My Worship Revolution

With Ed still recovering from being sick, I’m up to bat with the message this Sunday.  We’re in a series called “The Elephant In The Room.”  We’re focusing on family and parenting issues, especially some of those that aren’t talked about much.

What is the one thing that you wish someone would have told you that you never heard before having a child?

This post came out of a coffee I had with Ryan this morning.  We started talking about 24 and both agreed that the right decision for the president right now on this season of 24 is clear.  However, we disagreed on what that decision should be.  So that made me kinda curious to know what all of you would do in her position.

The short of it is this.  Imagine you are President.  There is mass genocide in Africa due to a major civil uprising, children are being kidnapped and recruited to kill, and thousands of innocent women and children are being killed daily.  You have troops ready to go in to aid the African government in putting a stop to the killing.  Now the terrorist leader that is responsible for the war has gained control to American technology that will allow him to kill thousands of Americans through air traffic control, power grids, and the likes.  He is ordering you to remove troops from Africa or he will begin killing Americans.

Almost a year ago I posted a recording of a song I had written for a service at CLC.  I used it for a songwriting workshop at Recreate and then invited you to give me your critiques.
To see that post and see what people had to say, check it out here.

Well, I reworked it just a little bit and then recorded it for our Christmas album.
Last year Randy said it would be interesting to hear copies of the song before and after receiving some critiques.  So here ya go.  The CD version starts with Rachel reciting Mary's words from the verse that the song came from.

Of course, there's nothing to say it can't still be made better.  (Hopefully I didn't make it worse.  Lol.)  So let me know what you think!
Here is both the recording from the last post, and right below it the new version of the song from the CD:

Rewritten Version

Literally.

As we pulled up to the house I could feel the nervousness in my stomach.  What is this guy like?  Is this gonna be awkward?  The door opened and next thing I know it was almost 3 hours later.

It was awesome hanging with him and his wife, Laura.   We had a blast chatting, getting to know each other, and letting Caleb go outside to play with the horses, goats, and chickens.  I might even be able to look past his total redneckness!  Country music, nascar, and cowboy hats!    Behold the pigs head that was hung the night before we arrived:

Meeting his family and being able to connect was super cool.  Strange to have somewhat shared experience and to be actually family with someone I’ve never known.  He is a Christ follower as well and is was cool to eat together and be able to pray together.  Looking forward to more visits with his fam as well as meeting the rest of the siblings in the near future.

So yeah, I know, Christmas was like 3 weeks ago.
But we just celebrated with our families last week.
Which means I can finally share a few of the gifts we gave that were birthed out of our focus on Advent Conspiracy this year.

The gift that I would say I was most looking forward to giving was one we created for both of our parents.  It was the most fun for me personally to put together and was one of those things we hope was meaningful for them to have.  We made extra copies and have been able to pass it on to some other family members who asked us for a copy as well.

We spent a bunch of time, with the help of Chris Gott (thanks dude!!) putting together our own Christmas album.  You can click to enlarge the inside of the cover below to see the details…track list, who played, etc.

And just for fun below that, you can hear the last couple tracks we laid down.  Including a little Merry Christmas from our whole family, 3 weeks late! 
Enjoy!

Little Drummer Boy

Silent Night

Well, back in the U.S. and back on the blog for 2009 anyway.  On vacation to see family for Christmas this week though.

Just got back from an awesome week in Mexico.  Like any trip, it had it's ups and downs, it's victories and it's hiccups, but after 5 days, between 2 groups equaling 115 people, one from Santa Cruz and one from L.A., 3 houses were built, 2 VBS experiences hosted, lots of other homes worked on, and lots of families were prayed for and loved on.  You can't beat that!

Here's a little video we showed at church on Sunday to share a piece of the experience.  Enjoy!

P.S. – The thumbnail in the video was Georgina leading us in morning exercises.  Hilarious!!  We need to produce her a workout video!

It’s been pretty quiet around here lately.
It’s gonna stay pretty quiet until after the New Year.
It’s actually provided kind of a nice break from blogging.
Kinda like it’s nice having an “off season” from Triathlon I guess.
Plenty of thoughts to ducument, just little time and motivation to bang em out.
But I’ll be back up and running (figuratively and literally) come January.

In the meantime, though, keep up with the next week in Mexico (internet service willing) over at the CLC Mexico blog.
Leaving with all these clowns in about 2 hours:

Keep us in your prayers!
It’s gonna be an awesome week!

Kinda like this, but a little bit different.
Saw this idea at both Whittaker blogs.
Comes from a Flickr group.
I like to steal good ideas.
It's a whole day in clips of a couple seconds each.

Yesterday I took the day off.
Here's the entire day in 90 seconds.
Welcome in to my life.
Enjoy.

Since I’m in a groove of pimping design, swing by our church site and check out the new design.
Tarena Heitmann, who is in our life group, designed it.  She is the bomb and did an amazing job!

Few small changes to tweak and then we’ll start adding some more functionality to it soon with the help of Aaron Mapes.
Good stuff!