Merry Christmas

Recent events in the McComas household:

-had the alternator replaced in our car
-drove to Oregon almost avoiding storms last friday and saturday
-managed to avoid car wrecks on the rural 97 highway of central Oregon
-watched the Portland storm coverage that was on 24 hours a day
-watched my wife chop some wood yesterday (don't judge me... she wanted to)
-lamented the Gonzaga basketball teams recent losses
-struggled to nurse my dieing computer back to health
-almost cursed the spotty internet connection

Future events...depending on the weather:

-Christmas with family in Prineville
-Watch Jenna go crazy with all her new toys
-drive to Winter conference in Portland
-pray for students who are driving to the conference
-clear the snow out of the gutters and off of the room at the in-laws house
-probably almost curse the spotty internet connection again

Love it or hate it

Conditions / High / Low (°F) / Precip. %

Today
Dec 13 Snow and Wind 22°/-11° 100 %

Sun
Dec 14 Snow Shower and Wind -4°/-14° 40 %

Mon
Dec 15 Few Snow Showers 5°/-5° 30 %

Tue
Dec 16 Few Snow Showers 13°/1° 30 %

That's right folks...a high of -4 tomorrow!!!

Vision for Ministry

Vision - Campus Crusade at Montana State University from Matt McComas on Vimeo.

This was a video I helped put together last year to help communicate what we do in our ministry with college students. The guy talking is Bob Schwahn who serves as our director. Check it out.

Mac's are taking over

This is a graph of Campus Crusade staff and their increased use of Mac's over the past few years. Interesting.

Be careful out there.

November is over

My 30 days of November blogging is over today. I think I managed about 24 or 25 days of posting.

Not to shabby.

I can't promise much for December. We'll be on the road for Christmas and have a couple retreats before then. So who knows what the blogging motivation will be like. I may run into some circus performers, nascar racers or other missionaries that I want to tell the world about.

Today we trudged through the wet snow out in the Gallatin National Forest to bag and tag our Christmas tree. It's absolutely not a perfect tree, but I like the natural look. Besides, after it's all done up it looks pretty darn good in our living room. To bad I had to cut a foot and half off of Mr. Tree to fit it under our 9 foot ceiling.

Civil War

My wife is crying because her Alma Mater (Oregon State University) is being humiliated by the University of Oregon in the annual Civil War football game. I told her, "chin up young lady, your team still gets the most fashionable award with cool hunters orange jerseys."

In other news, we discovered recently that you can watch cable sporting events for free online at stoogetv.com. This website came in handy for Pete Zagorda, who used to live in Croatia.

Advent Conspiracy Promo Video

This is my anti-black friday video

Thanksgiving

Happing Thanksgiving!

I have a boatload to be thankful for. Including, but not limited to, my sweet wife and crazy little girl, my home, my job, the beautiful view of the Bridger mountains out the back window and of course the Spudzilla 9000 (more to come on this device in the next few days).

Last night, thanks to the History channel, I learned that the so called original Thanksgiving meal in 1621 featured a variety of meats such as turkey, swan, seal, duck, crane and partridge as well as some seafood, including cod, eel, clams and lobster.

Interestingly Cranberry sauce was not on the menu.

Today at our amazing Thanksgiving meal we had two guys from India join us for dinner. We were getting to know Nipun and Rajit when we asked them about the climate in the city they're from and Rajit responded,

"It's...(contemplative pause)

freakin' hot!"

much laughter ensued.

Courage

-Leadership is not defined by talent. Look for an opportunity to break from the pack and seize it. Those are the moments when leadership is discovered and defined.

-You're afraid. So what? Everybody is afraid. Fear is the common ground of humanity. The question you must wrestle to the ground with is, Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity? If so there is no reason for you to finish this book.

-Don't let how get in the way of pursuing what? Leaders pursue opportunities way before the means and the maps are available. Your industry's unsolved problems are the gateway to the future.

