Group Time

Every Tuesday for this last academic year I met in group time with Bill, Becky, Rich, Tom, Rob, Marcus, and Ken. It was for an academic requirement, but it turned into much more than that. Those seven have been a gift of God to me and will be people whom I always love and hold dear to my heart. Today was the last day we had to officially meet. We did the thing where we took time to affirm each other. I love those times. I love my group.

am i a looser?

The Bridge 

traveling buddies

Have you ever gone on a long road trip and found yourself following another car? I end up doing it on long trips; usually because they are going the same speed as I want to go and I have no cruise control. Also, because I figure any cops will get them before they get me. Sometimes I get kind of attached on trips when I follow a car for a long time and I say good bye when they pull off the freeway.

Today I had a ford ranger following me on my way to seminary. I think he was a traveling buddy (either that or the FBI who I think have been investigating me lately; see conspiracy theory). He even got off the same exit as me today, but went a different way soon after. I hope and pray my mysterious traveling buddy has a good day today.

Need a Vacation

In class today I realized Mandy and I need to get away this summer for a week. Of course Lucy will also be with us. I'm thinking the first week in August right now. Anybody have any cool ideas of a place that is no more than five hours away and is a fun place to go to. We like the outdoors, but with a kid we also want all the amenities of comfort we can get. We'll also be on a pretty tight budget. My friend Gary gave me the idea of the finger lakes in upstate New York. Post or email me any good ideas you may have. Thanks!!!

less than 4 1/2 weeks left! 

Does God care about poop stains?

So yesterday our toilet clogs up. So I find this old rusty snake in our basement that was left there from the previous owners to unclog our toilet with. Of course I can't get the stupid thing to work, but it did leave these ugly brown rust stains all over the toilet that looked like poop stains. Eventually I got the toilet unclogged with another device and kind of forgot about the stains until Mandy came home. She asked me about them and I told her that I couldn't find our toilet scrubber. She told me she didn't think they would come off even with a scrubber. And she was right, they didn't. So now we had a permanetly pooped stained toilet, which is never fun to have.

I felt pretty bad about that last night and this morning I woke up and tried to bleach them out. It wasn't working and I felt pretty bad. So I let some bleach soke in the toilet while I took a shower praying that the soaking would bring it out. Literally I was praying in the shower for that bleach to have extra special strength to bring the ugly stains out. But while I was praying it was as if God told me to go down to our friends at GR Smith's hardware store and ask them for advice. So I get out of the shower to find out the bleach didn't work and followed the good Lord's leading to talk to my friend Bill at GR Smith's. He showed me stuff that he thought might work, so I bought it and took it home to try it.

Sure enough it worked like magic and we now have the whitest toilet bowl we've had in a long time. God doesn't always make our bleach extra strong when we ask, some times He just tells us where to get better stuff. God cares about us more than we ever know, even about the poop stains that really get us down.

After all that I woke Mandy up, who was taking a nap on the couch, to show her the clean toilet. She was so proud she gave me a hug and a kiss. So not only did God brighten my day by giving me a clean toilet, He also got me a hug and a kiss from the most beautiful girl in town!

Not to be

Sad day for me today. I've talked about a church we wanted to buy in our neighborhood and I found out today that it got sold to another church. I've never particularly wanted it, well at least as much as the rest of the people in our church, but it seemed so logical. I just always felt like God was going to give it to us, but today I found out that is most likely not going to happen.

I've been through so many emotions today already. I first heard about it from a friend who goes to the church that we wanted to buy. I had to be happy for him cause his church needed to sell it quick so they could finish their new building project, yet I wanted to cry while putting a smile on my face. He wasn't positive the deal had gone through yet, so parts of me hoped the deal might fall through. But then I thought what a pompus ass I was being cause it was another church who was buying it. Then I worried about another church coming down to our neighborhood and the competition that would bring us. That led me to calling myself a lot worse words than ass.

