This Crazy Life of Mine

Hey folks...

Sorry I haven't had any posts of substance in a couple of weeks.

If you don't know, our life is insane right now. We're 2 weeks from the baby's birth, and still trying to get everything ready for that. We're in the middle of our kitchen remodel, which should be done next week. We're also in the middle of a couple of painting projects, trying to bring the house a little life.

All that to say that my next post will be when baby Sarah arrives. I'll also put up some pics our newly remodeled and painted house when we finish up.

See you when our daughter arrives.

Congrats to Anthony and Jackie...

The Rosolowskis have a new addition to their family. Click here to see some pics of baby Graham. I get the pleasure of serving with Anthony at Smithville FBC. He's our worship pastor.

Unbelievable...

You've got to watch this video. I thought driving in Dallas was bad.

Chip...did you experience anything like this when you were in India???

First Day of Preschool...

I can't believe this is happening already. We started Luke in a preschool/"mother's day out" this week. It meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8am - 2pm. The teacher said he did really good from 8-12 and then had a major breakdown from 12-2. Anywho...here's some pics from the first day. Enjoy.









































Luke and Juliana at the preschool entrance.













I loved the lighting on this picture (click for bigger image).

Sabbatical Day 4...

Hey everybody. Great day. I got the September series half finished and am looking to completely finish it by the time I leave Camp Linden. This series is going to be awesome. You're not going to want to miss a single Sunday in September.

I spent a good amount of time talking with the camp director here. He's a great guy. Camp Linden is an awesome place. If our church or any group in our church ever wants to take a retreat, the facilities here at Camp Linden are really great for hosting something like that. That's actually one of the reasons the TBC built this conference center and the one at Camp Carson.

See ya soon...

Luke Pic

I think this is the one of the best Luke pictures Emily has ever taken...


This was at the beginning of 2006 when he was only a few months old.

Sabbatical Day 3...

I have a short update tonight...

Today I made the drive to Camp Linden. I finished reading Treasure Principle this afternoon after arriving and spending a little time talking with the camp director. I went to FBC Lobelville for service tonight.

One other note...I met with Brett for a little while yesterday and we decided to push the Oil Change Outreach back a couple of weeks to Sept. 8th to give us enough time to be fully prepared and enough time to advertise it.

Sabbatical Day 2...

Today was a fantastic day. I got big things done.

• I met with a missionary who works in Romania. Hopefully FBC will form a missions partnership with this organization and make regular trips to Romania. As I have thought and prayed about how the local church is to go about fulfilling the great commission to the ends of the earth, I have landed at the idea that forming long-term missions partnerships with missionaries who are regularly on the field is the best approach. This allows us to go to the same place and minister with the same people over a long period of time. I think this is much more effective than going on random short-term mission trips to places you'll never go to or see again. The missionary I met with was Bob Ward. Bob was our speaker at FBC in July when I was with our mission team in Arizona and Mexico. You'll be seeing Bob again as we pray about forming this partnership.

• I got a lot of the legwork done for our September sermon series. This 4-week series is really going to impact your life, as my studying today really impacted me. I hope the rest of this week to really work hard on this series and have it mostly ready to go by the end of the week.

• I read almost all of Randy Alcorn's little book Treasure Principle. Great read.

Two other notes...

• I leave tomorrow for Camp Linden tomorrow. I'm assuming they have internet down there. If I don't post the rest of the week it's because I can't hook my computer up to the internet.
  

• I want to direct your attention to Eternal Perspectives Ministries. Good stuff there. I'm also going to add them to my side bar.

• If you go to FBC Smithville and you're reading this, tell members of the church who don't know about my blog what the web address is so they can keep up with me this week.
  

Sabbatical Day 1...

Thank you FBC Smithville for this sabbatical week. It's Monday evening. Here's a some of things I did today...


I read and meditated in the Psalms. I love how the emotions of the psalmists come pouring through their writings. It's beautiful.


I read a big chunk of Ed Stetzer's book Comeback Churches. I look forward to finishing this book and reading / discussing it with the staff.





















I spent time in prayer. I prayed through about half of the prayer requests that you gave me last Wednesday. I prayed for the church. I prayed for the staff.

And speaking of the staff...I'll leave you with this pic of the 3 of us at our July 4th cookout gathered around the grill doing what men do.













I feel like God has really blessed FBC and created a great ministerial team.

Until tomorrow...

LEC Finally Rolling

Here's some pics of the beginning of site prep work for our church's new Life Enrichment Center.

These signs were sitting on the lot where the building will be built.














Here's a before shot that I took back in January. This building, which was sitting on the lot where the LEC will be built, was torn down earlier this spring.














Here's the current view (7.25.07) after a couple of days worth of dirt work. They've still got to build the lot up a bit b/c it has a lot of slope in it.

Stand: A Call for the Endurance of the Saints

That's the theme of the Desiring God 2007 National Conference. I really want to go to this conference. It's going to be incredible. But considering that I'll have a 2 week old baby at the time, I feel that the best choice is definitely to stay home and listen to the podcasts as they come out. :)

The theme, as you can tell by the post title, is endurance in the Christian life. The goal is a life devoted to testifying to the greatness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the reward is Christ himself as he says to the faithful, "Well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master."