-Leaders don't hide from the truth. The pain of discovery is the first step on the path to change. If you are going to fear anything, fear not know the truth about what's happening around you. In the world of leadership, denial is analogous to receiving the last rites.

-What could be? What should be? Write it down. Hang it on a wall. Broadcast it.

Next Generation Leader - Andy Stanley

Christmas Picture

I've missed a few days in my "30 days of November blogging" campaign...sorry about that. There is no excuse.

Maybe this will make you feel better. This is our Christmas card picture this year. Many thanks to Elliot Jenko a student at MSU who took our picture and tried to get Jenna to smile.

Jenna got tagged

Name/Meaning: Jennalynn Grace - God is Gracious

Age: 22.5 months

Nicknames: Jenna Bean, Peanut, Sweet Pea, Crazy

Favorite Activity (ies): Reading, going to the park and swinging, hanging out with our staff team, riding in the bike trailer, talking on the phone and lately pretending to be texting.

Favorite Food: Pizza, cold black beans (I know...weird), crackers, chocolate, cereal and quesadillas.

Least favorite food: anything nutritious especially veggies

Favorite Music: Hip-hop, and bluegrass and her favorite songs is Jesus Loves Me.

Favorite toys: Giant legos, blocks, books, little jungle animals, mommy and daddy's cell phones.

Favorite books: The Jesus Story book Bible (which I highly recomend for your parent out there), Good Night Moon, and Thomas the Train

What makes her happy: Being outside and being around people. Her blanky and seeing her grandparents. Lately her new veggietale movies...she goes craaazzzzy for them.

What makes her sad: I swear she has the spiritual gift of empathy like her mom, because she get's sad when others are sad. Other things include eating (about 90% of the time) and diaper rash. Diaper rash would make me sad too.

Jenna tags: Mckenzie, Lucy, Rosie, Z & A, Nathan

Friday night

It's 7:23 on a friday night and I'm ready for bed. I feel like I could go to sleep for 12 hours.

In other news, tomorrow is the 108th Cat-Griz game.

Winter Conference 08 - The Office Promo

If you're a fan of The Office you'll know how perfect this video is. These are our students in action.

November Posting

I've beening doing decently well with my effort to blog every day during the month of November. I've missed a few days but added an extra post the following day to make up for my apathy.

What's interesting about this November blogging campaign is that it's a little like exercising your brain. It takes some work to think and then blog and finally make your posts sound legible. It's exercise for your creativity muscle...although sometimes I'm more creative than others. For example, I woke up at 4:15 this morning and couldn't fall back asleep...thus I'm not feeling very creative.

My point is what if all Americans (or followers of Christ, for that matter) stopped watching reality tv and began to exercise our brains and begin to be creative and innovative? I'm guilty as the rest of of them, but what if we began to create instead of being consumers all the time?

Or maybe I should take a mid-morning nap.

Props to this guy for being creative.

Everything is amazing and nobody is happy

So true. Beware there is a bad word edited out in this.

Snow Cone Jeep

I had a friend send me this link today and suggest that CRU purchase it and make the official "CRU SnowCone Jeep." Of course we would have to trademark the phrase.

We could travel around to all the extreme sporting events, ala Redbull, and peddle our sweet snowcone goodness to all willing partakers.

Quantum of Solace

We were given some Movie bucks for the local cinema a couple months ago and finally got a chance to use them last night. We opted for the new James Bond movie. My official review...it was so-so. One of the coolest things about the movie however, is the scene set in the middle of Siena, Italy during the Palio di Siena horse races, which Jody and I experienced a few years ago.
Anway, it wasn't nearly as good as Casino Royale. The action in the movie wasn't very creative and the sheer volume of it limited the character development. Plot was fairly predictable, yet hard to follow throughout (if that makes sense). It was nice to watch on the big screen, but I'm glad it was free for us.

In a side note, I never buy pop/candy/popcorn at the movies, but after we purchased our tickets we had some extra movie bucks, seven to be exact. I was all excited to buy some popcorn, candy and a couple of diet Cokes. I was midly disapointed when all I could afford with $7 was a large coke and handful of sour patch kids.

