Hello everyone,

This is the debut of our first blog posting for the lifegroup. Let me introduce myself, my name is Dan, a drummer and one of the web designers in our group. I will start with my own story of how God has touched my life. Throughout this year I believe Jesus has been pointing me in the direction of doing His will. I began the year by writing lyrics for about 10 songs. My band, The Reverse Engineers, never focused on Christian-based songs on previous albums but I began to get inspired to write songs focused on faith. The songs came to me very quickly and I was starting to write about 3 or more songs a week during that time. I kept asking God what he wanted to me write about and the words just flowed from thoughts to pen to paper. I hope to share the songs on this blog once they are finished by the band. The lyric writing stopped in late march and then I was inspired with the concept for this Community focused blog network.

I had a large challenge ahead of me with the YourCommunityBlog website but I felt I was being pushed by God to get the site completed. With the help of my brother Bill, the design of the site came together quickly but the nuts and bolts of the site quickly became complex as we came up with ideas to use Google Maps to visually show blogs on the network. Over the next 7 months I spent most nights and weekends working on the site (I have to thank my wife Maddie for being very patient with me as well as being a good project manager when I went off on a tangent during programming). 4 times during the journey I became depressed because of the programming challenges and I kept running into problems in the programming I had never faced before. Each time I asked God that if it was His will that I complete this site that He would point me in the right direction. And each time He came through to give me the help I needed to get things done. My faith in Him was renewed each time. I need to learn to keep the faith even when things get difficult.

To make a long story short, throughout my journey this year I decided to listen to God and whether it was in writing music or programming, I decided to listen to Him and ask Him how I should move forward. Sometimes it is simple as just opening up yourself to listen and ask him for guidance on how you can do His will.  Your life becomes more meaningful and enjoyable when you give up control in your life and attempt to do what God wants you to do.

In upcoming posts you will hear more stories from the lifegroup. I hope you have enjoyed reading this first story. There will more stories from other members of the lifegroup coming soon!

-Dan Cote