The speaker lineup includes:

• Randy Alcorn of Eternal Perspectives Ministries
• John McArthur of Grace to You. He's also the pastor of Grace Community Church and president of Master's College and Seminary. He also squeaked in a little time to write over 100 books.
• Jerry Bridges
• Helen Roseveare
• and of course...John Piper

Here's a video about the need for endurance in the Christian life...





Here's a video of John Piper answering the question, "Why did you choose these speakers for the conference on endurance?".

6 Years

Yesterday (July 14th) Emily and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. Yesterday was also my parents' 34th wedding anniversary. (When Emily and I chose our wedding date I didn't even know it was my parents anniversary.)

We went to Ristorante Volares in the Opryland Hotel last night. Nice place. The Opryland Hotel is really awesome. I'd love to stay there, but rooms are about $400 per night.

Today is day number one of our 7th year of marriage, we've got a 21 month old son and we've got a daughter who is due to be with us in 2 months and 1 day. God has blessed Emily and I much.

Like Father, Like Son (100th Post)

I'm celebrating my 100th post with a couple of pictures from a swim party earlier this summer. Can you see the resemblance? Who looks like who?

Arizona/Mexico Report

Here's the entrance to the community where we served all week. The community is called Cuauhtemoc. There's about 400-500 people who live there. There's only one Christian church in this community. We helped to work on the building that the church is using. The only other church there is a Catholic one. They only have services about once per quarter. The catholicism is very cultic in Mexico. They have a lot of mini-shrines with statues in them on the sides of the road where they go and pray to different people.















These are some of the kids who came to our VBS. We had about 50 kids each day.




























This is our team with the pastor (Roberto) of the church in Cuauhtemoc and his wife (Chayito).















This is Tim, Jennifer, and Christian Scarbrough. They are the founders of Living Water Ministry, based in Naco, AZ. Naco is a border town between Arizona and Mexico. Cuauhtemoc is about a 20 minute drive into Mexico from Naco. They have restarted the only church in Naco, AZ that had previously been closed down for the last few years. The Scarbroughs hosted us for the week and allowed us to stay in their church in Naco.

Home

We made it back from Arizona/Mexico last night. The internet was down for the whole week after my first post so I didn't get to put any pics up. We had a major lightning storm that knocked it out. I'll get some pics up tonight.

Arizona Update 1

Hey everybody. It's Wednesday morning in Arizona.

Flights were good on Monday although we did have a cancelled flight. But we made it on the next plane. When we got here Monday afternoon we drove down to Cuauthemoc, Mexico to see the church we would be working on and where we would do Bible School. Tuesday morning our big van had some major problems which were finally fixed after 5 trips to the parts store, so we spent the morning doing some work here at the church in Naco, AZ where we are staying. In the afternoon we went to Cuauthemoc and did our first day of Bible School. We had about 50 kids show up. I'll try for some pictures in the next day or so.

Well Said...

Everybody...

You need to watch this video. This is Ed Stetzer at the SBC annual convention yesterday. Stetzer is the president of LifeWay research, the research division of the SBC.

June Blog Break

I'll be taking a blog break for the month of June. It's going to be a crazy busy month. We've got VBS at church starting next week and I'm leading my first ever mission trip that leaves on June 25th. I've been on a lot of mission trips, but I've never led one. It's a lot of work to get it together. We're going to Naco, Arizona and Cuauthemoc, Mexico. We're partnering with Tim and Jennifer Scarbrough through Living Water Ministries.

I might have an occasional post, but for the most part I'll be back in July.

Things Kids Say

Luke is really starting to talk and be able to understand what we are saying...to a degree. Today was our long trip back from Orlando. (good vacation)

Emily asked Luke while we were riding, "Are you awake?"

Luke's answer, "No."

I asked Luke, "Do you know what 'awake' means?"

Luke's answer, "No."

Lost Season Conclusion

Well...I would give the 2 hour conclusion of Lost an overall positive rating.

Negative

1. too many commercials...during the second half of the first hour the commercials were coming about every 4-5 minutes...i know, i know, that's what DVR's are for
2. they killed Charlie...boo...he didn't have to lock himself in the flooding room when he could have walked out the door and closed it behind him
3. how many lives does that crazy one-eyed guy have? they've killed him twice in the past few weeks and he keeps coming back...give me a break
   

Positive

1. the flashback with bearded Jack totally had me going...it was actually a flash forward...very nice
2. they are really developing John Locke to be Jack's nemesis...he's practically a superhero the way his body heals itself
3. the overall storyline of the show is developing nicely
4. the ending with future Jack and Kate was great, but you know that they're not actually going to get rescued from the phone call to that boat off the island anytime soon b/c there's 3 seasons left, so...can they change their future???
   
5. Emily wanted me to note that she disliked the ending b/c she wanted Jack and Kate to get together
6. It was cool to see Ben get beat up and to see the girl embrace her real mom

Guesses

1. John and Ben will return to the others and John will become the leader of the others
2. it will become Jack vs. John
3. Desmund will be the real hero of the story...he's just too cool
4. Ben was actually right about the boat...something bad will come from it

What do you think???