Summer has begun.

So School is now over, and I have to say I am happy it is. After the choir tour we found out that Dr.D's contract had ran out, and the school had decided not to bring him back to KCU. After weeks of tears, anger, and prayer school finally ended. Nevertheless the choir tour was one of the most amazing experiences so far in my life. After my juries (btw I got straight A's for the first time in my juries =] ) one of my teachers asked me to come sing at his church. Which is what I did today, or technically yesterday. It was my first official singing "gig". I sang Jerusalem and then sang a solo with his choir, We Fall Down by Chris Tomlin. The people there were wonderful and I truly enjoyed myself. On to news totally NOT related to school, the kind of news that I would rather talk about. =D Disney is only 11 days away =D This year we are taking one of my brother and my best friends Austin Muncy. The story of how he ended up going with us is a crazy one! My brother and I were not suppose to know we were going to go to Disney this year, in fact dad had kept it a secret from all of us, except family friends who were going at the same time. So at a tennis match one of our family friends spilled the beans. Well Austin was with Dad, Matt, and I at Walmart doing some late night shopping, when the topic of Disney came up. We said "Austin if you could get the money we would totally take you to Disney!" This being a joke of course. He texts his mom and says "can I have $5,000 to go to Disney with Matt and Allison." She responds with, "I'll give you $500." Needless to say he only needed $1,000. So he is now going with us to Disney for his birthday! While all of this is going on, mom has no clue! So on the friday before mothers day, dad gets a box and fills it with balloons and attached two pieces of paper that together said, "On June 24, we will be going to Walt Disney World." Love Allison, Bill, Matt, and Austin. Of course when the balloons popped out of the box and she read the papers, she was hysterical. You'd think that we had never been to Disney World when you see how excited we get when we find out we are going. But this will be our 7th trip, 8th if you count the cruise. We absolutely love it there, and cannot wait to share the experience of Austin's first trip and his birthday trip with him this year. =D On to some more news, but this is the kind that I would rather not talk about, but that bothers me so bad that it is unavoidable when documenting life. The week before I went on my choir tour, our assistant pastor Shane was made the pastor at a different church. Of course I was upset at first, but I would trust him to make the best decision for him and his family, one that was inspired by God. The only thing is, is that he truly was the only "elder" I felt comfortable talking to about specific topics. Maybe it was because he was younger, I really don't know. Regardless, nearly half the church left with him. This may sound like a large number of people left and went with him, but our church is very small and so half isn't that large of a number at all. This is not the doing of Shane or his family, and I do not blame them for it, but it is hard for me to believe that people we decided to leave really had the time that Shane and his family had to pray about this decision. A week is not long enough to get an answer from God. If he gave you the answer in a week then he did but it is hard for me to believe that such a big decision, like one that could change everything for your family, could be decided in one week. It hurts. And now the youth group is suffering. I was so excited about our youth program. Brent had just let me start teaching the intermediate class, and now I have maybe two kids in my class. It makes me feel like I'm not good enough. Like the church I was raised in is not good enough. I've been in this church my entire life. I have been a christian for nearly 16 years, and a member of the Belles Chapel Freewill Baptist Church all 16 of those years. By the way I'm only 20. And yes, I go there because of my family, I do not have any other choice. But I LOVE that church and the people in that church. We are a family. It hurts when members of that church family decide to leave. It also hurts when people try to blame the decline of the church on my family, the Hayes family. We run everything, yes that is true, but it's only because we have no one else stepping up to help out, except for the other families who have been there since before I was born, you know who you are, and I am grateful you have stuck with our church through everything, all of the crap we've gone through. My family has given up numerous opportunities and things that are very important to us, to stay at the church and keep it alive. So this feels like a knife in my heart. This is not a jab at anyone reading this who left, you are choosing to read this and it is an online diary. I still love each and every one of you, and that is why it hurts so bad. What happens if I get married and move away? And so does my brother and little cousins. Who will be the next generation? We need to bring people in. Our church feels like it is dying. I do not want our church to die! I do not know what to do. No one really listens to me, though I should be considered an elder of the church. But enough of that. I had to get that out. It has been in my heart and clawing at me for weeks now. We should not take the work of God lightly. We should pray to God for every little thing, give our lives over to God as an offering, a sacrifice for him. Jesus died for us. And he hasn't came back yet, so he obviously still has a plan for each one of us! I pray that God puts off his coming. We need to go out and get people saved! We need to stop sitting in our churches, in our pews, with our nice clothing on. We need to get down and dirty! Go out and feed the hungry, help heal the sick, cloth the naked, and save the lost! What are we doing now that is profiting the kingdom of God?