Lil' Wayne's Album Debuts at #1

So what you ask? Many parents have probably never heard of Lil' Wayne. Well, here's your education. Lil' Wayne isn't new, in fact he's been around the rap scene since '97 when he was part of the rap group "Hot Boyz". The reason this is blog worthy is because he just dropped his first album, and it blew everything else out of the water. Billboard reported in this article that his album "Tha Carter III" debuted at #1 selling 1 million albums in 1 weeks time. This is the first time in 3 years that this many albums were sold (the last album to do that was 50 cent's, "The Massacre"). If you were wondering what what genre of music is America's favorite, wonder no more. Rolling Stone posted their review of his album here. So, what do we do this info? We need to understand what Lil' Wayne is preaching....cause he is preaching. Walt Mueller did a review of his first single off "Tha Carter III", which was titled "Lollipop"(he calls them 3-D reviews). Mueller does a great job of giving you the information and then answering the question, "what do we do now?" You can also preview the songs on iTunes, which I did, and was easily able to tell what kind of lyrics filled his raps. I love music, but there is some stuff out there you just shouldn't listen too as a follower of Jesus. Bottom line: This is one of those albums.

Pray for Darfur

I just read a horrible news report at CNN.com. This article reports that rape in Darfur is becoming "a way of life" for girls as young as 4 years old! This was such a difficult article to read. I wanted to bring it to your attention so that you could be in prayer for these people as their government turns their heads and denies it all.

Read the article here.

Goodbye MySpace/Facebook, Hello Stickam!

I heard about Stickam about a year ago, and thought to myself....that could be the next big thing on the web. It looks as if its time has finally come. Stickam works essentially like a MySpace or Facebook, with profiles and friends lists, but Stickam takes the social networking to a whole new level. Stickam's major selling point is its web cam activity. Thousands of students are showing their faces to the world for all to see. Now, you can set your privacy preferences so that only your friends can see your live video feed, or you can let anyone check you out. This place could be a parents nightmare or if used with the right monitoring and rules, could be a really fun thing. Stickam is now the most visited website by teens according to this article. Check this article out and even the website. We can't be scared of this technology, because it's not going anywhere and it'll only get more prevalent. But, we must figure out how to monitor and teach students the dangers that are out there.

The Next Big Thing

I had my TV turned to the Fuse network, which is an actual "music video" network now that MTV is more "TV" than music. A song came on that caught my attention and not in the "hey this is a catchy song" way, though it was rather catchy. It caught my attention by what was being sung. The main line was, "I kissed a girl and I liked it". This was sung by Katy Perry. I didn't know anything about her background. I tossed it off as another example of Romans 1, until I read Walt Muller's blog. He did some research and found out a little bit about Katy Perry, and his findings were a little shocking. Read his blog post here.

CAMP O 2008

Camp is just days away! Pierce will be back leading us in worship and our very own Pastor David Uth and Jack Fiscus will be the camp speakers. Camp Orlando is literally bigger and better than last year. How is it bigger and better you ask? 1) The amount of people going has grown in number (and we took the most EVER last year), 2) We have a Rec Team to lead us in games this year, 3) Our Late Nights will be longer and loaded with MORE coolness, 4) The morning and evening services will have MORE video and MORE fun, And 5) We will have MORE Camp Speakers to speak truth to us! So, please take some time to pray for us before camp starts and while we are there, that God would show up in a mighty way!