22 month old's vocab...or "that's what she said."

Today Jenna said the word "actually" about 400 times and the phrase "see you later" once.

Lately

Things I've enjoyed lately, in the following categories:

Internet: Apartment Therapy
A website all about decorating and enjoying your home. I have visions of someday being a cool, hip person with good taste.

Books: The Next Generation Leader, Andy Stanley
See me explanation in previous post.

Entertainment via TV: The current season of The Office; Frontline (PBS)
Question. Why do I schedule my thursday nights around The Office?

Fact: I can't help it, it's my guilty pleasure.

I think Frontline is one of the best TV programs there is...although I've only seen 3 episodes. Get online on watch it, specifically the one about the war in Afghanistan.

Cuisine: Hebrew National Hot Dogs
All beef hotdogs that are soooo tasty.

Outdoor recration: Flyfishing
When I spend time outside right now, there is nothing I'd rather do than go flyfishing. There have been multiple moments over the last few months where I've thought to myself, "this could be a scene from the movie A River Runs Through It." It doesn't hurt that a bunch of scenes were filmed right outside of Bozeman on the Gallatin River.



This "Things I've enjoyed lately" ideas was stolen from Alexis.

International Thanksgiving

Jody and I are going to have some International students over for Thanksgiving dinner this year.

Any ideas of what to do during that time?

Leadership

I've been reading this book by Andy Stanley (pastor of North Point church in Atlanta). I highly, highly recommend it for you people out there itching to refine your leadership ability. It has challenged and inspired me, as well as forced me to ask myself serious questions about what I'm doing and how I'm doing it.

Worth every penny of the $15.

training for the 2024 Olympics

Thoughts from Church this weekend

Big Idea: We want our lives to matter, to leave a mark. This God-given hunger for significance is squandered through an unexamined life. Intentional alignment increases our chance to be part of a noble endeavor greater than we could produce individually

-Recognize opportunities for significance
-Align my world to those opportunities
-Make sure I'm involved in somthing bigger than me

"Greater things than I have done will you do..." Jesus

-Regret is often the unsettling awareness that we paid too high a price for something worth too little. Greatness is measured not only by the size of the accomplishment but the sacrifices made to achieve it. Too many people just window shop.

Thanks Pastor Derry.

Water

Check out the pictures of the water situation in various parts of Africa. The reality of it is tough to take.

Surrogate Sharers

Here at the NQE Blog we like to provide practical tools for daily living. For all you college students out there who need to tell their parents you're changing your major...check this out.

30 days of posting down the tubes

I can't even post 3 days in a row...how can I expect myself to post 30 days in a row.

Look at it this way, 3 out of 6 ain't bad.

Our annual Fellowship dinner is tonight in which we raise all the funds that directly support the ministry at MSU. It's always a little stressful, but it should be a fun time and hopefully point everyone toward how amazing our Lord is. I wish all of you could be there to get a taste of what we do!

If you're in town, swing by the ski-swap tomorrow and buy some of the stuff I dropped off there today.

Jeff Sharkey Android Developers - CompareEverywhere

This is genius Jeff Sharkey, a student here at MSU who's been involved with CRU.

30 days of blogging

I started this 3 days late so it's actually only 27 days of blogging.

GO VOTE!!!

Get out there and vote people! History is being made.

I voted a couple weeks ago on my handy dandy absentee ballot.

An interesting fact...Montana State University gives all the students the day off from school because of election day. I'm not completely sure why this is. Maybe it's so they can drive back to their towns and vote or maybe it's so they can all sit around and scan internet headlines of the big day.

Anyay, I hope your election day is great one!

99 Balloons

Matt and Ginny were on Oprah today. Watch out, this will make you cry.

