KC Sunshine Band

We are here. I am tired. My wife is tired. My kids are tired. My van is tired. I don't know about the truck I was driving, but as far as I'm concerned, the sooner our relationship is over, the better.

Here are the low-lights of the travel.
1. Camper door popping open, several times. Losing stuff out of the open door on the expressway.
2. Coming out to a dead battery in our van this morning. We left every attachment in the world plugged into the lighters and then we left another light on and a door cracked. Oops.
3. 7,000 bathroom breaks.

The Jesus sightings:
1. The aforementioned stuff that fell out of our camper, some very, very, very nice truck driver, stopped, picked up, hunted us down and gave them back. Whoever says that there are no good people left in this world: well you're wrong.
2. A nice guy at the hotel this morning giving us a jump so we didn't have to wait 1 hour for AAA.
3. Our kids just loving hotels and pools. It is so funny.

Okay - that's all for now - dinner and sleep are calling.

Numb update

Well, we've returned from our mission trip to Elizabeth (awesome with lots of great moments, laughter, stories, gift giving and more) which I will update you on in the future. In the meantime click here for some pics.

We also have had our last service in Bel Air, which was really great and really sad too. We did celebrate though, all that God has done in our time there. He is so great! I'll update on that too this week sometime.

In the meantime I am sitting in a dark hotel room in St. Clairsville, Ohio as we are moving all of our things to our new home in Olathe, Kansas. Everyone is asleep and I'm catching up on a few emails and posts. Now it is my time to sleep too and so if you're checking in... good night and thanks for the prayers that have been said and will be said especially in these few days of travel.

God is awesome.

Mission trip day 3. Here we are adding more sheet rock and really getting things rolling. We really started moving this day. It was great to see people start to get the hang of it all and then to begin to do stuff on their own.

We also had a great day with Drew. He was helping Jim Wood run the wiring for the air conditioning and heating unit. They ran it, then they realized it was the wrong wire for that system, so they pulled it all, then they realized they did need to use it, so they had to re-run it. Drew was so happy. This is a great shot of Drew when he is about to kill someone with joy, coming out from under the stage.

That night we had a celebration. There was more food there than we could possibly eat. Pastor Bello brought out his accordian and led us in some songs. Pastor Brian Kido, who is the pastor of the Japanese Nazarene Church and the Metro NY district work and witness coordinator, and his family were there too. So we sang songs in Japanese, English and Spanish. Pretty cool.

Mission Trip day 2. This is Matt and Dayne and our first piece of finished dry wall! It was a good first day with many great stories, but mostly it was about beginning - friendships (some rocky) and work (a lot rocky that first day).

God is so good and present all the time. It's amazing when we give him everything and commit ourselves to him how he works through even our weaknesses and our stumbles and brings about goodness. By the end of work this day he had done the same!

Day 1 of mission trip. Here we are Sunday morning visiting with the Paterson Spanish church where we worked last year. It was a great morning of worship with much singing, celebration, dancing (conga line), and of course food! I preached that morning on Living Water in a room that was about 1000 degrees and everyone was hot and thirst. That might have been the work of the Holy Spirit, or the devil, I'm still not sure which.

Then we headed to Elizabeth for their evening worship service. It was a great day and included us getting a bit turned around in Paterson and a lovely scenic tour of the town. [Did I mention that Paterson is the town where the movie with Samuel Jackson as High School principal who locked the doors of the school to keep the drugs out is based on?]

Here we are shopping for our food before mission trip. This is that crazy Rebecca Steelman. Our High School group is going to Elizabeth, New Jersey Spanish Nazarene Church to help them re-do their fellowship hall. It's going to be great! All prayers would be appreciated! 

Youth workers unite - tonight

We had our last youth worker's meeting tonight at Bel Air. It was cool and tough at the same time. Probably what I expected that way. We ate together did a few nuts and bolts and then we just sat around and told stories! How great is that. Some highlights:
- The ski retreat when I said to all the adults on the trip at the beginning, "Whatever you do... don't get hurt." I then proceeded to run into a tree and sustain a concussion among some other injuries.
- The houseboat trip when Carol had just found out she was pregnant and I was driving the ski boat while she was tubing... then I launched her off this wave into the stratosphere - she got great air!! - and then having to pull her out of the water and have her almost kill me.
- The spring Middle School retreat when we were all outside at night in the woods, gathered round, the stars were out, the bugs were chirping - just nature sounds and us and God. I start telling them to focus on God and his creation and enjoy it and just listen - then this tractor trailer goes down the road somewhere near by - HONK! HONK! - Tony Steelman, one of our key leaders, starts laughing and just can't stop. So much for that God moment...
- The houseboat trip when some kids snuck off in the woods - of a state park in the middle of a drought summer - and let off some fireworks (which they were not supposed to bring and they all knew it). Then the rangers came buy and threatened us with at $50,000 fine and the confiscation of the houseboats which we were renting. Luckily they had mercy.
- Of the time I was filling on the softball team, playing second base, trying to help the team get their first win of the season and I let a ball go by that I should have gotten to that kept us from going into extra innings - and then I said a lot of Christian cuss words and threw a mini-sports-related-tantrum. Great pastor! Great witness! (When I am weak...)

