Starbucks on Christmas Eve morning

Starbucks right next to Gonzaga’s campus in Spokane. Jody and I drink coffee getting ready to drive to Prineville for Christmas. We noticed a guy with a perfectly manicured feathered, blonde mullet hair, talking to a large guy with blue-collar work clothes and a hard hat on over coffee.

As the hard hat guy stands up and leaves he turns to his mullet friend and says, “I’ll call you in January and we’ll do yoga.”

Dec 23rd
For those of you who’ve experienced flying Southwest. Everyone is assigned a boarding letter, either A, B or C. Everyone jockies for position at the gate area in the assigned lines.

Us: Standing in ‘B’ line, relatively close to the front as ‘A’ line is heading down the gate ramp.

Blonde mid 30’s lady: As she passes us while walking in line A to the friends she made in line, “I feel bad passing all these people, why do we get to go first?”

Guy friend in line with her: “because we’re in loading group ‘A’”

Lady after looking at her boarding pass and realizing she is in group ‘C’: “ohhh shooot”

Same lady after looking over at the long lines ‘B’ and ‘C’: “ohhh sh@#!”

Grandma

Aaahhh…San Diego. 68 degree weather is quite the change from -3 it was in Bozeman last night. The bummer in all of this is that the reason I’m here is that my Grandma Gwen passed away last Saturday. Sad that I never again get to enjoy the engaging personality that was my Grandma.

Thus I sit in a hotel with my wife, sister and Mom. Jody and I are t-i-r-e-d. We just want a couple of easy weeks with no major news. I’m tired of answering the phone and getting bad news. I’m happy to be here with my family though.

Please pray for my family, especially for my Mom as she grieves and takes care of most of the arrangements. Pray too that we can get to Prineville for Christmas. Thanks for all your prayers. We love you all very much.

catching up

These are a couple of posts from my time in San Diego for my Grandma's funeral.

Staff meeting today!

I'm sitting in staff meeting for our marathon evaluation meetings. Here's a picture of a moose I saw the other day. Check out the updates on our ministry site for a sweet moose video. Look under Interesting sites on the right of this page.

ohhhh my goodness!

I just went crazy in my living room. My poor wife...I'm not sure how she puts up with me. The Gonzaga-Oklahoma State game was on CBS today. Adam Morrison banked in a three with 2 seconds left. Thus the crazieness in my living room... I wonder what our neighboring condo's think?

Svakistudent.com

This is a fun statistic I just found...especially since Jody and I lead a summer project in Rijeka, Croatia last summer and publicized this website alot.

According to Rob Williams (Campus Crusade tech guy)... Last week we discovered that our Croatian evangelistic site, www.svakistudent.com has been seeing about 44 people each month indicate a decision to receive Jesus while reading the site! In September the number was 79!

Picture of Katie

Many of you heard of our dear friend Katie Walsh who passed away unexpectedly on Saturday. She served with Campus Crusade at the University of Montana. Jody and I dug through our old summer project pictures tonight. We found some of the Echo project that Jody and I were on with Katie. Here is one...

Leadership training

This how we build community amongst our leaders. That's one of our staff on the left.

sleepy time for Bob

Being my boss makes Bob tired

Big word....Prevenience

Dear Church,
The concept of "prevenience" was at the foundation of Jesus' ministry. ("Prevenience": referring to that which goes before or precedes)

He said, "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." (Jn. 5:19)

"... I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me." (Jn. 8:28)
"For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it." (Jn. 12:49)

Jesus, the very Son of God, did nothing (zero/nada) on his own initiative. He spoke nothing on His own initiative. The Father initiated, Jesus responded. Jesus believed that His Father was prevenient. Every healing, every miracle, every teaching was initiated by the Father and carried out by Jesus.

His entire plan consisted of this:

1. See what the Father is doing and do that.
2. Hear what the Father is saying and say that.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

He is no longer the passive "honored guest" for whom we perform.
He is "the Master of ceremonies".

He runs the show. He sets the agenda.
And, that changes everything.
John White-Dawn Ministries