I met Ginny when she came to Bozeman as an exchange student from Alabama....way back in the day, when I was still a student here at MSU. Matt and Ginny just had a little girl a couple of weeks ago named Hazel

Home alone

From Thursday till Monday of next week I will be home alone as Jody and Jenna fly to Tucson to visit Jody's brother, his wife and new little girl Addison! Congratulations Todd and Crystal!

I, of course, will miss the ladies in my life very much, but being home alone means I've got some planning to do for the "tour de Montana fishing extravaganza."

I must plan my time carefully to allow maximum time of fishing in the most spots. My goal is to fish every major river within 50 miles of Bozeman in 4 days...

Yellowstone River

East Gallatin River

Gallatin River

lower section of the Madison River

and finally the upper section of the Madison River

I know what you might be thinking..."Matt sure is spoiled with all the fly-fishing spots nearby."

I think you might be right.

In case you're wondering...

...here's my weekly schedule. It's not perfect and not every week stays true to this schedule, but it's gives you an idea of what my week looks like as thirty year old married with one-kid Campus Crusade for Christ staff member.


FYI:
Op's = Operations
D-Group = Discipleship Group (small group Bible study)
WSN = Worldwide Student Network (international ministry)
MPD = Ministry Partner Development (support raising)

Yellowstone

I forgot to mention a few weekends ago while my sweet Mom was in town we took a trip down the road to the Yellowstone National Park and saw....

a HUGE BEAR!!!!

When it started to attack us I just grabbed it by the ear (which as everyone know immobilizes a bear) and told that huge grizzly who's boss. I then (after realizing you can't reason with a bear), gave it a Chuck Norris like round house kick and for good measure yelled at it saying, "go back to eating your fish and berries bear!!!"

We then visited the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone...not to be confused with the other Grand Canyon. Don't we look good for having just been attacked by a bear?



No animals were injured in the creation of this blog post.

Flip Card Testimonies

A little something our staff team created for the winter conference last year.

Things I thought I would never have to say

"Don't lick toilet water off your hands!!!"

The Economic Meltdown Song

Quick summary of the weekend

Our Fall Retreat came to a close on Sunday with a whopping 220 students in attendance! By far the largest retreat we've ever had. But it wasn't just about quantity either. As my friend Nick said at the end, "I'd wager this was the best Fall Retreat ever."

I could tell you story after story about how God is at work in students lives preparing them to live a life that is dangerous for for the Kingdom of God. Including one guy who came to the retreat to just check out Christianity and gave his life to Christ. I could also show you pictures from our super-hero dance party (lot's of spandex and capes) and our ridiculous staff hunt water balloon game...but I won't.

One of the highlights was that our big meetings were in the old Union Pacific dining lodge. People used to ride the train in to West Yellowstone, go check out the National park and then come back and eat dinner at this big lodge. It was sweet.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while

It's been probably the busiest 3 weeks of the year for me. Friday we're headed down to West Yellowstone for our fall retreat. The good news is that probably about 200 students are going with us. The bad news is that we're overflowing our hotel. A good problem to have I guess.

Anyway here's a public service announcement for all you headed to Yellowstone this weekend.

Jesus Is My Friend

A friend of mine found this video from our "CRU" weekly meeting. Check it out.

My mother-in-law

This is the transcript of a voicemail message that my wife recieved from my Mother-in-law tonight.
*Please note...I think my Mother-in-law is great.

"Hi There, how are you? Dad and I are on the way home from Bend and we're discussing
the Moon...

Because we can see the moon and it's almost a full moon, it's just bright bright...it's gorgeous.

We were sort of wondering how the moon looks to you tonight. Because we're curious.

I sort of feel like I could just jump up and grab it. It's beautiful.

So anyway, nothing important. Hope you guys are good. Bye"

Has the Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

Check here to find out.

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Hope and Change

I liked this post by Andy

lost blog posts

Lately I've been thinking about all the cool blog posts I could do about recent events in my life....such as...

- Harvesting rocks from out in the middle of the forest
- The truck-size pitbull statue that I saw for sale in Spokane
- How much I love the cherry freeze drink from Dairy Queen on a summer night
- How our daughter was handing out hangers to college students last week

But I haven't got around to it.

pulled a hammy

I pulled my hamstring playing ultimate kickball tonight with college students.


