Dan Updates.

My friend Dan fell in a climbing accident last weekend. He is still in the hospital and has a long road to recovery ahead of him. Another friend of ours, Kris, is putting regular updates on his blog. You can see his blog here.

Stupid.

California, Colorado and Dirt.

CALIFORNIA

I spent this last week directing a High School camp at a different camp in Ventura County, California. The camp was called Forest Home: Ojai Valley and that area is wonderful. Its located about an hour and a half or two hours north of LA and its a beautiful area.

The camp went really well and it was a great group of students and sponsors to and out with.

COLORADO

The speaker for the week was named Jim Burgen from Flatirons Community Church near Boulder, CO. If you ever get a chance to check out their church you should.

DIRT

One of the main points that we are talking about at high school camps is to serve others. So one of the days we go and volunteer at different organizations and get the kids an idea of what can be done in their communities.

One of the groups went to a homeless mission called Turning Point. It is a place for people that are rejected from the homeless shelters.

While at Turning Point some students cleaned and organized closets full of clothes and supplies, some kids cleaned windows and scrubbed floors and some other kids did something that will stick with them for a long time. Every night the mission fills up so the lady who runs it has people sleep on the floor and on couches, when those fill up so has them sleep on a dirt patch out behind the main living area. The kids had the job of pulling weeds and tilling up some of the dirt to make it a softer place to sleep. After the day of service the kids talked about how they couldn't believe that people were sleeping out behind this building on dirt. I think it really put their lives into perspective and opened their eyes to how some other people live life. Hopefully they will have a greater appreciation for serving those in need in their communities. Cheers.

Chris

Update From Cali.

Marriage, Past, Present and Future.

PAST

I figured out that last Sunday it had been 10 years since Rachel and I met. It was June 1999 and Rach was traveling with her college, Atlanta Christian College, to summer camps promoting the school. We worked together for a week at Tri State Christian Camp and I honestly fell in love with her that week. She was everything I had wanted in a wife.

Its been an amazing 10 years.

PRESENT

While we have known each other for 10 years, Monday will be our 7th wedding anniversary. I feel so blessed to have such an amazing wife.

FUTURE

As we look to the future we are so excited because in January we will be having our first baby!!! Yep, Ray Ray is preggers and we couldn't be happier. Shes 10 weeks now from everything the doctors have seen things are going well and there are no problems. She's super tired all the time, but hasn't dealt with too much morning sickness. She's only had a couple of 'crazy pregnant lady' breakdowns, but to me they were beautiful because they are just part of the process.



We are so excited. Cheers.

Chris

You're Freakin' Kidding Me.

Land of the Lost sucked.

Like so bad that we almost left early because we could have been spending that time sleeping, rather than watching this awful movie. I know some people don't like Will Ferrell (side note: those people are dumb, sorry Jeni), but this was like nothing I had ever seen.

As the movie was going on I thought to myself that maybe its not that funny to me because its for kids. However, if it is for children don't take them because the language is bad. My Nanny would be so made at me if I wrote those words on this blog.

Whatever, don't waste your money on this movie. If you would like to throw that money away please feel free to send it to me, I'll buy spandex shorts with it. Cheers.

Chris

Typomash #2

The new Typomash is up. My article is on page 26 and its titled Homecoming. Check out the whole magazine there are some great articles by some really cool people. Enjoy.

Oh, Sameer, You're so Funny.

Found this on Derek's blog. Funny.

Cool Video.

Awesome.

Bartape.net

Cervelo is a bike company and they have made these really cool short films about their factory team. The website is bartape.net and they are worth a look. Cheers.

Chris

I Turned 30 and Never Wrote About it.

Hey Guys,

I'm 30. I have come to grips with it and have this horrible feeling that the older I get to worse I become at things, not a good sign since I have possible 50 more years to live. So the way I see it from age 60-80 I won't be able to do anything successfully. Awesome.

For my 30th, Ray and I went over to Orange County and hung with a couple of our friends, Shaun and Melisa. Shaun turned 30 a few days after I did so we went to drown our sorrows in Ruby's cheeseburgers and California Strawberries (they are the best strawberries I have ever had, seriously I at about 14 lbs of them). Sounds lame, but we had a great time.

While we were out there Ray and I picked up a new laptop, ours has been jacked for months so we saved up and got a new Mac. She's cherry.

Also while we were out there I got my b-day present, an '08 Gt Peace 29er Single Speed.



Greg, the camp director, and I were talking about riding the Whiskey Off Road MTB race (its a local race of 15, 25 or 50 miles) next year on single speeds. So since our talk I have been looking for a used on that I could get cheap and that's what we did. I found her on Craigslist in OC and brought her home. She's tough on our trails with the one gear and rigid front end (no suspension), but a fun bike to ride.

I've had the chance to ride a lot over the past several weeks and it feels good to get in some sort of cycling shape where I can now go for a ride and actually enjoy it.

Hope everyone is doing well. Peace out.

Chris

Made Over.

We filmed a make over video for our summer program today. I've been growing out my beard and hair to make the transformation as drastic as possible. Here's my before and after.

I Love Wikipedia, They Have Crazy Stuff Like This.

I love that the symptoms of Swine Flu are the same symptoms you experience every time you have ever been sick in your entire life. Cheers.

Chris

I Think Ron is a Douche Bag.

I Got This.

I have had swallowing difficulties for a while and had a swallowgram done yesterday and they said I have a Hiatal Hernia, which is a hole in my diaphragm which allows my stomach to come through and causes me to have acid reflux which in turn causes me to have difficulty swallowing. Awesome.

Typomash.

A friend of mine, Mynhardt, is helping a friend with a new South African online magazine called Typomash. When speaking with the editor, she said she was wanting a monthly feature called The Norther Hemisphere from someone up north. He suggested that I do it, she and I emailed back and forth and now I am getting to write for this project.

I am excited about this because I think this will help me be more creative at work and give me an outlet to write besides here on my often neglected blog.

The site launches on May 1st (also my 30th birthday, more about that later) and we'll see how it goes. Cheers.

Chris

My Transformation is Complete.

Camp men have trucks.

Especially the guys I work with, they are all from the midwest and they have trucks. I did't fit in because I grew up in Florida and have a Jeep (which is close, but just not 'rednecky' enough). However, I am happy to say that today I completed my transformation by purchasing a 1988 Chevy 4x4 from a local drywall company.

My new 'big ass' truck comes with a decrotive layer of drywall dust blanketing the dash and a dust mask in the glove box in case there is another SARs scare.

Its also the first time Ray and I have had 2 vehicles since about a month after we got married, boy are we fancy now.


Oh, how sweet it is.



Don't I look manly?


Chris

You Would Like to Eat What? My Eyes?

A couple of weeks ago we had a program "adventure" week for some 6Th graders and one of the days we had a guy come talk who was a 'birds of prey' expert.

He brought this huge owl and the whole time he was teaching the kids about birds of prey I swore this thing was going to attack his face. I mean this bird had the beak of a samurai sword and the eyes of Satan. You could see into its deep dark soul and tell that it had only ill intentions. Satan or not, nobody died, however I am sure that's only because we all were extremely lucky.


Here is "Satan With Wings" doing his best imitation of Lord Voldemort. Evil bird.



See, looks just like him......except with feathers.

A bunch of people took pics with this widow maker and I was the only one it stared down. I almost punched it in the face.

Life and Priorities.

Life

My boss, Chris Herrington, called me this morning to tell me that he and his wife were rushing off to the hospital to give birth to their new baby. WooHoo! Please pray everything goes well with the birthin'.

Priorities

I was reading on Marko's blog this morning some of his notes from the Jr High Youth Ministry Summit he hosts each year and I found something interesting. There was a little brief thing about priorities in ministry and how the thing you value the most should be recieving 70 percent of your focus, time and resources. However, many times the thing we say we value the most gets the 30 percent instead.

This got me thinking how we do things here at camp and I think that we would all agree that we hold a high value to small group relational ministry within the context of our summer program. However, I think that our large group sessions recieve way more of our finances than things that foster community and relationship.

I know that within program ministry, large group "sessions" are really important, to have low quality bands, speakers, lights, sound systems etc can really distract people from the message you are trying to get across, however does it need to take up the resources that we throw at it? This applys to camp as well as to church and even family budgeting, what do you value? What gets your money?

I don't know what camp could look like if we spend more of our budget on community building projects (games, community spaces, etc). Would we suffer as a ministry? Or would we thrive by allocating funds for our primary values rather than a piece of the pie that is typically uses for attracting people? Just a thought and I look forward to where it could go. Cheers.

Chris