For the people that do not yet know me, my name is Josh Sczebel, I am 19 years old and am interning here at Grace Church in San Diego, California. I was born in Kamloops, BC, (that is in Canada) so I definitely feel a little bit out of place down here in Southern California.........but not too out of place; mostly because for the last 8 years I have been living in Vancouver, BC which has many similarities to San Diego. So that is a tiny bit of background on me, now I will explain a bit about how I ended up here and what I am here to do. Back in March of this year my Dad, Pat Sczebel, had the opportunity to go to the Together for the Gospel Conference with Tony Walsh who is the senior pastor at my home church Crossway Community. At the end of the conference he (my dad) began a dialogue with Eric Turbedsky regarding Grace Church's desire to have an intern come and serve in the areas of media and worship. My dad responded by saying, "that sounds like my son." They discussed this possibility for the next few weeks and my dad also sought out counsel from other Sovereign Grace pastors in trying to discern whether or not this was the position for me. When I first heard about the possibility my initial response was, "what about all my plans?" haha. I had a great job, was serving in many ways in my local church and was just happy where I was. On top of all of that I was planning on starting a Joinery apprenticeship program at a local trades school in Vancouver. I have to admit that the idea of southern California was definitely appealing to me. But at first I just didn't really have the faith to say yes right off the top. So I began to pray about it and seek out counsel from close friends and others who I figured would have a better grasp on things than I did. Whenever I would talk to people and get their counsel they would listen to me and just sorta stare, after a while of this they would usually respond with something like, "Heck Yes you should do it!" (sorry, i couldn't resist the nd quote). The more I prayed and talked, the more it seemed clear to me that this was God's plan for me. So my dad and I arranged a phone call with Eric and we told him that I was up for the adventure. A few months and 7 lightyears of emails later (inside joke) the adventure began. We left on August 22 around 9:00 pm Pacific time. My dad, brother Joel, and I departed to make the long drive down to SD. Aside from a few car troubles we had a relatively care-free car ride down. We arrived thursday August 24 just after 8:00pm. And thus began my San Diego trip. Today will end the first four days that I have had in the office. In which I have for the most part just been getting settled in. Buying computer gear, camera gear, wiping hard drives, installing software, going to burger king, recieving cameras, computer gear, etc. I don't really know why a crazy canadian like me gets to do something as cool as this. God is extremely gracious. He does not treat us as our sins deserve! That is an incredible truth that doesn't ever get old to me. Looking forward to the next ten months.

:J:C:S: