Last night at the PDYM conference kicked off great. If I had to sum up the night it was "It's not about the building." Saddleback has one of the best youth ministry facilities in the country, but until recently they'd met in portable facilities, tents, etc. Lucas and I were talking about it on the drive back to Riverside last night and both of us feel like we don't walk into an amazing youth facility (I've seen a few now) and go "Oh....well they can do great ministry because they have a great facility." Don't get me wrong, I definitely say "Oh, this would be sweet to have." But at the same time youth ministry is not about a building, just like church is not about a building.

Stoked for the rest of the conference. Nicole and Addie are coming down with me today. If you're at the conference I'll be the guy in the bright green shirt with the the hot wife and super cute 8 month old daughter.

Labels: family, PDYM, youth ministry

Enjoy

Labels: family

Here's what I'm up to this week:

Monday
- Shots for Addie
- Admin catch-up work in the office
- On Target Evangelism Conference
- MOPS & POPS dinner at church...we've got some sweet outfits planned!

Tuesday
- On Target Evangelism Conference

Wednesday
- Youth Ministry Class
- Mount some TVs in our high school room
- High School Gathering - Week 3 of "Goin' All the Way"

Thursday
- Meet with college pastor
- Meet with high school intern
- Meet with local pastor re: summer mission trip

Friday
- Day Off
- Maybe move into new house?

Labels: family, random, youth ministry

We're buying a new house. It can be kinda stressful, but is also very cool. Today was the home inspection. Our home inspector was a cool guy and VERY thorough. He had all sorts of sweet tools like a laser thermometer, thermoimaging camera, and a stick that picks up microwaves. Basically James Bond meets General Contractor. We'll be moving in sometime in late February or so (after a brief stay at Nicole's parents). Here are some pics.

Labels: family

It's my wife's birthday today. Go wish her a happy birthday on her blog!

Labels: family

This Week I'm...

• Speaking at chapel for Riverside Christian on Wednesday....20 minutes....nice short slot
• Winding up a 3-week series in high school ministry on The Bible
• Trying to figure out how to improve our wednesday night program....it needs love
  
• Recovering from a crazy weekend
• In major need of finally cleaning/organizing my office (I say this most weeks)
• Celebrating Nicole's 2_th birthday with her on Wednesday
• Determined to make blogging a regular habit once again
• Trusting God more than I have in recent months/years
• Enjoying life more than I have in recent months/years
• Going to hang with my daughter and tell her how cute she is
  

Labels: family, random, youth ministry

Some of the things going on this week:

• Wednesday night Back to School BBQ - we had a big turnout last Wednesday and I'm thinking we'll see a lot of students at this event.
• message for Wednesday night kickoff....still not sure what I'll teach on, but thinking I'll grab some coffee in a few and figure it out.
• College Ministry - new CBU students arrive tomorrow....these next couple weeks are our big chance to connect with them and plug them in to our church.....maybe a full post on what we're doing with this later today.
• On a related note, we have a bunch of Rwandan students attending CBU this year who came to our church and then to our college pastor's birthday party yesterday. Pretty cool.
• Nicole and I are planning on having a Coffee Depot date sometime this week.
• I need to make travel arrangements for a conference I'm heading to in Nashville in September. Southwest is making me choose between times I'd prefer to fly and nonstop flights....jerks.
• Twitter Plug: Follow me at www.twitter.com/mikelovato if you aren't already.
  

Labels: family, random, youth ministry

My blog has been VERY silent lately. Let's try to change that. Here is some of what's going on right now.

• Addison is doing well. Sleeps pretty good at night. Now we just need her to take some daytime naps so Nicole can catch up on some sleep.
• Church stuff is kinda mellow right now. A bunch of our high school students are on a mission trip to San Francisco. Normally I'd be on the trip, but with the baby coming we knew I couldn't go. Today I'm working on making a bunch of announcement slides in Photoshop and then working on some college ministry promo material.
• God has really been working on my heart lately to change some super-negative thought patterns that have been going on. It's tough, but I'm glad to be moving forward.
• Decent amount of travel coming up this fall - first, I'll be heading out to Lifeway's National Youth Worker's Conference in September, followed by PDYM Gathering the next week, and then tentatively looking at a trip to do some writing for Lifeway in November.
• Was supposed to have my 10 Year High School reunion next week, but it was canceled. I was bummed because I was really looking forward to that.
• Even though I haven't blogged much, I'm still twittering pretty frequently. Come follow me.

Tha's all for now.

Labels: family, random, youth ministry

Check out Addison's blog or my facebook page for some pictures

Labels: family

Here she is! We're trying to adjust to the new schedule of a baby. Everyone warned us about it, but you just don't know until you experience it. Not much sleep. By the way, if you're interested in stopping by to see the baby, we're going to let some people come by today from 1 to 5. Call me or shoot me an email if you'd like to come by.

