From the Past

So I'm starting this blog cause the one I was using before with Yahoo 360 kept messing up (I'd hit compose blog and it'd go to the blog set-up page, etc.)
So I'll start by copying and pasting over my few entries from there.

Entry for September 10, 2008
Tonight I am taking the taco bell challenge. This is a cool thing I heard of from my friend Matt. You go to Taco Bell and order the Grande meal #10, which is 10 tacos (hard, soft, or mix) and a drink. The challenge? Eat it all in one sitting. Me and some brave members of the youth group are participating, I am pysched. We'll see how I did/how I feel tomorrow.

Entry for August 26, 2008
The days go by so quickly. This past week Tyler came home from CA, and he, Shannon, the Workmans, and us all went out to Outback to eat and celebrate. De-licious, as Isaiah would say! I had the no rules pasta, which is basically fettichini with chicken and shrimp. Tyler took my metal mystery sign and says he'll polish it, so we'll see (we're at about 9 months of him saying that now, though for the last 3 months he has been in CA). The next day he came up again with some friends of his (Shannon couldn't come) and we went to a huge car show across from Fallon Park, over 300 cars. The show was a fundraiser to support officer Brian Lawerence, who became paralyzed on the job in Roanoke. My favorite car was this hot-rod that had been purposefully pieced together with junk. It had feed bags for the inside door covering, a tractor front with a dead bird caught in it, gutters for exhaust pipes, old beer cans holding pipes together, and tons of other funny things about it.
I went to my first mens fellowship in Roanoke recently. It went well. Johnny Tickle spoke about not being silent during a moment of silence, but actually crying out to God like it says to in the Bible. Met some good people, ate some good food (except the chicken, which no joke, was raw...yikes...). Found out Murray from out church won a Smart Car by entering a contest at Grand Furniture. He just filled out a slip of paper, and he won the grand prize! Pretty cool.
We had Singspiration this past Sunday night. It went well. Three little kids did a great job singing El Shaddai. I played the piano and sang Heaven Came Down. All the men in the church got up to sing a song to Larry since it was his birthday (and I had never even heard the song before). Then at the end we surprised him with a party complete with cake and ice cream. Good times.
Well, I got to go finish putting together a church library.

Entry for August 17, 2008
Camp Rudolph
I went to work at Camp Rudolph this past week. It is a Christian camp in Yale, VA. This week was the Junior week, for 5th and 6th graders. I grew up going to Camp Rudolph, and I always love going back to work at the place for a week, but since I recently moved to Roanoke this is the last week I can see myself doing Camp Rudolph for the forseeable future. Next year I'll probably try to work with Blue Ridge Christian Camp near Roanoke. I only worked Camp Rudolph this week because I had commited to work that week before I ever moved. It was co-deaned by Preacher Dave from Reedswood, where I used to be the youth minister, and I wanted to help out.
It was great seeing lots of the Reedswood people. We drove to Newport News Saturday evening, after I had finished giving a talk for a youth rally at a small Roanoke church. We stayed with my parents, and worshipped with Reedswood in the morning, then went out to eat at the County Grill with my parents that afternoon after church. We also saw my niece Brooke, she got to see Lily for the first time at lunch. Tammy had to work, but she saw Lily for the first time that morning.
After lunch Sarah dropped me off at Camp Rudolph, then headed down to Edenton, NC for the week. She saw her Dad and Betty and her Dad's side of the family (they hadn't seen Lily yet either). Isaiah went to the beach for the first time while she was there, and loved it. She also saw our friends Matt and Pam who recently moved down there, and our friends Jordan and Becky.
I had a good week at camp. It was a Wild West theme, and it was a lot of fun. I met some good people, including Eddie from West Park, Robert, Nick Carter, and Abbey (children's minister at New Venture (relaxed church) in richmond. I also got to work with lots of old friends from Reedswood. And O'Neil was there from Jamaica. It was a great week.
I had a really good group of kids on my team, we called ourselves the Desparados. they had thrity memory verses to memorize, and 3 of them memorized all thirty! 8 of them memorized 20 scriptures or more! They were a really good group of kids.
I got back Friday evening around 9 (we had to stop a few times to eat, and feed Lily, and because Isaiah threw up), and we unloaded the vehicle and just got the kids to bed, then chilled. Yesterday I worked on my sermon on Forgiveness, and I preached this morning. It went ok, considering the little time I had to really prep. David came to listen today. Sandy is coming back from CA with Tyler. Tomorrow David is taking Sarah and I out to eat at Abuelo's. I'm looking forward to it. Tomorrow I'm also going to be working on putting my office back in order (we took everything out so they could replace the floor). I had twelve kids at youth group, and like four said they'd try to come help tomorrow, we are starting at 7. We'll see who makes it.

