The Update

Luke is preaching this Sunday!

Message: An Upside Down Faith

Description:
Faith does a lot of things, but it usually doesn’t make sense. Faith has a way of taking things that look terrible and showing the greatness hidden in them. Faith takes things that seem like simple nothings and releases their potential. Faith takes the way we thought the world worked, and turns it upside down.

FYI: Normal youth group will note meet this Sunday.

Look Ma, I'm on TV!

Introducing the latest edition to the NSL website, NSL:tv!

Northwood Student Life has its own online TV channel, with on-demand videos of past events, movies we used in lessons, and things like promo vids, video archives, and a place for the videos YOU make called U Speak!

So head on over and check out NSL:tv!

We've got NSL Chat up and running again. After a brief time of some technical tom-foolery, it's up and waiting for you all again. So when you're checking out the calendar, watching NSL:tv, or reading many of the other things at the NSL Homepage, be sure and head over to UR Voice>Chat and see who else is online!

Another neat thing is that by clicking "Embed Chatroom" at the bottom of the Chatbox you can put the same HTML for the chatroom wherever you want. Chat from your MySpace with people on the NSL Page, let NSL visitors chat with people on your blog, or whatever else you can think of! Like this:

Christmas party for NSL Junior High this Wednesday! Here's the details:

Who: The Junior High of Northwood Student Life
When: 6:30 - 8:30pm, Wednesday December 19
Where: Koppendrayer's Home in Albertville

Directions:
I-94 North to Albertville (exit 202)
Right at top of ramp
Quick left in front of gas station
Follow until E. Laketowne
Follow E. Laketowne to it's end.
11548 E. Laketowne, Yellow and Green home
Koppendrayer's Phone # 763-463-1314

What to bring: Bring a gift, worth less than $10, funny or fun, for the White Elephant Gift exchange. (For a definition of White Elephant click here)

E-mail Luke (luke.trouten@northwoodcc.org) if you have any other questions. See you there!

A little something fun:

Yesterday Katie and I got some much appreciated help from Spencer, Rockie, and Olivia as we ripped the carpet and pad up from the basement of our new house. Spencer hauled stuff to the dumpster, Rockie was a stair-carpet ripping fiend, and Olivia came up with an awesome (and easier) way to get up the stuff glued to the floor. A huge thanks to you three for helping us get closer to being at home in our new place.

A side note for everyone else, here's our new info:

Luke & Katie Trouten
5193 Kahl Ave. NE
Albertville, MN 55301

763-515-3244 - Home

Fifteen of us went to Feed My Starving Children last Tuesday night and spent an hour and a half packaging food for starving children in Haiti! A special congratulations to the crew, who set a new record at 8,424 meals packaged!
Who says we can't change the world?

We're heading back in a couple months to give it another go. But you don't need to wait, you can organize your own group of friends, family, or people from church and head over. Just visit www.fmsc.org to get more info.

NSL has a kid! A few weeks ago the awesome teens of Northwood Student Life (that's you) made the decision to sponsor a child somewhere in the world. By pulling together we're able to provide a lot of help to a child. Things like:

• Educational opportunities
• Health care and supplemental nutrition
• Opportunities for safe recreation
• Opportunities to learn about important life skills
• Most important of all, sponsoring a child will allow your child to hear about Jesus and be encouraged to develop a lifelong relationship with God.

That's a pretty sweet deal, right? And if everybody pitches in, that's just $1 a month per person. Wow!
So it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you Melanie Nicole Oña Barreno, our sponsored child from Ecuador. Melanie is 7 years old and lives near the Pacific coast, she likes basketball, singing, and telling stories. She lives with 1 sibling and her Mom and Dad. Here she is!
So now what? Each month Jason Dyer will remind you that it's "Bring Your Buck" Sunday, meaning that that Sunday will be the day to bring your $1 to help sponor Melanie. These Sundays will also be the days that we'll read letters from Melanie, write letters back, take photos to send, and other things to help show Melanie that NSL cares about her!