How old am I.

Kickball, speed scrabble and foursquare

So we've been in staff meetings all week, but yesterday we took a break.

We played a little kickball, which made this 29 year old a little sore (from all the amazing plays I made). Some of our team also played foursquare. It was funny when the university president drove by and all of our staff team stopped and waved to him. I felt like I was reliving 2nd grade or something.

We also played some speed scrabble

Anyway, it was a good week. I love our staff team and it was awesome to have some new staff, student-staff and interns with us. I'm looking forward to this year...good thing cause student "move in day" is on wednesday

This post is dedicated to summertime #2

Today in Portland #2

Today in Portland I saw:

-a guy walking down the street with a snake draped over his shoulders.

a SNAKE!

I feel like you might want more info on this sighting.

The guy was probably in his late 20's. He was smoking a cigarette non-chalantly while passing my car as I waited at the stoplight. At first I thought it was fake, and then in the rearview mirror I could see the snake making its way down the guys back.

Today in Portland

Today in Portland I saw:

-A guy riding a bike with giant angel wings attached to his back
-People protesting nicotine testing on animals
-A guy selling backscratchers for $3 (telescoping version available for $5)

Olympics

I've been sucked into the olympics.

I don't normally cry watching TV or movies except anything related to sports stories...and especially the 'underdog beats all odds to win olympic medal' stories.

The sappiest romantic comedy or saddest drama has nothing on those human interest stories like the one about the russion gymnast whose son had leukemia so she moved to Germany and now is competing at the age of 33! Or how about just plain competition to get your eyes a little misty...like the amazing 4x100 swimming relay that the Americans pulled out over the trash talking French. I don't have anything against the French...just trash talking French.

My other thought about the Olympics: China's image obsession about their country seems to be backfiring on them a little bit. This came to a head with the little girl who was pulled from singing in the opening ceremonies because she wasn't perfect looking enough. "It was in the national interest." the organizers said.

Alright men's beach volleyball is on...I gotta go.

Getting learned

I'm heading to Portland for a couple days of seminary class. Should be fun. All my favorite staff friends that live in Portland (that's right...I have favorites) are out of town this week at a big conference...so I'll be studying by myself.

I'm still trying to figure out if seminary is right for me. I love to learn and be challenged in critical thinking and leadership. Sometime classes fulfill that and othertimes they don't. This class will be a good test to see if I want to continue to pursue my Masters degree or put seminary on hold for a while.

Here's what I know about Portland in the summertime...it's green and people ride their bikes.

hmmmm...

Has anyone else been sucked into late night Olympic viewing?

This post is dedicated to Summertime

Batman review

Jody and I along with some of our friends Matt, Sarah and Pete were amongst the crazies who went and watched the midnight showing of Batman-The Dark Knight last week. Yep that's right...we defied age...although I was feeling it in the morning.

Unless you live under a rock you've heard all the stuff about Heath Ledger playing the Joker and then ovedosing on prescription drugs...which added to the hype of this movie. And since we drove by Heath Ledgers apartment last weekend on our NYC trip, I thought we owed it to Heath.

Anyway, the movie almost lives up to the hype. The cast is great in this film, but Heath Ledger is the star of this movie...he will be in the running for an Oscar for his performance as the Joker. He was simply fantastic in this role. He plays the part with commitment and creativity. Sad that he was only 28 years old when he died. Don't take your child that's younger than about 13 to the movie...it's got some disturbing violence. A great film, but it's not perfect. It's long, over 2 1/2 hours it could have been a little shorter. It was long enough that I had to go to the bathroom really bad for the last 30 minutes of the movie. Also the Two-face character's makeup job was a little cartoonish for me, which kind of took away from the "real-ness" of the Dark Knight. But all in all it lead to great discusion of morality and if man is basically good or evil.