Labels: family

Baby Addison is due in 6 days. And my lovely pregnant wife is VERY ready to have this baby. Car's packed and I'm ready for the call.

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Our baby's due date is just 3 weeks away from tomorrow. Pretty exciting stuff. I now have a house full of things like pink blankets, baby monitors, LOTS of diapers, onesies, and loads of other baby stuff. There's a car seat base in the back of my car. And another in Nicole's. Then we have bags in the car ready to head to the hospital. I think we're about as ready as we're going to be.

My life is about to radically change (in a very good way).

Labels: family

Addison Rose is due 7 weeks from today. Going to be awesome!

Labels: family

Stuff that's going on:

• We're just about 7 weeks from our baby's due date. I will be a dad soon.
  
• High School camp is in 3 weeks. We have just about filled our spots (with the deadline being tomorrow morning for people to sign up). We go to Hume: San Diego in case you're wondering. It's awesome
• Freshman Frenzy is in like 3 weeks too. We've changed this event this year from being Freshman-only to now including older students too. We just charge the older ones a lot more.
• There's also a ton to be done in the next few weeks before we promote new freshmen....assigning them to groups, choosing some filler curriculum, promo materials, etc.
• I have a few long-term items I want to sit down and think through sometime soon. They include: internships, how well are we accomplishing our purposes, volunteer training, volunteer recruitment, volunteer care, mentoring/discipling students, options for students to go "deeper" (I'm not completely sure what this means) in their faith.
• Nicole is watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
• We're going to visit baby Savannah Pogue tomorrow after church. Should be fun.
  

Labels: family, random, youth ministry

So Nicole and I spent our Saturday today at a "Prepared Childbirth" class. It was pretty informative and stuff. Here are some of the funny things that happened:

• Saw lots of videos with very exposed pregnant ladies.
  
• The instructor talked about post-partum sex life for like 15 minutes.
  
• Nicole and I were practicing our breathing techniques and I was breathing along with her. As I stared right at her, I dropped this big old drop of drool right out of my mouth onto my jeans. We both lost it. Hopefully I don't make her laugh in the middle of a contraction.
  

Labels: family, funny stuff

For years now I've said I wanted to lose weight. I'd do seasons where I'd go to the gym. I'd go without soda for a bit. But in the last few months I've gotten more serious about it. I had some bloodwork done in December also that showed some issues I needed to take care of. In the last few months I've dropped from about 217 down to 201 today. I can't wait to see the scale say 199!

At my heaviest in my life I was 235. It was when I was an intern at Saddleback, eating lots of fast food and stuff all the time....drinking as much soda as I wanted. It was actually a little hard to get in and out of the car at that point. I had to work at it.

All I've done now is start doing sit-ups at night, running during the week, and making some relatively minor changes to my diet (typically red meat no more than twice a week and soda or coffee no more than twice a week).

Hopefully I'll be healthy dad when baby Addison gets here!

Labels: family, random

That's right, my nephew is adorable.

Labels: family

I'm super excited to be headed up to my parents for a little rest and relaxation. Not too much of an agenda other than hopefully connecting with some old friends. Should be nice. Anything I blog will probably not have too much substance (not that it normally does anyways).

Labels: family

Little update on what's been happening around my life lately

• We had our annual Errny Awards last night for high school ministry. Turned out to be a cool night with about 80 people showing up - great decorations, funny videos, and just a cool time. I'll link to a post with some pictures from our high school blog when it's up.
• I got a new phone (no, Jon, not an iPhone, I seriously don't want one, my fat fingers could never type on it). I like it, but I'm having trouble getting some stuff set up on it for my Outlook stuff and it's got a bit of a learning curve for me.
• Tomorrow's the funeral for the mom of some of our students that passed away last week.
• On Thursday, we head to Fresno for Easter. We're also going to take a day to go up to Modesto where I used to live. I never make it back there so it will be lots of fun.
• They're carpeting our new high school room this week and all our sound/video stuff will be up sometime next week. They're also painting and carpeting the building that my office and our jr. high room are in. Things are a mess, but it's almost over. Unfortunately, my office is getting neither painted nor carpeted (it has a spot that looks like someone hacked up a lung there).
• My wife is still cute and pregnant with our little Addie.
  

Labels: family, random, youth ministry

Nicole had an ultrasound on Monday and we found out the sex of the baby. It's......a girl! Addison Rose Lovato is due on July 28th. I'm going to have to toughen up so this girl doesn't walk all over her daddy. Check out Nicole's post about it here.

Labels: family