Monday, September 24, 2007

08059

yesterday i was supposed to run 6.6 miles, many of them working upwards against the forces of gravity, but my final trail run was postponed due to a torrential rain that has raised our beloved animas river to near record levels. i can live with that...another two weeks to prepare will be greatly appreciated...

...i am so excited to watch our farmington campus develop and grow over the next several months! one thing that was fun about this week was realizing how far we actually have come in durango...sometimes you can get so caught up in the moment that you don't realize what's been accomplished...but as i was sitting in our first farmington service i was simultaneously overwhelmed with how much needs to happen to get that group going but also how much has happened already just in durango. that experience made me appreciate both of our "core" groups of people so much for what they have done for our community...

...new crowder out wednesday!!!

my parents are here this week, so i finally get to show some boutry's what durango is all about!

peace

Monday, September 17, 2007

07859

- i'm sure you've all had this experience...an old friend, someone you once were really close to, moves away, or you move away, or you both move on to the next thing, and communication becomes more difficult and you don't see each other more than once a year, and after a while you still have this sense of what the other is up to in life, but the closeness that was once there is there no longer. and then something happens...you see them at a wedding, or a group of old friends gets together for whatever reason and next thing you know, in that moment, it's like nothing has changed.

this is how i've experienced the new caedmon's call album, "overdressed." i used to love this band. between 1998 and 2002 i probably saw them play 10-15 times. they would have been a no-brainer choice for favorite band. but then derek webb left the band (and to be honest, the real reason i loved them so much was for derek's songs), they did some less than great worship albums, and i just moved on to other bands and other music. i sort of kept track of what they were doing...for example, i really admired their passion for india and the subsequent album that came from that experience...but i just wasn't feeling the connection anymore.

"overdressed" is not a great album...but it feels like that moment with old friends where it seems as if time has been rolled back and nothing has changed. derek's songs are once again amazing...coupled with andrew osenga's songwriting skills, about half the tracks are excellent (the rest leave something to be desired)...but the bottom line is that it's been nice to get reaquainted with this old friend. (the most excellent song, if you are in to downloading, is the last track "ten thousand angels")

- this week i finished the final Harry Potter novel. it was excellent...it took me a while to get into the series (and i started with a lot of skepticism), but the last three books, in particular, are so fantastic, it's worth slogging through the first half of the series just to get to the payoff!

- last, but definitely not least, our farmington campus kicks off this week...please pray for that amazing group of people as they pour themsleves into this new adventure!

Monday, September 10, 2007

07759

some updates:

- we had a sweet prayer time last night for our farmington crew, commissioning the people and the place (hot stuff billiards and spa!)...the new campus starts sept. 19th and everyone seems to be really excited about it.

- yesterday i played my first game for the durango herald's adult league soccer team...we got killed, but it was a lot of fun! i thought i was in shape from all of the running i've been doing, but not even trails can prepare you for 80 minutes of soccer...i'm pretty sore today =)

- fantasy baseball is all but over (even though there are three weeks left in the season)...current standing are rmps59 106.5, tex boys 82, enraged echidnas 81.

- thanks to rmac for sending me the new caedmon's call cd...derek webb is back with the band (at least for the recording of this album) and upon first listen at least the results are pretty fantastic.

i think that's it for now. peace

Monday, September 03, 2007

07659

on saturday i dropped amy off at the airport...not fun. on the way home i buried myself deeply into a world of self-pity and melancholy. about an hour outside of durango i got a call from james asking me to pick him (and some of his stuff) up at a local gas station. james is heading out to oklahoma this week to see his family.

i thought this would be a simple procedure...pick james up, drop him off, go home, crawl into bed and continue to wallow in my self-pity while listening to some sad songs on my ipod. i was terribly wrong. before i had time to really process on what was going on i found myself on a cliff in Horse Gulch, in my flip flops, helping james mule his belongings off the mountain.

there i was, dirty and sweaty, less than four hours removed from saying goodbye to amy, loaded down with stuff (james was carrying a five gallon bucket of bean soup on his back about which he made the following comment: "i gotta enough soup to be able to eat all winter and tell everyone else to go to hell")...thinking to myself: how absurd and wierd life can be at times.

i seem to be having these experiences a lot lately: moments where i get pulled out of myself and reminded that there is more to life than the little worlds i can create in my own mind.

sometimes it takes a bucket of beans to get me there.