NYC

Jody and I went to New York City last weekend. It was actually a suprise gift for Jody's birthday last April (I won't mention how old she is).

It was a blast. Here's the quick photo tour. If you'd like to see more visit Jody's facebook page.

Conan O'Brien's desk


Met's game - we had Maury Povich's seats.


We got to talk to Al Roker.

Fourth of July weekend

It is sooooo good to be home. I can't get over how awesome summer is in Bozeman.

Thursday we went to Music on Main, where they close down mainstreet in Bozeman and usually cool bands play. We managed to eat some tasty vendor food and enjoy some ice cream.

Friday we hung out at home in the 96 degree weather. Jenna now has a kiddie pool in the back yard. We bbq'd, had dessert with some friends and then watched the fireworks from our backyard...a perfect view of the big ones out at the fairgrounds. Although the the big ones were almost outdone by all the locals around us shooting off their own personal fortunes in fireworks. This was only my second Fourth in Bozeman since moving here in 1997 and I was reminded of how crazy people are about their fireworks.

Saturday, We loaded up the car for some sweet yardsaling action and a trip to the huge Farmers market, which again speaks to Bozemans awesomeness. Jody made these delicious muffins the night before...which speaks to Jodys awesomeness. I took a nap in the afternoon. We went to our church for the first time in a couple of months and then I closed the evening by reading a good book on our back porch looking out at the sun setting on the Bridger mountains.

Not bad at all.

Finally an update

I know, I know...I'm a blogging delinquent. Well that's about to change...I'm about to to wow you with my amazing stories of adventure and witty humor in far-away lands. Stay tuned.

In the meantime check out this amazingly stacked pile of wood somewhere in Austria.

the traveling child

Quick update

Not having internet in our aparment is killing me. KILLING me!

We're already more than a third of the way through our summer project! Things are going really well. Our summer project team has been amazing and we've begun to see God open up doors with a large number of Croatian students. There's so much to write about and not enough time.

Here's the important stuff.
-I drove in Rijeka for only the second time and didn't die
-There are more than 100 steps up to our apartment.
-We sweat alot here
-I eat a lot of grilled sandwiches and drink a lot of cappucino's

Here's some of what's coming up.
-Grocery shopping later today.
-We have a weekly meeting tonight and a big Story of Soul outreach next wednesday that our students are in charge of!
-Bible studies thursday and friday.
-I'm going flyfishing with Kevin Kneeshaw on Saturday

That'll have to do for now. Later

So far, so good.

We made it safe and sound to Rijeka, Croatia today. Everything has gone relatively smoothly. Our students are amazing travelers. Jenna did great so far too. We'll see if she sleeps through the night though.

Tomorrow our students will be racing through the city competing in an Amazing race. Thanks for all your prayers!

Summer Project begins

As I write this 12 college students are arriving here (Denver) from around the U.S. to join our summer project team to Croatia. All is a go for what I expect to be a great summer of seeing God at work in our students and staffs lives and in the lives of the Croatians we'll interact with.

Jenna's doing great so far, but the mother of all travel day's starts tomorrow. Please keep us in your prayers.

Packing

We've started packing for our trip to Croatia....a total of 7.5 weeks away from home. Our goal is one checked bag and one carry-on for each of us.

We're officially crazy.

Actually I was thinking about starting a new website about traveling with children. Check it out...it's in the works.

Now, how many pairs of underwear do I need....1 or 2?

Yard Sale Mayhem

Up until now we've just been patrons of the yard sale scene in Bozeman.

All that changed last saturday. We had the mother of all yard sales. 7 families with their stuff in our front yard (strategic traffic zone of Bozeman) plus perfect weather = the perfect storm.

People started showing up at 6:30 am. 6:30! We hadn't even pulled stuff out of our garage yet and one lady asked me if she could rummage around! By 8 am cars were lining the street in both directions and it was non-stop untill noon.

Inventory was moved.

It was awesome.

The place where words come alive

This is my daughters favorite cartoon these days.