Hillsboro Family Camp
Wow, so again Hillsboro is this cool Christian family camp in Ohio. Myself, a female sponsor named Rachel, and 7 teens took our church van up there on July 26th, and stayed for the week. It should be about a 6 hour 10 min. drive according to Mapquest, but taking an old 15 passenger church van and dragging a Uhaul trailer made us slow down considerably, especially in the mountains. We ending up making it in about 8 hours. On Saturday evening we got the tents set up, and went out to Walmart. That Sunday morning we went to the morning worship and heard Ed Bousman preach. He is an elderly gentleman, and amazing. He quoted the entire text he was preaching from (John 8:1-11) from memory. I heard from a couple of people later through the week that he has, at least at one time, had the entire New Testament memorized. Wow! I was impressed, inspired. That afternoon we went to a nearby lake and hung for a few hours, then we went back there the next day.
The camp officially kicked off Monday evening. Lots of cool speakers, incuding Jack Cottrell (Cinn. professor). I didn't get to hear many though, cause I took the teens to the youth barn, which was quite cool, and really well done. Every morning and night were great sessions for the teens that included cool games (many gross), a great praise band, and good speakers. the focus this year was on the Kingdom, based off of Matthew 5 and 6.
Kids in my youth group participated in the talent show, and two of the boys were part of the preacher boy competition on Thursday afternoon (props to Kevin and Zac). They worked on short devos/sermons (like 5 minutes each) and then spoke. Oh, and Kristen rapped the song Baby Got Book by whiteboyDJ/ southpaw. If you've never heard the song, it is a hilarious play off of baby got back by SirMixaLot.
Highlights of the trip include:
playing basketball for afternoons, eric dying his hair with a huge pink cross, Bob Evans (twice), Big Boys (this was my first time going to either of those ever), meeting the ever so nice Steiner extended family as they treated us to Sunday lunch, seeing Cutter, the "Hey now, hey now" song and dancing 'the lawn mower', 'flush flush it doesn't work', and others, the showers with the chains you have to keep pulling for water, Desi giggling like a crazy person late at night, star tipping (stare at a point straight in the sky, spin around in circles fast for like twenty seconds, stop and have someone shine a light in your face and you fall over, you can't help it!), and the infamous port a john incident (that I can not legally go into at the moment).
Can't wait till next year!

Entry for July 24, 2008
Had a good day off today. Lily slept through the night last night, it was great! 8 straight hours of sleeping, and she is only 3 weeks old! Isaiah was a great sleeper when an infant, and we were worried the next baby would be rough, but Lily is making it easy. I got up around 9am (love sleeping late on days off, and it is odd because I was just thinking this morning that before kids I could sleep so much later than 9am...now 9 is late to me). Sarah and I went out to the Pawn Shop in Vinton and got some more DVD's (15 more). We are replacing all the DVD's that got stolen from us. Well, not all, but the ones we really liked and want to replace. Then we ran some errands to WalMart, the bank, and ate lunch at Taco Bell.
We back to our house after lunch and laid Isaiah down for a nap. While he slept we worked on the house. I hung the curtains in the den and dining room (lots of drilling to install the curtain rods in those super hard wood window frames). Sarah got the DVD player set up and the new DVD's put into a new DVD notebook we got, then went to get her hair cut.
She got it cut short before Lily was born, this was a touch up. It is shorter than before, just a little, and Gig (is that a hair stylist name or what?) straightened it out. I like her hair better curly, so we'll see what it looks like tomorrow when it is natural again. We worked a little more on our house then left. We went back to her parent's and Isaiah and I ate leftovers. Then Sandy and Sarah went to a food tasting party. Isaiah, David, and I have been hanging here since, that is what we are doing now.
Oh, one more thing. I want to say how much I love the library. Yeah, I'm a nerd. But seriously, so much cool stuff is available for free there. Yeah, of course great books, but also lots of great CD's to check out (and download onto my ipod), and lots of great DVD's to check out for free. And not just educational stuff, tons of movies I would want to pay to rent otherwise. Our library has Vantage Point, and is getting 21 this week. I just checked out CD's from Arrested Development, Metallica (the black album with Enter Sandman for all those Hokie fans), and Matisyahu. They also do lots of cool events. A couple of weeks ago they had a band playing inside the library downtown, and it was being catered by an awesome Mexican restuarant for free! So if you haven't checked out your local library recently, check it out! (No, I'm not being paid by the Roanoke Public Library System, I am just a fan. And a nerd, but we've already established that.)