We booked our 5th (sorta) anniversary trip this week. We are going to Galveston TX for the Vineyard National Leaders Conference. Then we have a couple days to bum around before we go on a cruise to Jamaica and Mexico. (Sorry Kyle and Ellen, we wanted to visit, but this was the only way we could go to the conference and do a vacation). So that is pretty exciting for us.
After that we will be responsible people and put more money into paying debt, but this sounded like a good thing to do prior to having kids, which we are thinking about in the not-so-distant future.
Besides that we had a great time running around in the Quad Cities IA, O’fallon IL (by St. Louis), Memphis TN (Lauren only), Indianapolis IN (me only), Champaign IL, Chicago IL, Eau Claire WI (stupid ice storm…this was an unplanned stop). Also I got a bluray player and some cool bluray discs to play in it. Good holiday times.
Last weekend we had a ‘roaring 20’s party’ and dressed up like flappers and gangsters and proceeded to drink gin out of a pot and beer out of a 5 gal keg. Good times again.
We just started a new small group which meets for the second time on Tuesday. I’m SUPER excited about it, and we really enjoyed the first week where we had 9 adults and 3 kids.
A while ago Lauren and I talked about what we wanted to do (kinda a pie in the sky thing, not a ‘I’m a church planter and need to do whatever needs to get done’ type of thing) if we were to start leading things again. And we both felt like we really wanted to get more involved with the poor and homeless, and do more servant evangelism and street prayer. So we said that if we ever started a small group that is something we would incorporate in it.
Well, starting in Feb. we are going to do the first of our monthly outreaches. And then after both Lauren, I, and our intern plan one of the events so everyone is used to the idea, it is going to turn into a thing that people can sign up for leading. I’m excited and scared of this all at the same time. But if my past experience is any indicator, these type of things usually are good for character and group building at their worst, and super exciting and God really transforms people through them at their best.
Sometime in the early spring I want to sit down and collect some thoughts and try to turn them into some substantive, hopefully professional sounding, blog posts. I would like to do a little more than I have with my blog, which will hopefully mean some more tutorials, more thoughtful stuff, and less narcissistic junk. That has been difficult so far as my writing style doesn’t currently do a good job of conveying my thoughts – something I want to practice and work on a little.
After that, I think I’m going to learn the basics of Drupal, in anticipation for designing my wife’s website for her eventual commercial success as a writer.
And that about does it for me recently. How are you doing?