Big weekend!

I don't know what I am more excited about the 3 day weekend, or the Friday night lights! I am so excited for our football teams to be able to get on the field after an entire off-season of hard work and see where they stand. To put all that they have learned from, and gained to work tonight in front of their own home crowds, how exciting.
I love my role as Chaplain at Pedro Menendez and I really like being there to share the games with the players and coaches alike. I think it is very important that if you are going to witness to someone or even a group that you go through life's peaks and valleys right alongside of them, every step of the way.
I'm equally excited about a 3 day weekend. Today is Alexa's 8th birthday! We'll be having a little party for her at our family's house from 2-5 on Saturday with college football scattered all around it. We'll have church and then we will have the afternoon for relaxing, relaxing better than usual knowing we don't have to get up and face the work load on Monday morning. I have it all planned out, it's a lack of plans that is feeling good for once in my life.
So enjoy your weekend, if you have Monday off enjoy it with your family and if at all possible try to do nothing! It's not as scary as it sounds!
Thanks for reading!

Day after Hump Day

So here I sit, at my computer the day after Hump Day. The day after my mid-week buzz called "youth." Last night we tried to go back to our roots and change things up. Each week we are going to change things up so that we can see what best fits our youth ministry's personality right now. Last night we did a discussion-type setting and we are going to slowly start making them interact during the message. We'll change it up each week until we know what fits best.
We actually had a good sized group last night considering my brain dead older kids. It's funny we had 9th graders hustling to get to church and find rides after football practice, but those who can drive didn't make it. But, we'll keep on plugging along and reaching those who we can reach.
This week marks the beginning of highschool football and their kick off classics. Tara and I will be setting up and serving the team meal at Pedro, then she is off to the st. Augustine game while I will be pacing the sidelines at Pedro. I'm excited about this season as we will have a lot of kids on a lot of different teams from Pedro, St. Augustine and even Nease. It's going to be an exciting and busy time for us and we love every minute of it. So if you find yourself sitting at home on Friday night with nothing to do, go to a football game. Same goes for Thursday nights, we have a lot of freshman playing too.
Have a great day and thanks for reading!

Slow Tuesday

I must say I am glad that it is Wednesday and that there is no reason for us not to have youth tonight! It is important that I get that mid-week buzz going again to carry me through to Sunday.
A lot of people probably don't understand how the ministry works for someone called into the full-time ministry that is working bi-vocationally. I go to bed on Saturday night excited about Sunday, my day of full service for God. My opportunity to share all that I have studied and had GOd reveal to me in His word over the week. Then comes Monday which is a bit of a downer and Tuesday even worse. Then comes Wednesday, which I must confess is still my favorite day of the week. It's my longest day in which I am on the go from about 6:30am to about 9:30pm but it is well worth it. I spend the day just struggling to do my job at the BGH, waiting for the afternoon when I can go hang out at football for a while, go run the van and pick up kids, then have youth group, load up the van take them all home, and then go home. It's the best day of the week for me, it's second only to Sunday.
Then comes Thursday and Friday which are somewhat downers again, building up toward the weekend. Saturday is a good one because it is teh one day I can devote 24 hours to my family uninterupted(sometimes uninterupted) and then we're back to Sunday, the highlight of my weekend again!
So there you have it a little look at the rollercoaster of life that keeps us on our toes. Tara has learned how to see it and by what day of the week it is how to handle it. Football is a great fix though, I get off work at 3 and ride out to the football practices at Pedro MEnendez each day and I am able to minister the whole time I'm there so each day is not a total loss.
Thanks again for reading and have a great "HUMP DAY!"

P.J.'s first day

Yesterday was my little bulldozer's first day at school. It's so funny how we can have such meaningful conversations on her way to school and yet they are taken completely out of context. She is so head-strong and driven in all aspects of her life that it is scary sometimes. We talked about being a leader and a good influence on our way to school. I told her it's important that she makes her own decisions, and good decisions that would make God, her parents and her teach proud. Part of beign a leader was making the right choices based on those people and not the other kids in the class, and not going along with the group all the time(especially when the group is doing something that isn't right!)
Well, yesterday they had a chance to go to several of their resource times like art, music, P.E. and others. As they travelled they had to have a line leader, well guess what. Little P.J. told her teach she needed to be the leader, because her daddy told her to be a leader. How funny! She was very pushy about being the line-leader to each place they went to and her teacher had to tell her to share the line leading with other students. She didn't understand why she wasn't being the leader, funny, funny funny! She took everything I told her and applied it to the wrong situation, aren't kids awesome!
Well, I went on to work, go through the day and wondered how she was doing. She got home and told me it was okay, but she didn't make many friends because there were only 4 other kids. She is excited about Thursday when all of her classmates will be there and she can make more friends. We talked about it some on the way to football practice out at PEdro last night. When we got to football practice I played catch with Alexa on the sideline while the guys were practicing and then I lost track of P.J. for a few minutes. When I turned back around she was riding the cart around with the water girls and she had them laughing hysterically(I'm afraid to even ask what she had said), but she again had walked up to a pack of strangers and made friends. Alexa went over, hopped on the cart and they helped the water girls put everything up after practice and now they want to go to practice with me every night!
Alexa even told one of the girls she was cool, and that if she didn't go to church she should come to church with her. Atta girl! So my associate pastor and visitation co-pilot is still at it doing her job.
That's about it for the excitement on our end of the road, hope you're having a great week, thanks for reading!

Fay-tigued?

I never thought I would be happy to be back to work. The normal daily routine of reading my quiet time, spending time in prayer, then going to my office to type out my blogs based on my studies the night before and that morning.
But, today I am proud to say that I am back in the full swing, with a little bit of sadness mixed in. You see today is the day that I admit that P.J. is going to school. I didn't want Alexa to start school and we struggled with that, but I still had P.J. to fall back on. But now, with her starting there's just me left. Luckily, today she has to go get her physical which was scheduled for last week but not done because of the storm. SO thank you Fay, for one last day with my little bulldozer!
We had a great few days of no electricity, bonding time with the girls. Tara and I spent a lot of time just sitting on the front porch and talking, these were times that would cost me big time. You see as we sat there, Tara decided she didn't really want any of the bushes that were planted out front any more. So, you guessed it I spent Saturday ripping out and transplanting all of the bushes. I can hardly wait to see what she has planned for us to put in the place of those bushes, yay!
So as you can see Fay gave us some time, some time to think and bond, some days where even I was able to make myself do nothing and relax enjoying my family. So I am thankful for that, for sure!
Have a great day and thanks for reading!