I ended up having to leave the library where I was planning to get some work done and go pray at a few places. I had to go to the where the purchasing church currently meats at and pray for them and then to the church property that we wanted to buy and they are buying and pray for them again. There I saw no more 4-sale signs and I realized it was for real. I had to start planning in my mind how we would welcome this church to our neighborhood and how we could work together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

I also stopped by the Alternative Center and prayed for them. They are moving into the building where we currently meet. I'm pray that God will shine His light into that school through our church. And I pray they will still let us meet in their building after they move in.

I wrote the above as a confession. The Bible says it's good to confess our sins to one another. I also wrote it for the record. I want to read this again in five years and see in what ways God did cool things even through what I think is currently discouraging news. And that's the thing, I'm confident God is taking care of us even now.

I have so many more thoughts going through my mind right now, but I'll save you from them. Blessings on your day knowing that we serve a God who is able to do immeasurable more than all we could ask or even imagine.

ps. The new Narnia trailer is out at www.narnia.com it's good. Of course he's not safe, but he's good.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

For all of my friends who remember Eric Frey. He is now the youth pastor at St. Pauls and might be on TV tomorrow night.
Nazarene ties to this week's Extreme Makeover: Home EditionKansas City—As reported in the April 8 edition of NCN News, Kansas City’s St. Paul’s Church of the Nazarene recently played a major supporting role in the production of an upcoming episode of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Originally speculated to air May 15, the episode will air May 8. St. Paul’s Church, who provided use of their facilities to the ABC team, will hold a community watch-party for the show. According to St. Paul’s pastor Caleb Reynolds, the church will likely receive some attention in Home Makeover follow-up show How'd They Do That? set to air in May 9.
Reynolds said ABC approached the church asking to use their facilities to help with the production. “The back entrance to the church is a hundred yards or so from the house they renovated,” Reynolds said. “They blocked off the entire street between our lot and the job site so that construction crews could have dedicated use of the road.”
Initially, ABC had only asked for use of the church’s parking lot and back yard.
“We offered to let them eat in our gym and use our newly-renovated kitchen if it would be helpful,” stated Reynolds. “They took us up on the offer, and during construction we served as the dining hall for 300-400 volunteer construction workers, cast, crew, and contractors that were contributing their efforts to the show. Many of the volunteer workers are from the Kansas City metro area, so we felt it was very important for us to be able to make contact with them in a setting like this.
“We have been praying that God would show us ways that we can connect the resources of our church to the needs of our community. I think this opportunity was God answering those prayers.”
Reynolds called the experience rewarding and said that the ABC team was extremely appreciative of using the church facilities.
Both shows air at 8 p.m. Eastern time on their respective nights.

Israel

I found out two nights ago that I might have the oppurtonity to go to the Holy Lands for 10 days next March. It would be with Seminary and it would be my last class there. I think it would only cost me about 1000 dollars, normally 2200, but I'd get a special deal cause of the scholarship program I'm a part of. The only problem is the ten days away from Mandy and Lucy, oh yeah, and Hank. It's someplace I've wanted to go to for years, I hope it works out so I can go.

Do I look like Derek Webb?

If you follow the link in my previous post look at the picture of Derek Webb. Now imagine me minus 60 pounds, with a short hair cut, with a guitar, and singing my guts out. Do you think I look like Derek Webb in that picture?

Derek Webb

This morning I'm driven over to the Naz to use the library and I hear on WNZR that there giving away Derek Webb tickets for tomorrow night at Kenyon. So I go into the library where they have no radio, but I know there giving out four pair over the next 1/2 hour so I decide I'll call radomly to see if I get through. I call once and get through, but they weren't giving them away at the time. Ten minutes later I call back and it's busy, so I know they're giving them away at the moment so I call back again right away and I'm caller ten, I WIN!!! But I found out I called for Wayne Watson instead. But after I told them my crazy story they gave me Derek Webb tickets instead!!! So Mandy and I will be thinking about Trent Charles tomorrow evening while we are listening to the cool, yet convicting, Derek Webb at Gund Commons on the campus of Kenyon College. Now that's a good way to start the morning off.

For all my rowdy friends who are Derek Webb fans who would like to join us go here for more info.