And on and on! What a great night. Thank you God for surrounding me with great people and great friends! I'm going to miss them like crazy.

Great groovy day! I preached in the 3 services in the morning, then we went to dinner with our awesome neighbor, Mickey! This picture is from dinner at Applebee's as taken by my daughter Meg who is 7! Then I had a mission trip meeting (we leave on Sunday morning) and then went to the get together at the Stanfords with some of the high school kids. Cool! 

Where has all the passion gone?

It's amazing how people forget about passion. Have you noticed how many people are just living life... getting by... putting up with themselves and their jobs and their lives for what?

They've forgotten their passion. Remember the passion you had as a child? Remember how much you played and loved and cried and just lived life?!? What happened to that?

One of the things that I believe is that people lose passion because the things that they've chosen to follow aren't really worth being passionate about. Possessions - all get old and fall apart or go out of style or need upgraded. Sex and image - bodies age, people are more than their physicality, hearts can only be given away so many time. Whatever else it might be, it's just simply not worth being passionate about. Except one thing: Jesus.

What does it mean to really follow Jesus? It’s more than finding him. It’s more than knowing about him. It’s more than seeing him. It’s about experiencing him.

Following Jesus is about following the one who leads us to the unknown, the uncomfortable, to the place where there is wonder and mystery – to a way of life that loves in the craziest, most uncontrollable and wonderful ways; beyond hurt, beyond explanation, beyond self and into revolution.

That is worth being passionate about.

Great 4th Weekend - with a suprise, top-secret new fireworks watching location

We have some great friends and we have some great times together! Here are some highlights from our weekend:

Our friends Josh and Aubrey from York, PA came down on Saturday evening and we had a good time grilling, talking, playing with kids and of course eating! We just love to be with friends, especially when they come over and don't even seem to notice the giant mess of our house as we are packing.

Sunday morning was a great morning at church as Pastor Nikolai spoke in morning services. He's a pastor from Bulgaria that we are partnering with for the next couple years (at least). The Bel Air Church sent a team there in March of this year and will be heading back next August. This kind of missional partnering is so much better than the one and done deal. Its so much more in line with biblical relationships, long term difference making and just good old fashioned friendship.

Sunday afternoon we went to Jeff and Anita and Hannah Good's house. We swam in their pool and ate their food. Cool people- Jeff and Anita and Hannah.

We started the 4th off with the guys (Jahred, Isaiah and me) meeting up with our friend David Rebello and he opened up the construction yard where his dad works so we could play. Awesome. I got to drive this giant forklift and was going to do great things with it, but I stalled it out and then it had some trouble on the re-start.

With testosterone blazing we picked up the Hull gals and headed to our church picnic where we ate more food and did some frog catching and game playing.

Then we cruised home for a siesta (yeah!!!) and some down time before heading out to the world famous, internationally renowned Bel Air 4th of July parade. The good news and bad news about the parade can be summed up as follows - if needed our county has lots of fire trucks!

Then on to ice cream, grab a pizza pie and then headed back downtown for some fireworks! Bel Air always puts on a fine 4th of July display and they did not disappoint this year either. We found a GREAT and top-secret spot to watch them too. It's so great that we saw them all and were close enough to feel them. It's so secret that there was only 4 other people there around us watching the fireworks. In fact, it's so great and top-secret (with great parking and no crowds and no crazies) that if I weren't leaving I wouldn't tell anyone, so that we could go again and be the heroes who show only our friends the greatest spot ever. But because I'm leaving and am a particularly good American (in the spirit of celebrating our country), I'll be happy to reveal the top-secret location of the best fireworks watching spot ever to whoever either gives me the most money or the best sob-story about why I should let them in on my secret.

Let the bidding begin now!