Funny because it's true

Photo by Adam Bacon (MSU student)

TV

Our friend who was on the TV show "The Bachelor" is about to be on the infamous "Girls tell all" episode. Don't worry she didn't make it through the first night. She's way to cool for this guy. Anyway, this is where all the girls get mad at the bachelor and tell him how it was so rude that he made out with 16 girls during same period of time.

What did they expect?

Is it just me or has TV gone downhill?

Thank goodness for The Office.

deleted post

Had to delete the post about Google ads...because my friend Matt W. reminded me that in the small print Google tells me it's illegal to tell people to click on the ads...which happen to be at the bottom of the page.

Spring weather

It's finally going to be above 50 degrees this weekend...in fact I don't think it's going to snow at all! Woohooo!

In other news 1 month from today we leave for the Croatia summer project. Crazy. Below is a picture of Baska, Croatia where we'll take our team for a rest weekend 2/3rds of the way through the summer project. There's a reason why Croatia is the next big tourist destination....it's pretty.

The Roller Coaster Story

Not my finest moment in life...enjoy. It's 6 minutes long, but it's oh so worth it.

reprieve

Sorry about the reprieve from blog posts...or maybe a 'you're welcome' is in order.

After having the flu, I had one good week and then last weekend I came down with a cold that I can't shake. I've felt crummy all week. The funny thing is that life continues even when you're sick.

Jody's Grandfather passed away on tuesday night, so Jody and Jenna flew out to Oregon to be with family for the weekend. We had been expecting it for a while, but it still seems sudden when we get the phone call...and then frantic trying to get a flight out the same day. Anyway, pray for Jody and her family that they would have some good time together.

In other news our summer project is only a month away. The last two weeks have been filled with the details needed for taking 17 people overseas for 6 weeks. I'm getting more and more excited for our trip. My sense is that God is going to do something really cool during our time there.

In other news...how cute is this picture?

The flu

I've got the flu. It's probably been 10 years since I've had the flu. I've been rudely reminded of how not fun it is.

Our friend

Jody referring to Matt Mikalatos (one of our regional directors) after reading his most recent blog entry.

"Matt is a freak...
I mean, he's great...
but he's still a freak"

I laughed and then promised to post that comment on my blog.

the bachelor

We were startled last night to look up at the tv and see one of our dear friends on the show "The Bachelor". Incessent laughter and phone calling ensued.

Our friend used to work in the Whitehouse...as in thee Whitehouse! She also sang in our wedding. Now she's a lawyer in D.C. She didn't get a rose to make it past the first night, thank goodness...she's way to good for that show.

Mexico City

I got back from Mexico City yesterday. Jody and Jenna (both are sick) got back from Oregon on saturday. It always feels good to come home.

Mexico city was great. Our students from MSU were great.

Things we did:
-We pioneered new ministries on a bunch of campuses
-4 of our students led people to Christ.
-We ate a lot of tacos
-We saw some ancient Aztec pyramids
-Had a day of service in the city...I helped out at a boys home.
-rode the Mexico City subway
-had a public bus we were riding break down and then waited on the side of the road for a ride
-ate some more tacos...one of which was cow tongue and mabye a little brain
-went to the zoo
-got lost a couple of times
-prayed for, dreamed about and trusted the Lord for transformation of the entire city of 28 million people

Spring Break is here!

Students are heading out of town this week. I'm headed to Mexico City with a group of students for a spring break conference. We're driving to Salt Lake City this afternoon and flying out in the morning. Jody and Jenna are flying to Oregon to visit Jody's parents.

Pray for safe travel for all of us!

San Diego

We had a great time in San Diego this past weekend for my sisters wedding. We stayed right on the beach. Jenna did reasonably well with all the travel and late bedtimes. We got to see almost all of our family and got to meet our new Scottish family. Because you read this blog....Congratulations Paul and Megan! Have fun in Mexico!

And now we're home and it's snowing.

My sisters wedding

traveling - this how we roll

Airplane safety