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.