odds and ends

Welcome to those of you visiting from Canada and Germany (eh, and da - respectively). If you are an international visitor, please take a moment and post a comment and let us know you're here.

I've been spending much of my time recently preparing for our Annual Youth Auction and dinner (May 6th at 5pm, tickets are $8...shameless plug). We have some really great donors this year as well as some great slave...er servant labor for sale as well.

I've discovered some really cool online tools recently. One is Google Calendar and the other is Google sketchup (a 3D modeling tool). I'm liking this web 2.0 thing, and there seems to me more and more free (and useful) programs available.

It has been difficult for me to read lately, but I just started reading a book by David Crowder called "Praise Habit." I must say, I didn't know what to expect from a quirky musician like him. Well, what I discovered so far is that his book is very much like his hair, fun and a bit weird. In the first half of the book, he explains about what a Praise Habit looks like (a lot like a nun). The second half of the book is full of excerpts from the psalms and his personal reflections. I love his creative way at looking at praise. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand what praise is and how to incorporate it into your every day life (or if you are a fan of strangely written books with pictures of nuns).

District Summer Camp

I've been working on a ton of new websites lately and this is one that I just finished for our camp. Thanks to Shana for the logo design and Jonathan for the theme idea. I just found out yesterday that in addition to the current speakers, we will also be flying in none other than Kelly Clark. Kelly is an Olympic snowboarder and took 4th in the woman's halfpipe in Torino, Italy this last winter. In 2002, she took the gold in Salt Lake City. Kelly has an amazing testimony and will be sharing one evening durring the week. Click here to see the camp webstite and to learn more

Kudzu is very flammable

Down in the south, we have a wonderful plant/vine/weed/sentient plant lifeform called kudzu. There are acres and acres of kudzu all around our church and the surrounding community. While I was away yesterday, I learned that some of the kudzu around our church caught fire.

As the story goes, some kids were playing with fireworks and BAM! We had a nice and smoky/crispy field of dead kudzu. The bad news is that the fire department had to be called and my people that were parked at our church couldn't leave until the fire trucks left. The good news is that our church didn't catch fire and we killed a good portion of the hard-to-kill kudzu behind our church. Here's a picture of the aftermath:

long overdue update

Well, it's been a CRAZY last week for me. Thursday through Sunday I was at my friend's wedding. I got back Sunday night, had my D-group over (5 minutes after I got back), packed up and left early Monday morning for District Conference.

District Conference was better than expected. We met at First Alliance Church in Chattanooga, TN and stayed nearby at a Day's Inn. Although the conference was great, I would have to say my biggest highlights of the week were seeing "V for Vendetta" and spending time with Luke and Rachel. I'm glad that our district planned the conference 15 minutes from my girlfriend's school (I'm sure they did it just for me).

For the rest of this week I am trying to catch up with office stuff and well as prepare for the next few (crazy) weeks. If you are around next Thursday night, I'd like to invite you to our "Walk With Christ to the Cross" worship service- it's going to be a great time to relax and connect with God. We will have several "hands on" ways for you to participate and "experience" God through worship.

Britney Spears is a great way to get your blog read

I was discussing blogs tonight with my good friend friend Luke Camera and told him how if I had Britney Spears in my blog title I would get more page views on my blog. He seemed skeptical, so I'm going to try it. If you have got to this blog somehow by searching for Britney Spears, please leave me a comment and let me know.