first painting project

So started my first painting project ever. Four 8 by 4 Masonite canvases to fill a blank wall. Thanks for your help Kate. Think I like painting furniture better.

seat yourself please.

hey i know you are just a minor but you guys need to behave on the plain. that was just one of the many instructions that i gave to the you as we began a week of service. a lot of times boarding a plain is the initial step to a good time of vacationing. not this trip. sixteen jr. high and high school students, four leaders to which i nominated for sainthood, and myself boarded this southwest flight to do everything but vacation.

our trip to alice, texas was a very stretching and challenging trip. i love when youth are able to go and give a selfless week to love others and share the jesus that they know. alice, texas being ninety percent (ninety is statisticly, one hundred is reality) hyspanic was an incredibley positive circumstance to which we were entering. not only is their food especially superior to tradition amercan, but their perspective of family (both church and intermediate) is truely genuine.

the logistics of the trip was minimal, but the effects of the ministry was incredible. kids were seperated into groups. they would administer three vacation bible schools daily. this involved freeze tag, fruit punch, and forgiveness. we would convine for a nightly activity; undefeated night chicken fighting being the highlight. its not a service oriented trip unless you put on the gloves and do some hard work removing thorn branches and raking leaves. this is what we did but not how God moved. God did not move through what we did but through our relationships. our relationships with emanuel baptist church and the broken community of alice, texas, and to this we give credit to Jesus and his relational reality within each of our lives (our – being both the students from our church and the church in alice).

disarray.

that is the state i am in. the holidays have been hard. life has been difficult. i have reach a state where the intensity of this last semester has simmered down. the dust from the bussiness is settling. things are becoming made clear. as the murkiness and fog subsides i get a true glimpse of reality. disarray is what i see. to have confusion be something that is evidently shown clear is a mystery within itself. the job i had is now someone elses and i am put in a situation of submission to one who is less as knowledgeable yet somehow right. god has brought me to this place and now i am sitting here in confusion. what patience and obedience has brought is now frustration. frustration that things are changing and that things will be different. i know they will and there is not too much i can do about. so i go into it trusting god, now even more unaware about the outcome. i am now at a place where i believe god will take me and deliver me. in all this i am processing alone because the whether has unexpectantly delayed my girlfriend from returning from her families holiday extravaganza. my other best friend is in arkansas visiting his crazy relatives. my other friend has a new girl and is off to the races with that relationship. i lost one other friend to an unexpected double life. i feel flustered around others. my coworker  has been fantastic but i do not want to taint her view with my feelings. and here i am. in disarray.

past and path.

“life is hard, ministry is tough, but you have to look how god has consistantly been faithful through the past”

this has definately been something that i have heard tremendously a lot recently. i just returned from nation youth workers convention where the countless speakers talk about hanging in there and not burning out. i think the thing for me right now that life is just busy. this idea of time consumption creates a dilema of choice where ones decisions of time usage either creates problems or eases tensions. i am not in a place where i am feeling burnt out on ministry but rather burnt out of school. rather i want to be in a place where i can give more to ministry. life does not have to be a hard thing. ministry does not have to be tough. i just want to live. to relax. to not care. and through that nature i want to be walking the the faithful present.

“in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path”

worry. after a seventeen year plan of going to school, thirteen mandatory and four that are expected, the system spits you out as its bi-product. based on production, society has a number of expectations to what you are suppose to do. from graduate school to entry level jobs and base salaries. since we have learned how to ride the bike we are suppose to hop right on. well where the hell are the training wheels. worrying about how to actually ride a bike with out that initial help and support of those small dinking insignificant training wheels can leave you with some serious injuries. now i am not justifying graduating college, moving home, and not working. my appeal is to just live. to graduate school and follow god. i do not want to opperate under expectations but rather live freely with freedom to do and be what the lord is leading me to be in that exact moment. like i said, i was at a conferance this last weekend, and this is the verse that hit me the most. why i am worry about the future. why do i think that it is out of control. why do i need to know where i am going to live, who i will be with, what i will be doing. if i worry too much about the future i miss the now. i have to obey six words. if i just acknoledge him. if i make him the center of my life. if i make hime my now. then what? then he will direct my path. its on him. so i put him at the center of my life then i do not even have to worry about my path. its his path to worry about. so worry about this life of mine because i am not any more.