» Middle School

8th Grade Beach Trip Video

tallohood — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:17:53 +0000

Here is a quick and simple glimpse at what our week was like in Alabama. Lots of worship and beach time. Awesome!

-Micah

8th Grade Beach Trip: Days Four and Five

tallohood — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 05:10:53 +0000

Well, it has been an awesome week, but it is about to come to a close. We leave at 8 am tomorrow morning and have more than 10 hours on the road before we make it back to Houston. It has been an absolute blast to spend a week with this group. They are great students and this week I have seen them grow closer together and I have gotten to witness their heart for God. Awesome! Anyway, here is a quick recap of the past two days.

Yesterday, we had a great morning of worship and then came back to the condos for lunch and some beach time. The beach really has been awesome. Some of our boys bought skim boards so they spent several hours of the last two days just running down the beach, and gliding on the water. I would try it, but if I did, I know I would end up flat of my face. haha! After beach time and dinner, we headed to our evening worship service.

The thing that stood out for me from last night’s worship service was the opportunity for students to sponsor a child who lives in poverty through Compassion International. Several of our students called home and got permission to sponsor a child. This really is an awesome thing. Check out their link for more information. Also, last night, I treated the students to a movie after worship. We saw Despicable Me. It was a really funny and appropriate movie. If you can, make time and go see it. You won’t regret it!

Today was more of the same: breakfast, worship, lunch, Bible study, beach time, dinner, worship, group time, and bed. As you can see, we spend a lot of time in worship and eating! I have to say a HUGE thank you to our female sponsors Bina and Joanne who went shopping for all of our food and prepared all of our meals – with the help of our students, of course. If the meals had been left up to me, we would have had a rough week. These ladies have gone above and beyond and our students have eaten well. They are awesome!

Also, as we have spent time in worship services, our students have really been engaged in what is going on – especially during the music. Kristian Stanfill has been the worship leader this week and he is outstanding. A few of our girls sort of stalked him after the final service and got a picture with him, so I had to put that on here. They even got him to sign their CDs. Good job girls!

Well, that’s it. See you back in Houston tomorrow!

-Micah

8th Grade Beach Trip: Days Two and Three

tallohood — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 05:11:34 +0000

I finally got Internet access at the condos in Orange Beach, so I’ll try and fill you in with a quick update from the past two days.

We left Baton Rouge early on Tuesday morning and made it to Orange Beach for check-in with Student Life around 2:30 pm. From there, we headed to our condos which are right on the beach! We were very excited to see where we are spending the week and we were even more excited to see how cool the condos are. We have four condos and they all have wrap around balconies that look out over the beach. Let’s just say that we are spoiled!

We were also thrilled to see that there is NO OIL on the beaches, We can see boats in the distance doing cleanup and we can also see big red barriers a long way off from the beach, but the water is basically unaffected where we are. We have had red flags flying, but oddly enough, it is not oil related. The red flags are because of strong riptides. So, since there is no oil, we had some good, unhindered time on the beach today!

The way the schedule works here is simple. We go to a worship service in the morning and at night, and then we are on our own from about 11 am to 7 pm. In this “free time” we eat lunch, have small group Bible studies, play on the beach, and also eat dinner. It is a very flexible schedule and has been awesome for us so far. Student Life also organizes some beach rec, so some of our boys took advantage of that today.

The services have been great so far. Kristian Stanfill is leading worship and Matt Carter from The Austin Stone has been our camp pastor. Matt has been talking about sin and the effects it has on us. It has been good, challenging, and deep stuff. Starting tomorrow, we actually have a different camp pastor for the rest of the week – Darrin Patrick. Matt and Darrin are really good friends and are well coordinated so it should be interesting to see how that works. If you are curious to hear more about what we are learning at Beach Camp, you can listen live from home. Tomorrow night (Thursday) and the next night (Friday) our services will be broadcast online. To listen to the audio, go here! It starts at 7 pm each night.

