Category: Travel

the boat finally arrived in Dublin. It took us nearly a week to get here and we are very tired and suffering from scurvy.

p.s. Dave, the lamb had plenty of room between us. After takeoff, he fell asleep. 🙂

These are the words of my 6 year old, Megan as we lingered at our friends house in dropping them off. Paul reassured us, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 days isn’t very long at all.

We finally finished packing, we’ve taken care of all the details we know how to… and we’re off. Check back soon as we’ll be planning on doing some mobile blogging on vacation.

Not quite sure why… but Kristen and I still aren’t motivated to pack for our trip. We really want to go but we’re just being lazy.

We gotta get it done.

After a rainy drive and a restless night of sleep (roughly $20/hour for that nap.) I am here at the Duke Energy Center in Cincy.

The convention areas look perfect for the weekend. I’ve been watching and observing a lot of the fun stuff here so far. I’m going to be especially interested to notice "weird" behavior and hoping to document some of the here. So far, seen one dude dressed up with coconut shells and fake blond hair. (Flashback to last nights game at LF!)

Class is going great. In a few minutes we’re going to go listen to Chap Clark talk about the research behind his book, Hurt.

It’s 12:53 am, well past my bedtime. We just got back from Niagra Falls. It was a great trip. It was good seeing some family and really cool to see the falls. I am sure Kristen will be uploading the pics from her camera in the morning.

p.s. Making a cool, yet weird connection thanks to my involvment [is that a PC thing to cop out of saying I’m one of the owners] with Youth Ministry Exchange. Josh Yates is the youth pastor at my last church, Oroville E-Free church. He joined the forums last week and we’ve exchanged a couple of messages. When we made the connection I instantly started humming "It’s a Small World."

It’s 7:35 am and we are already running late. We had anticipated leaving the house at 8:00 am for Niagara Falls… but that’s not going to happen. Only Kristen and I are awake and I still have to gas up the car, get packed, get everyone set… on and on.

So we’re off until Tuesday night. It’s not a big trip but I am looking forward to a little R&R with the family. (And Dave) The last week has been pretty hard on me schedule-wise. I know some people do well when they are getting little sleep and have back-to-back-to-back stuff… but I don’t. By Saturday morning I was a big grump and I hate that. A nap Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon definitely helped.

Of course we are going to see the falls. But the real reason we’re going to Niagara is to see my mom and brother’s family. The 5 of us will be crashing in their house. It should be a good time. And worst case scenario… it will only last 48 hours!

We were here about 20 minutes before I started noticing a
lot of damage. If you were ignorant of last falls storm season you would think
that

Ft.

Lauderdale

was having a construction boom. No boom, just replacing stuff. As we flew in
you could see many houses with the telltale blue tarp roof of hurricane damage.
There are FEMA and Hurricane evacuation route signs everywhere as well.

It’s been a long but good day. I woke up at about 5:30 this morning and it’s now 11:20 PM and I am sensing the pillows call.

All-in-all it’s been a solid day. Everything has gone according to plan and on schedule. I love it when a plan comes together.

Here are some thoughts from my first day here.

Moody is a great place. I know I am an alumni, so it is expected that I would feel this way. But it also is worth noting that I wasn’t a big fan of the Institute all the time. In fact, most of my time as a student was spent not liking the place! But today was another story.

As I sat in the massive auditorium of Moody Church I kind of felt the sense that my alma mater wasn’t the great place I had been told it was while a student. I started thinking about it as a dying breed and frankly stuck about 10 years in the past compared to what I see every day. My mind filled with a sense of "Am I really associated with this?"

About half way through the session tonight I discovered that I liked the place afterall. It wasn’t the music, it wasn’t the patting of the back of one alum to another… it was a sense of togetherness for a purpose that drew me to the place in the first place and somehow I felt like coming to Founder’s Week was "checking in" to that togetherness. If the purpose of MBI is to train a generation of church leaders, I have reported for duty.

I have no great plan. As I listened tonight to a fantastic message by Andy Stanley it came to me. I will never stand on that stage and preach to this audience and I am perfectly fine with that. I think at one point in my life I had hoped that my ministry would one day progress to a national stage or some sort of spotlight. It’s not that "the dream" was a bad thing… it’s that I don’t think that is something God will have for me. I don’t want to focus on the future so much that the present doesn’t matter. Right now, it is far more important to me that each day I do the best I can and live to the most glory of Christ that I can.

P.S. I received good news tonight. A student of mine recently came to know Christ. That is very exciting.

Bob and I (and Dwaine!) are leaving this morning for Chicago. We’ll be attending Moody’s Founder Week. I’m looking forward to spending time with the guys and hanging out a bit around my alma mater. We’ll be back Saturday night. Since the hotel has wireless and all, I know I’ll be updating.