This past weekend I attended the LEAH convention in Rochester, NY. I can’t even begin to explain to you how much God blessed me and taught me this weekend. But I’ll try anyways.

I went in to the convention with a good attitude. I was positive, confident, and prayed like crazy the night before. I had asked God to bless me and let His light shine through me when I met and interacted with the people there. Which, for anyone who knows me, isn’t always the way I approach things. Unfortunately I tend to have a negative attitude about things and hardly ever expect or even ask God to truly bless something I do. A lot of times I pray and say “God bless…” and then not really expect God to do it. Why is that? I’m not totally sure. It may be because of what our culture says, or even the things that we as Christian teenagers think and chat about. I think as Christian “teens” or young adults we often joke about God “blessing” us. We throw that phrase around like it means little or nothing that God, the Creator of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, who cared enough about us to DIE on the cross for OUR SINS, is BLESSING us in what we’re doing. It’s a big deal, and I personally don’t think I’ve ever truly taken it seriously before this weekend.

Anyways, I got there Thursday night and set up my booth and right off the bat got to meet and talk with some really cool people. They showed a genuine interest in what I was doing and what my company does, which isn’t always the case. Most of the time people don’t take me seriously, they just think its “cute” that I run a business. They see it as like a teenagers lemonade stand.

Over the next several hours or so I kept meeting great people, one right after the other. At about 9 o’clock we packed up and headed home. Once again, before I went to sleep I prayed and contemplated about the next two days and asked God to bless me and shine through me.

Friday morning my dad and I woke up around 6:30 and got dressed and ready to go for the day. We stopped by my friend Destin’s house and picked him up. We got to the convention at around 8:30 and set up my booth and got settled in for the day. After we got done Mr. Gorman, the convention coordinator, and someone else stopped over at my booth. They informed me I had been chosen to receive a $300 check from Ian Lamont the next morning. WOW! I didn’t know about this previously and it was a nice surprise, and that was just the first blessing that day. After that Mr. Gorman and I took a tour around the building. He showed me around and told me some things he’d like to have filmed for their video I’m doing for them. During all this Destin dutifully sat at my booth and talked to people for me.

Later that afternoon I had ran out of all my business cards. But soon after that I met a man who was interested in me recording his son playing guitar and singing. I told him I had never done it before, but he said he wanted to give me the opportunity. So I have him a quote, and then he gave me $50 in advance! Another big blessing.

Then later that afternoon I filmed a workshop for one of the vendors, I ended up having technical difficulties and had to give her a refund. But she’s still interested in me producing a DVD for her, so thats awesome. Another big blessing.

Then Saturday came and I received my check and met some more awesome people. I had the oppurtunity to help shoot some footage for the guys over at E3cubes, and in return they gave me one of their cubes. I also got to do my first “workshop”, which was an interesting experience. So overall God really blessed me and taught me a lot of things this past weekend.

Thank you to everyone who I got to meet, for those that encouraged me, and those I met in person for the first time. It was great getting to talk to all of you and learning from you. I hope I get the privilege of doing it all again next year.

So a couple weeks ago I created a “fan” page for myself on Facebook.

Now I know that sounds conceited, but thats not why I created it. My goal is to market myself. Sounds kind of weird but its worked for other people, so I thought I would give it a shot. Since I enjoy hosting podcasts, videos,etc. I’m going to try and market my personality. So anything and everything I create thats not specifically done for JPT Media will be marketed as eg: Producedby Ethan Thompson. So if people enjoy what I do, or at least are interested I may be able to create a “following”. Which could then be used to market other peoples material, or my own, and at some point God-willing make me some cash. SO, become a fan of me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter!

So if you guys go back through my archives you’ll notice that last summer I went to work at the Word of Life Ranch. I had applied with the intentions of working on their “tech” team. But soon found out that you had to be 16 in order to work tech. Which was a problem because at the time I was only 15. After a couple months of waiting to hear if I even got accepted, I got a call notifying me I could work in the dishroom. I wasn’t very excited about washing dishes all summer, but I decided it would be a good experience and went anyways. After getting there, meeting my cabin mates and supervisors, I was glad I went. I ended up hating washing dishes, but it was worth it because I got to do so many other fun things.

All right fast forward to the end of the summer. I ended up applying to go the next summer (this years) with the hopes that I would get accepted to work tech. After waiting almost 6 months I got an email asking if I still wanted to have them process my application. I emailed them back telling them I had changed my mind and didn’t want to work at WOL this year. But after thinking about it some more, praying, and getting a good nights sleep I emailed them AGAIN saying that I changed my mind AGAIN and would like to come work for the summer.

Fast forward to March 31 2010. I received another email, this time telling me I got accepted to work tech this year. I was so excited! I’ll finally be doing the job I’ve been wanted to do for almost 2 years.

As of today its only 54 days till I leave for my first year of Word of Life STC on the island. I can’t wait to see what God’s got planned for me this summer. I’m also hoping I might be able to “chronicle” my summer and make my videos into a kind of video blog that I’ll post when I get back.

Moral of the story, don’t be afraid to go outside of your comfort zone and keep on trying no matter how young or inexperienced you think you are.

Well I’ve been hard at work saving up for my new desktop computer. I’m looking to save up about $700 and I’m almost at $200 after about 3 weeks of saving and selling a ton of stuff on ebay. I’ll probably end up selling a lot of my book collection to help pay for the computer. If I can sell 10 books a month and make about $50 profit, then add in my dog walking pay, and any video jobs I get and I’ll probably have my new computer in about 2 months. Then I’m going to save up and buy 2x 22 inch monitors. At some point down the road I’d like to update my mouse and keyboard and get a nice wireless set, but thats all extra.

Speaking of video jobs, I’m hopefully going to be working with The Batavian and producing some video ads for them. It’ll look nice on my portfolio and will be a nice source of income.

I’ve also been working on promoting and setting up a facebook profile picture competition with my friends. You can see the video ad I made for it below.