So I'm blogging from a wireless connection in the middle of the woods above Santa Barbara. That's pretty cool. I'm leading this retreat for Pastors' Kids this weekend. Here's some of what's happened so far.

Bugs: plenty of them
Poison Oak: plenty of it
Students connecting with each other: seems to be happening
Sunburn: Happened to a few students and to my face
Food: not too shabby
Worship times: good response
Beach: sandy, not good for flying kites
Visit from Brian and Kalee: a nice treat
Coffee Bean ice blended: delicious
Cabins: they look like an Ewok village

Labels: youth ministry

Labels: random

One of the first headlines I saw this morning was "50-Foot Michael Jackson Robot May Roam Desert." How can you not click on that? Read the entire article here. Here are a couple clips:

"It has now been claimed that his plans include an elaborate show in Vegas, which would feature the giant Jacko striding around the desert, firing laser beams."

"'It would be in the desert sands. Laser beams would shoot out of it so it would be the first thing people flying in would see.'"

Labels: funny stuff

Just made some updates to my "Blogs O' Sweetness" links on the right. Here are some people for you to check out.

Dan Lance - young adults guy at the Grove
John Snyder - John's been on my list, but changed his blog address. He's the jr. high pastor at Journey in Okiehoma.
Tim Schmoyer - I don't know Tim personally, but I read his blog and I believe he reads mine. He's got some good youth ministry stuff. He recently made a move from Texas to Minnesota so I'm sure he's probably freezing his butt off much of the time.
Tony Steward - Tony's a newer guy that came to Saddleback after I left. He does some sort of stuff for Doug Fields.

Here are some pics of the new place before most of our stuff was in.



Here's our awesome pea soup colored kitchen.....that Nicole will be picking new paint for in the near future.







This is our Love Sac in our office/dining room/whatever room.







Our Master Bedroom - also a potential painting project.

I know it's been awhile since I've blogged. The move and everything has kinda overtaken our life right now. But we're in. More on that later. In the meantime, this is the first time I've been on the internet in the new house. The phone jack next to our desk doesn't work. But after a little thought, Nicole scrounging up a couple long phone cables, and me taking a trip to Radio Shack we have Internet (via a really long phone cable going through the office, through the living room, and plugging in in the kitchen). Hopefully it's just a temporary solution, but I know having internet working will make the wife happy, which in turn makes me happy. I'll put some pictures up soon of the new place.

Labels: random

Nicole and I spent the day cleaning our new house. Lots of dusting and lots of 409. I'm feeling better about it now that we've spent some time in it cleaning stuff up. I was feeling a bit nervous last night about the whole thing. Although Nicole did manage to anger a wasp that was trying to build a hive above our front porch. That wasp had better watch out....if it comes down to Lovato vs. BugWorld, we will be triumphant....I hope. Tomorrow's the big moving day. I'll post some pics when we have them.

Labels: random

Under California law, a landlord is NOT required to clean the place (i.e. shampoo the carpets, paint the walls, etc.). They're only required to make sure it's livable (weatherproof, everything works, no pests/rodents, etc). Just thought you should know.

Labels: random

We got the key to our new rental house today. As we were going through we started noticing many of the "quirks" that come with a house that's over 50 years old. Fun stuff. It's caused us to experience a little anxiety, but we're just trying to remind ourselves that we're trading a nice new apartment for an older house that gives us some more space and a shorter commute. Everything's a trade....

Labels: random

My day at a glance:

• Found out a Pastors' Kids Retreat I'm planning next weekend IS happening.....I'd been operating off a hunch that it might be cancelled, so now I'm scrambling to finalize some stuff.
• Had a cool time helping out some people that have had some rough times lately.
• Went to It's a Grind to work on some stuff for tomorrow night's message.
• Ran into Trevor Christmas from The Grove and spent about an hour talking through our upcoming joint Mexico mission trip.
• Ran into a couple guys from Church in the Valley that are planning on planting a church up near my current place (soon to be former place). I'm super excited for what they're up to.
  

Labels: random, youth ministry

I'm loving being able to check out the progress of the new David Crowder album. Check out the live webcams here or Crowder's blog here.

Labels: random

We're stoked....we're finally moving into our new (to us) house on Saturday. If anyone's near Riverside on Saturday who feels like helping us move a bunch of stuff, feel free to contact me through my profile page.

Labels: random

Me: I also now have a Gmail account.

Nicole: A what?

Me: A Gmail account.

Nicole: That sounds dirty.

Labels: random

Well, my Grandma's health continues to be an issue. She had surgery about a week ago because her stomach had gone up into the upper part of her chest and was essentially divided into two parts. They pulled it back down and fastened it in with some tubing (which is simply amazing that they can do that).

Since then she still hasn't been able to really eat. So today they ran another test and discovered that food basically can't get from her esophagus to her stomach (it can, but only very slowly). So now they're going to have to do another procedure sometime in the near future to try to open that up. As far as food goes right now, they're feeding her some liquidy/pasty stuff that goes in through the tube in her stomach.

As always, I appreciate your prayers.

Labels: prayer

Here are two of the posters we had students write on Sunday night. Not sure if you can read it all well, but there was some pretty heavy stuff on there.

Labels: youth ministry

Two things I hate: confrontation and phone calls. I just finished making some calls to our students who missed our "mandatory" Mexico training meeting on Sunday. I hate doing stuff like that, but students need to learn to "be committed to what they've committed to." I think that's a Kurt Johnston-ism.

Labels: youth ministry

Today is one of those days where I'm glad I'm in youth ministry. It was a pretty long day. I got to church a little before 9am and left a little after 9pm. We had Mexico training this afternoon which was a great time. We've got almost twice as many students going this year as last year and it's a good crew. It felt weird going from prepping one house-building team last year to prepping two teams this year.

Then tonight we had a worship night for our high school students. Spent the time between the two events planning the worship night. It turned out to be really cool. We divided the night into three basic "phases" or sections: feeling far from God, drawing near to God, and celebrating that God is near. It was a really cool time of allowing students some space to connect with God. Some good conversations happened and good prayer times as well. It's amazing the hurt and crap that some of our students are wrestling through....and yet you'd never be able to tell at first glance. I'm going to post some pics (once we put them on the computer) of a couple poster-type deals we had students write on. There were some very real and honest things on the poster.

Labels: youth ministry

The Mis-Statement of the Day goes to my Aunt Margie who instead of referencing Krikorian Theatres, referenced Kevorkian Theatres.

Labels: random

Ok, I'm definitely out of my blogging rhythm at the moment, but here's a quick recap of the last few days:

• I may have mentioned my Grandma has been sick. She hasn't been able to eat really at all since mid-January and the doctors couldn't figure anything out. Well they finally did and they're doing surgery tomorrow. Basically, her stomach is in two places right now - her chest and her abdomen - with a small opening between the two which means that actual food is not able to get through. There's more details than that, but that's the short version. I'd appreciate your prayers.
• Spent the weekend at Thousand Pines with some great friends as we put on a jr. high winter camp for our four churches. Spoke Friday night and ran MediaShout the rest of the weekend.
• Then yesterday went to Disneyland with Nicole, Puddles, Treece, Swanny, and Stephen. Then we met up later with Blogless Phil Shinners and Pogue, along with their families. It was a really fun day. It was also a good day on Buzz Lightyear as you can tell from the picture.
  
• Finished the night off with 24 at the Shinners.
  

Labels: random