So what do you do now? First (and most importantly), pray. Pray for Melanie, for her health and her family, and that our sponsoring her will start a great and exciting change in her life! Second, watch for the first Bring Your Buck Sunday next month.

NSL is changing a life in Ecuador, that's pretty cool.

Due to diametrically opposed hypotheses regarding the validity of the assertion involving a homosapien with a presupposed disposition toward social ineptitude, an analysis of Newton’s First Law with respect to a nerd equipped with spherically-enhanced footwear will ensue with potentially advantageous findings.

Translation: Can nerds skate?

We’re going to find out. December 1 is our second annual Nerd Night. Last year it was bowling, this year we’re strapping on the wheels of glory and taking the roller rink for a spin. So grab your best Nerd outfit, invite your friends, and give it a whirl (he-he-he, SNORT).

Sign Up By Clicking Here

RECAP
Who: Junior and Senior High
What: Roller Skating Dressed As Nerds
When: Saturday, December 1, 6:30pm - 10:00pm
Where: Meet & Return at the Maple Grove Community Center
Why:God has a sense of humor. (Need proof? Read this: 2 Kings 2:23-24
How Much: $10 [includes transportation, admission, and skate/rollerblade rental]

Helpful Links:

Need tips on being a nerd? Click here to learn “How To Be A Nerd”

Want to see what you’re in for? Click here for pictures from last year’s event

Update: There is a winter storm watch for Saturday. In the case of inclement weather we will reschedule. Any notice of cancellation will be posted by 4pm on Saturday.

Hey World-Changers, this one's for you.
We're heading to Feed My Starving Children to package food on Tuesday, November 20. Trips to FMSC have always been a blast and this one is sure to be the same. We're going to take 2 hours to feed hundreds and hundreds of people.
If you're scratching your head, here's the deal: Feed My Starving Children is an international organization that packages nutritional meals right here in lovely Minnesota and then sends them all over the world to starving families in third-world countries! Pretty sweet, right?
So that means that even though we can't travel to dozens of countries in one night, we can still make a difference in them! Plus we get to have fun by doing it together, you can't lose!
We've got limited space, so you're going to have to sign up quick to be sure you get a spot. But for thefaithful readers of The Update, I'm giving you a head start. If you click here you can head over and sign up now, getting in ahead of those who wait until weekends to catch up on Student Life goodness.

RECAP
Who: Junior and Senior High
What: Feeding hundreds of third-world families
When: Tuesday, November 20, 7:45pm-9:45pm
Where: Meet & Return at the Maple Grove Community Center
Why: Proverbs 22:9

Since yesterday was the last day of "Pastor Appreciation Month" I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for your kind words and encouragement over the past weeks. I enjoy the support that Northwood has for it's staff and the many ways that it is shown. Katie and I are both very excited to be here, and we are glad to see the same is true for many you. So for the cards, comments, and gifts... thanks!

Hey Parents!

You're invited to our fall Parent's Meeting on Wednesday, October 24 from 6:30-8:30pm at the Anderson's Home (map below).
We'll be talking about how Student Life is going, the current changes, and the year ahead. It's a great time to bring your questions, meet other parents, and hear about what your teens are doing at Northwood Church. Meanwhile the students will hang with our awesome youth leaders. I look forward to seeing you there!

-Luke


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September 26. Mark it on your calendars. Make appointments with your friends. Camp out in front of the school if you have to. It's See You At The Pole time!
See You At The Pole is possibly the largest prayer movement to ever exist. Over 2 million American teens and countless others across the globe participate. Basically, it rocks!
So what is it? Well you check out this article, or watch this video. But basically, See You At The Pole is an annual event where students gather around there flagpole before school to spend time together in prayer.
The beauty of this event is that it was started by teenagers, is led by teenagers, and is for teenagers. Man, if only more adults were so die hard about prayer!

So what should you do? It's pretty easy!

• Pray in advance for September 26.
• When you get to school that day, head straight to the flagpole.
• Pray.

See how simple it is? Other things you could do would be ask friends to join you, take note of the other Christians in your school that morning, pray out loud during the event, and talk to classmates that day about what See You At The Pole is.

