Thanksgiving Time

wow! It's been quite a week of reflecting on how awesome God is and how He unnecessarily give us a large portion of blessings.

The week started off last Saturday when some friends of ours, the Jones family came in for a visit. They are from Michigan and are our super best friends of ours. What a cool family, to drive 12 hours to visit us as their sole purpose of travel, on a holiday week at that. They were our first overnight guests to stay in our newly purchased home. They along with their two children stayed with us until just this morning when they took off to the great white north.

Sunday night was the office Christmas party for her place of employment (her dad's office). All employee's (and guests) went to a local dinner theater where we saw "Church Basement Ladies 2." It was a hoot! The show liner was actor Barry Williams (Greg Brady from the Brady Bunch). It was super funny, and actually our second time of seeing the show. It's now one of my favorites!

The rest of the week was spent working, spending time with the Jones' and of course... Thanksgiving. We gorged ourselves at Sandra's parents house until I almost burst open. Waay too much food. Oh! And I had a birthday, on Thanksgiving. Getting old, 30 years old that is! Luckily I don't feel older yet, just fatter. I'll start working on that again on Monday ;)

The rest of the weekend will be spent w/ my fam. in little ol' Caney, KS. What a great little town. It should be quite fun!

Updates soon...

So, it's been forever since I've updated. As soon as I finished my marathon in Detroit work took over. I'm almost finished with a book by John Piper and will post some thoughts about that. Deep book indeed. My favorite chapters were on worship and suffering of all things. I have about 40 pages left. Hopefully the next book gets here soon!

We're Back!

We're back from our 1-month stay in East Africa! What an amazing time we had. It's going to be difficult to communicate all that took place either online forum or even in person.

What a life-changing experience. This is the fourth time that I've had the privilege to travel over the past years. While my passport continues to gather stamps, God teacher me how creative He is and how much He loves all people. He also told me that I am loved, even though I don't always show my love for Him. He revealed to me that He wants to know me better and that I've been too content with my relationship with Him. I've plateaued in some sense. I could make excuses as to why: busy schedule, tiredness, blah blah blah. The bottom line is that I need to pursue Him as much as He has pursued me.

We had the opportunity to make many new friends, go on a safari, see monkeys on a college campus as regularly as we see squirrels, and most precious of all, we were privileged enough to be used as tools to bring one of His sheep into the flock. The strangers who traveled with me, I now count them as friends, hopefully for life. I'll forever hold on to the sweet times of worship, giddy laughter, and tears of hurt and sorrow that we all shared together. What great brothers and sisters they all are.

Sandra and I have a lot of stories to tell, so please come and see us. We want to share all that God has done! Or, if we come into your city, please ask us some probing questions. Again, we want to tell the chapters and events that we watched that make up part of His story.

I hope everyone's summer is going extremely well. I'll start posting some pictures soon for you to enjoy Peace!

The King vs MJ

    It's time for a sports related question. Who's better? More accurately put, "which game winning shot is better?" I personally don't think that there's any contest. 

Okay, our contestants are the King, LeBron James and his game 2 winning shot from last night. A tough shot indeed as the defender was all up in his grill. But is it really better or even as good as Michael Jordan's game winner against Cleveland from 20 years earlier? I say no way!

      LeBron's shot was good, but here's why it is not better than Jordan's. Jordan's shot was with a series on the line. The Bulls of this generation had never been out of the first round yet and it was the decisive game 5. Winner moves on loser goes home. It was also on the road for Jordan and crew. Jordan also had to split a double team AND he was sick prior to the game. 

     For LeBron, one could argue that the series outcome was dependent on this game, but in reality it was only a game 2 at home. The Cavs have had success before, even making it to the finals previously. 

    Enough talk. Watch the shots for yourself and compare.

Counting Down!

   Wow! Times seems to fly by in the short term, while looking at the big picture it seems to drag on. No, I'm not talking about a reversal of Einstein's theory of relativity. I'm talking about how there's only a few days left before the end of the school year and only a couple of weeks before Sandra and I head off to Africa! So, in a micro-sense of anticipation, it seems like time is flying by and that I'm not really prepared as much as I would like to be for either. In the macro-sense of anticipation, time is traveling slowly b/c I never thought either event would get here.

    I hope all of you are enjoying the warmer weather and enjoying the beautiful creation that Father has made.

    

Update

Geeshal it's been forever since I've updated. My apologies for alienating all of you who used to read this blog. Life has been super busy as of late. But I'm going to try to make blogging a higher priority from now. It obviously won't be my top priority, that would be wierd. But higher than it has been should suffice.

So I'd find rather impossible to update you on what transpired in the 5 months since my last post. So I just won't try. Christmas came and went. And then work kicked my butt for some reason during the 3rd quarter. Spring break was a great blessing in multiple ways. Sandra and I traveled to Michigan to lots of great friends. It also woke me up out of the comma that I had fallen into over the winter months.

My dad just turned 60 and now I learn that spring will never officially come this year. The weather is simply going to tease us with spring and then dump a bunch of snow on everything that tried to bloom and find life. I suppose it will melt. In fact we are in Kansas so it will probably melt within like 2 days to be followed up by flooding, 80 degree highs and sever thunderstorms. It is Kansas after all!