Finally, to see a whole lot more about the week, you can go here. This site is hosted by Student Life and gives a really good detailed look at our week. And a cool thing – we are the “Youth Group of the Day” tomorrow (Thursday). This means there will be an article about us on this site sometime Thursday. Just click on “group of the day” in gray on the right. That should be cool!

I guess that is all for now!

-Micah

8th Grade Beach Trip: Day One

tallohood — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:00:26 +0000

Today we left with 21 8th grade students and began our trip to Orange Beach, Alabama for Student Life Camp at the Beach. It is a 10 hour drive though, so we split the trip in half and spent our first night in my hometown of Baton Rouge, LA.

I can’t take students to Baton Rouge and not bring them to LSU, so we spent about an hour touring the LSU campus. We drove around Tiger Stadium, visited Mike the Tiger (who was very playful today!), drove around the Parade Grounds, and even drove down Sorority Row.

After that, we made our way to Brew-Bachers, a great down home, local restaurant for an authentic dinner. It was some good food! Man, I miss that Cajun cooking. We wrapped up the night with some swimming at our hotel and then headed off to bed. Ready to get to the beach tomorrow, but really enjoyed a quick stop in BR!

-Micah

**Check out this video I took of Mike today. Pretty cool!

Camp Tallowood 2010 Flashmob

tallohood — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:13:12 +0000

On May 16th at the Camp Rally in the Tallowood gym, about 50 students spontaneously did this:

Are you ready for camp? I know I am!

-Micah

6th Grade Acteens

tallohood — Mon, 10 May 2010 21:26:22 +0000

Every Wednesday night during the school year girls in grades 6^th – 11^th meet for Acteens. Acteens is a time for girls to learn about missions and missionaries. Not only do we learn about missions and missionaries, we also do mission work. The sixth grade girls have spent several Saturdays working at Gracewood and have LOVED every minute of it. The girls also learn more about their Christian faith and serving others through Christ’s love.

6th Grade Acteens at Gracewood.

Some of the other activities that the Acteens have participated in with enthusiasm include making candy turkeys for the Baptist Mission Centers, wrapping gifts for Mr. Brunner’s Christmas, participating in a prayer journal and prayer guide and collecting items for children in need. The sixth grade Acteens focus on Awareness of their Baptist history and faith and Confidence that God gives us to share our faith. The sixth grade Acteens have learned about their spiritual gifts and put them into practice. The last activity the sixth grade girls completed, was talking to the fifth grade GA’s to encourage them to move up to Acteens.

Working with fifth grade G.A.’s

The sixth grade Acteens are looking forward to moving up to 7^th Grade next year.

www.tallowood.org/students

tallohood — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:53:51 +0000

We are working hard to keep our online presence up to date so I have been trying to make this site (www.tallohood.com, no longer www.tallohoodtoday.com) interesting. I don’t always make that happen consistently, but I’m doing my best. Usually after a big event, like SPARK, we have lots to say. Other times things are a little slow and I don’t have much to write about. Anyway, I have recently updated the header image and done a few other small changes. Hope you notice the changes.

Another thing I’ve been working on is the “official” students page on www.tallowood.org. I am very excited to say that you can now DIRECTLY access the Tallowood student ministry web page by simply going to www.tallowood.org/students. This is the place to go for all the latest news and info for upcoming events, so be sure to check it out. And you can always come here to see videos from past events and occassional thoughts from your student ministry staff.

I hope you enjoy it!

-Micah

SPARK 2010 Video

tallohood — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:00:19 +0000

Check it out. Good times!

-Micah

SPARK 2010 Pics

tallohood — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:45:44 +0000

Check out the Tallowood Student Ministry Picture Site for pics of SPARK! It should be worth your while.

-Micah

SPARK 2010

tallohood — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:01:26 +0000

8th graders after their shaving cream war!

We had an awesome weekend these past few days during SPARK. Check out tallowoodtalking.com for more details from the view of Karen Harrell, who hosted one of our 6th grade girl homes! Links to her two blog entries are below:

Friday reflection

Saturday reflection

-Micah