It couldn't be easier, and it's amazing what things like this can end up doing. So mark September 26 down on the calendar and we'll See You At The Pole!

Wanna know a super easy way to get all the latest info from The Update? I thought you might! So today I'm gonna clue you in on RSS (Really Simple Syndication). It's a really simple way to get automatic updates when The Update is updated.
Some of you have e-mail subscriptions already set up. This works great most of the time, but some days I'll be posting more than once (like today) and soon your e-mail inbox will be overflowing with youth groupy goodness. A nice way to avoid all that is to use an RSS Reader. Take a couple minutes and check out this plain-english-no-tech-knowledge-needed-simple-explanation of what RSS is.


So that's all it is! Easy, right? Personally I use Google reader and just have it running on my homepage so I can check whenever I open the internet. Others of you might find Yahoo! or bloglines.com to be better. It's all about making the most useful for you and therefore... really simple!
So find yourself a reader and add click this guy on the right hand side of the screen. Soon you'll be in Update Subscription Heaven, and able to enjoy the newest NSL has to offer at the click of a button!

Have other suggestions for The Update? Leave them in the comments section!

This week starts up our new year of youth ministry. We've got a lot of new stuff kicking off in the coming weeks and it'll be important to keep up to date with "The Update" so be sure and check back often.
One of the things that is changing this fall is the meeting times and locations of our midweek events. The Table is meeting on Mondays now at the Kraemer's house while the NSL:jh Midweek (junior high) is meeting Wednesdays at the Prinzing's home.
For that reason, we've created a map of locations for you. You'll find The Table (in blue), JH Wednesdays (in green), and Sunday Mornings (in yellow). Hopefully this map will help you get to where you need to be.You can find this map anytime at northwoodcc.org. Just go to Ministries>Student Life>Info & Events>NSL Map.

SEE THE MAP

So... I 've been working on this website thing. I spent for stinking ever today trying to make this cool thing that changes pictures and highlights different things that are important. I finally got it running and you can see it here [the linking isn't set up yet, but eventually when you click it'll take you to the right page].
You probably haven't seen it yet, but the Northwood site has a whole new look and feel. It's pretty. This project has been going on for a loooooonnnng time, which is good because I think we're doing a pretty good job of making sure the site does everything that we would want it to do.
But that's just it, we need to know what you want it to do. Sure it's got forums (new topics added today), chat (say howdy), links here to The Update (have you subscribed yet?), and will have pictures, video, articles, links, and other goodies soon... but it's your place to belong online. So I want to be sure that we've totally hooked you up dude! So what you need to do is add comments to this post with your ideas on what the new website should have, especially if you're interested in helping make it happen (like Joe did with the forums).
So check out the Northwood site and take a peak around. Happy hunting!

Hey crew, long time no see.

The summer was, quite frankly, AWESOME! Boundary Waters, Splash Camps, Mexico, Paintball, Cookouts, Hangouts, and tons more. There was all sorts of neat-o stuff.

But all that activity led to a little less "what-what" courtesy of the update. So here we are, summer is closing down and the next chapter of cool stuff is coming up, and what better way to get the word out than to revitalize "The Update" for fall 2007?

You'll notice there's a new look and new feel for The Update this year. We are switching to a Blog format, which means a few things are different.

• Posts - Additions now come in the form of "Posts" (anything that is posted to The Update) will be listed in reverse chronological order. Which means that the newest will be at the top, and the oldest at the bottom. This way the latest and greatest is the easiest to find, but you can go back and look at older things if you need.
  
• RSS Feeds- You can SUBSCRIBE to The Update now! I'll hook you up with step-by-step directions in a later post, but if you know how to do RSS (that stands for Really Simple Syndication... so it can't be that hard!) you can now get it going.
• Links & Archives - On the right hand you'll see a place for Links (cool sites to check out) and Archives (older posts). These are both great places to find even more helpful info on the web, so check 'em often.
  

I'm really excited about the changes to the update. We're also still working on the new Student section of the new Northwood Website. I'll keep you posted. That's it for now, more soon!

Here's a poll for you! After you vote, add your thoughts to the comments section!