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can't decide if i have nothing to say or too much to say and not enough energy to write it all down.  so we have, instead, a list of things that i like right now...

1) nathan's picture a day blog: home sweet 22

2) books about suffering: one about the blues and one about creativity

3) websites about puppies

4) blogs about potential baseball trades

5) online giving

have a great week, hopefully i'll have more to say next time 

18759

nantasket beach!

18659

we have a lot going on right now.  summer camp is in full swing (a fairly all-consuming swing at that).  amy is in the midst of an intense 10 week clinical experience.  we are in the nitty-gritty stages of the home buying process.  plus we have family visiting, weddings to attend, more social gathering invitations than we have time for.  oh yeah, and i'm working on fundraising so that i can actually have one job and focus this fall.

i have to admit that in the middle of all that sojourn gets lost.  september, though right around the corner, still feels a long way off, especially with more pressing details and deadlines staring me in the face.  

which makes me all the more glad for the series we are going through at reunion right now.  it's called "roots" and it looks at the four generations described in genesis, starting with abraham.  which is cool, but even cooler, for me, has been the series of video stories they've done where different people in our community have shared about their own spiritual "roots".  we've heard three stories so far and for each one the pivotal moment arrived when they were in college.  

fascinating.  inspiring.  

these five minute stories are keeping me focused right now, reminding me that what i'll eventually be doing this fall is so vital and important to God's kingdom.

18559

i have a lot of books on my shelves about leadership.  some of them are inspirational, some are informative, some are analytical, some are anecdotal.  they are all intended to make the reader a "better" leader.  

i've read all of them.  i've taken classes on leadership.  i've been to the leadership summit.  i've been a leader in different contexts.  i've been a leader by title, by position, and by circumstance.

we are only four days in to summer camp and already this is the most challenging leadership experience i have ever had.  over the course of a given day i have had to get 10 five year old boys changed and ready for the pool, talk a seven year old girl into participating in activities with the rest of her group, motivate a sixteen year old junior counselor to "go above and beyond" by carrying one more cooler up the stairs, teach a unit leader how to be a leader to the kids and junior counselors they are overseeing, inspire the art teacher to think of something to do on a rainy day when she'd already seen all the kids once that day, speak frankly to a parent about their child's behavioral issues, and the list goes on and on (and almost all of this is cross-cultural as well).

so, i sit in my living room and look at all those books and chuckle to myself because they are fairly worthless when rain and thunder and lightening are bellowing forth from the sky and you have to get fifty kids off one broken bus and squish them on to a second bus with the same amount of kids, all while burning up your cell minutes trying to figure out where you are going to spend the day because hale reservation is no place to be in a storm like this one. 

and that was just the first week =)