Uphill idealist

Crocodile Dock is almost here! August 17-21 is Vacation Bible School for First Lutheran Church and all our neighbors and friends are invited. I did not want to let the summer pass without asking you if you could or would be available to help lead or co-lead an activity station, be a counselor for a small group of kids, or simply be able to come and help where needed for the mornings (8:45-noon) of that week. On Friday of that week, we will be having a cook-out and inviting all the participants and their families to attend. I know summer is a busy time, but your help is greatly needed in order to make VBS great this time around. Whatever gifts your bring to VBS, the best ones are go with the flow attitudes and a child-like desire to learn and have FUN! We are accepting helpers from a wide age range, 7th grade to 101 and beyond (While minors being partnered with a qualified adult),so please call me or email me back and I will secure you with your preference in jobs as best as I can. Her...

Well the song "Love Addict" by Family Force 5 to be exact. I saw this band play at Kingdom Bound on Tuesday night and I have to say it was the most unique set I've seen for a long, long time! The second band that we took in was Hawk Nelson, a fun power pop punk band that really did a great job of drawing in the audience, even for those of us that were new to them. "Friend Like That" by Hawk Nelson I think I've found two more bands to investigate some more!

Exercise, eating right and the spiritual discipline of prayer and scripture reading. Why is it so difficult to balance all three of these positive life assets? I can manage to juggle up to two of these things fairly well, but add a third and SPLAT - the whole effort can go down the tubes like dropping hand-tossed-over-ripe tomatoes! In the early spring of 2008 I came to the place were I knew I needed to make some changes in my life to allow for more physical activity or asthma was going to take my life over. At least that is the way I felt at the time. Over the last year and a half, I’ve managed to add exercise at first 3xs a week and now I’m up to about 5xs a week. In May of this year, I rethought how and what I'd been eating and have been relatively faithful in eating much better than I had been in the past. Yesterday as I jogged 2 miles without stopping, I remembered that day in late February 08 when it was all I could do to catch my breath after running only a few minutes to c...

Here is one discovered and passed on to me by Unfinished Person that is a mix up of White Strips and The Eurythmics. Sweet dreams all!

A mash up is defined by wickipedia as "A digital mashup is a digital media file containing any or all of text, graphics, audio, video and animation drawn from pre-existing sources, to create a new derivative work[1]. Digital text mashups, for example, appear by the thousands every day as users of blogs and online forums copy and paste digital text in juxtaposition to comment on topics of interest, while fan-created video/audio mashups juxtaposing commercially produced video clips with favorite pop songs constitute a major portion of YouTube content." This last week was somewhat of a "mash up". For months I'd prepared to go to New Orleans with my youth group for six days of service, education and fun for the ELCA Youth Gathering . There was a great deal of fund raising that took place to make the trip possible, as well as reservations and what seemed to be thousands of emails. But, all that work done and over with, our group was off to the Big Easy. Our group was...

I'd made all the arrangement. Reserved the item ahead of time and made arrangements for pick up and transport. I worked an extra gig last week to be sure I had the $ to handle the surprise I'd hope to reveal later today. Well, when I revealed the surprise, I did not get the response I'd expected. In fact there was only a quiet and trying to be polite,"Oh, ok." What? How is this possible? How could you not WANT this? Maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board on surprises for my pre-teen boy, eh? This is too disappointing for words, yet her I am typing away. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Post update 11:00 pm Post bike shopping trip. After all this, when he saw the shiny red Schwinn mountain bike, all his ambivalence melted away as he grinned, "Is this the one for ME!" Yes sir, that is the one for you, my unpredictable fellow. Sigh. BTW, I got a new bike too as I haven't had one since I ...

Last Saturday I sat among 38,000 Lutheran youth and youth ministers and waited with baited breath as Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz), came onstage to address the crowd. He spoke of the challenge of being authentic in service to others, even in the areas that aren't so fun or are not the areas of service we feel we are "good" at. Donald spends a great deal of time still writing and working with The Mentoring project , that pairs adult men with boys that lack relationships with positive male role models. He spoke of the joys and challenges of mentoring. Mentoring requires the mentor to stay engaged and interested in the life of another person, even when that person does not turn out to be tiny Tim. The Mentoring Project - Elephant Musth Cycle from The Mentoring Project on Vimeo . Being with others and living in community is difficult to say the very least, but the option of living in isolation from others does not offer very much interest to me. How about you? Ju...