, the Vikings, or other. If you want to voice your opinion on another team or anything regarding the Packers and Vikings do so in a comment or send an email to me at baysideyouthgroup@yahoo.com

Last thing, on Wednesday night I want to show a music video during youth group. The first person to comment on this post with an acceptable music video will have that video played this Wednesday night at youth group. Good luck.

-PT