IT'S A GIRL!!!

Wow! I'm going to have another little girl. That totally rox! Riley (my 5 year old son) already has named her Violet and Callie Joy (my 3 year old) named her Kitty. As soon as I can I'll post the sonogram pictures. TJ and I thought it was a boy but we are thrilled to have another girl. Looks like #4 will have to be a boy to even things out, that's right I said #4. Be sure to click on the pictures to blow them up, it's pretty cool. Again I'm blown away by God's grace.

72 hour update

In the past 72 hours a lot has happened, so here it is:

• Sleepover Challenge @ church for our GLOW N TELL series and it rocked. I'll post pics and talk more about this soon. A-TEAM great job making it happen. u-rock!
• McCormicks: After Church Sunday we went to lunch with some friends from our old church, the McCormicks. It was really good seeing them and hearing all God is doing in their lives. Old friends rock! Holla McCormicks!
• Beach Baptisms: After that we headed to the beach for beach baptisms. Speaking of things that rocked, it was awesome. Somewhere around 30 people got baptized by, without exaggerating, hurricane force waves. The water was so rough but it made for great memories. Pics to come.
• The Nadars: one of the highlights (of many) during the beach baptism was a family friend of our, the Nadars. The nadars have 2 sons (Mikey and Boyd) and a daughter (Ashlyn) from 1st grade to 6th grade. We'll the entire family got baptized. Mom, dad, and all three kids. It was so cool to see someone we care for draw close to God. Afterwards we celebrated at an awesome seafood joint in Cocoa Beach. Nadars Rock!
• TJ is amazing: On top of all that I somehow have the most amazing wife and mother, TJ you really do rock!
• Boy or Girl: Tomorrow we find out what gender our baby will be. The kids really want a boy so we'll see what happens. Also my 3 year old Callie Joy told us last week that the baby (unborn and in the womb) speaks Spanish.
• Old Faith: Lastly: today i took an hour of my day and read some old prayer journals from high school. It was hard because i was reminded of how much faith i had back then. Although I feel like I am moving closer to God daily I can't help remember how much i simply trusted God.

I need to Change!

Last month our church did a series called "I need to Change". It was powerfully convicting as God revealed to me many areas of my life that need to change. So in honor of that series I changed the layout of the blog. Fresh start all around. How about you "what do you need to change and what's stopping you?" by the way that is a rhetorical question.

Sleepover Challenge

This Saturday Night (October 25th) we are having our first ever Sleepover Challenge. Kids bring your friends to your house, have a blast, wake up and join us in the Theater for some good times.

Isaiah 1:17

"Learn to do good.
Seek Justice.
Help the oppressed.
Defend the cause of orphans.
Fight for the rights of widows."

Wow, I smell a 5 week series sometime in the future. What a jammed packed verse, amazing. good stuff.
DA

Opps

I'm not sure what happened but somehow my links to the left all disappeared, so I am slowly but surely putting back up all the link love. If you see one I missed holla at a brother, thanx

Monday Morning Dumpster Diving

This morning as I woke up I got excited about the week ahead of me and felt like this was going to be a great. Well I may have been wrong. It is noon on Monday and the only thing I've done is spend several hours looking for my cell phone. The good news, I found it. The bad news was...well you can see the picture. That's right I had to dumpster dive for my phone. At all started yesterday at church. Every Sunday I leave my phone on a back table. It seems someone accidentally knocked it into a small little waste basket. No big deal. The problem was no one saw it go into the clean little waste basket. So when our clean up crew cleaned up after church they emptied all the trash cans and put them in a big trash bag. Still this can't be too bad. But then I realized they already took out the trash to the dumpster. For most churches this wouldn't be a problem, but with our church being in a plaza, we share a dumpster with Party World (not bad), Quiznos (bad), and a Chinese Restaurant (very, very, bad). To make matters worse, the Chinese Restaurant doesn't use trash bags, they just throw the food in the dumpster. It was bad, I mean it smelled horrible. Flies were everywhere, it was not good at all! At first I thought my phone might be in there but wasn't going to search on a whim. But we (Tammy Joseph) called my phone and heard it vibrate in the very back bottom of the dumpster. So I look at Tammy and let her know, I am going in. I grab a mop from my Chinese friends to use as an extended arm and found a cardboard box to jump in so I wouldn't touch anything. After going through about 6 bags I found my phone. After grabbing my phone and cleaning it up I tell Tammy I'll be back later as I off to take my second shower in 4 hours. God and His sense of humor, gotta love it.

Sleepover Challenge

As we are doing this series in Children's Ministry called GLOW n TELL, the whole point is to encourage kids to reach out to their friends. So we came up with this idea to have a sleepover challenge where we are challenging every student to invite a friend to stay the night and bring them to church. We've never tried this before and I haven't heard anyone do this before so I'm really not sure if this is going to work or not, well see. With me transitioning from student ministry to children's ministry just 6 months ago I'm still learning the best practices on how to do outreach events for kids. If you have any ideas, I am all ears. If you are in children's ministry, what has worked for you? What hasn't? Lets keep on doing whatever it takes to keep reaching more kids for His Kingdom.

Oh to have faith like a child.

Today as I am driving on I-4 TJ (wife) calls me and with son Riley crying in the background tells me to "hurry home, Riley just busted his eye open, ok I gotta go, bye." As she hangs up my thoughts immediately go to my college years in St. Augustine where there was a deaf and blind school. I was already making plans to get him in. That is the only thing she tells me. I freak out with my mind thinking the worst. Well I get home and take him to the doctor and as you guessed he is ok. Above is a picture of him at the doctors office with him smiling and yeah nothing wrong with his eye. He does have a small cut next to his eye which required no stitches and one butterfly band aid. The story is he was on a stool and fell. With all that said on the way to the doctors Riley ask me "Daddy if God can heal me why are we going to the doctors?" Wow! What a great question. I managed to give him some less than adequate answer. Thus leaving me with the reminder that I'm all grown up and my thinking of who God is is totally different than my sons more accurate view of our God and Savior. (The other picture is my beautiful daughter Callie Joy, I just got this pic, so I had to throw it in).

Oh to be rich...

Do you ever get frustrated when you hear of some rich person that "has it all" complain over a "problem" we'd love to have. Like P-Diddy complaining because he now has to fly first class instead of on his private jet because the gas prices are so high. Tough problem, huh? Well I have a feeling we are all sounding more like P-Diddy these days and less like Mother Teresa. Most of us in the U.S. are filthy rich, including myself. Of course we don't think we are but what we think doesn't change the fact that we are rich. I don't mean rich in Christ, I mean rich in Bling Bling. Check out this site. Simply log in what you make and it will tell you how rich you are. Pretty neat and pretty darn convicting. http://www.globalrichlist.com/ In Philippians 3:7-10 Paul talks about how everything seems like garbage compared to Christ, WOW! I pray that for me. Too many times I know I get easily lured into the newest thing or wonder, "yeah why don't I have that". I guess when it comes to the national bailout I don't blame the government, I blame myself. I make plenty of money. If only I'd spend less, save more, give more, and want less. Congrats, were RICH!!! I can't tell you how passionate I am to help kids from a young age realize what we do have and not cry for what we don't have. This is so anti-american but very much pro Jesus. Let's teach the next generation that "His grace really is enough".

That's my boy!

This past weekend my son Riley played in this third baseball game of the season. He is 5 and it's his first season of "coach pitch". Here he is playing catcher, he loves playing that position and I love watching him with all that gear on. Great stuff!