Haiti Missions Trip

Haiti Missions Letter <— Click the link to see my letter.

My Dad called me several weeks ago and asked if I would like to go and after some prayer I decided that this would be a good opportunity and as it so happens I have just enough vacation time to make it happen.  I will be heading to Haiti on May 16th and will return on May 31st.

My dad with grand-kids!

I am excited to be going on this trip with my dad as I have never done a missions trip with my dad before.  My dad has been a pastor for over 30 years in a small Montana town and recently retired.  I am sure that it will be a great experience as we serve the people of Haiti together.

If you are interested in more information about what I will be doing and how you can support me along the way please take the time to read the letter by clicking on the link above.  I will be sharing more on here upon my return.

Below are just a few random pictures from Haiti, I hope to be able to take pictures while in Haiti to help capture the experience along the way so that all of you can continue to pray for the people of Haiti.

Back to the Gospel

I had an opportunity to speak this last Sunday at Holiday Park Church of God which was a good experience. This is a church that has been through struggle and a lot of change in recent times. The church building was originally built in the 50′s or 60′s and was a thriving, in standards of numbers, church at one time and is now in a point of history in which they must either change or die as church cycles typically go. This is never an easy thing for a church to go through, it can be a very painful process, but they are taking it in stride and making the changes needed to once again become a thriving church being relevant to the changing community around them. They have been doing a missions emphasis month and invited me in to speak about MISSION.

Here is a video that I put together as part of what I spoke about

One the big emphasis that I talked about was to bring the people back to the simplicity and importance to the Gospel message. I think often as seasoned Christians we kind of move beyond the Good News of the Gospel and begin to focus more on the do’s and do not’s of the Christian life. The problem is that we then began to look at others in this light instead of sharing and letting the Good News of the Gospel change people. Even Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 has to remind the people, the church of the Gospel and says it is of “First Importance.” We have examples throughout scripture of the Gospel impacting lives in the case of Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8, and elsewhere throughout the New Testament. This Gospel is the MISSION and to share the Good News with others is what we are here to do.

The Olympics Mission Trip

As most of you know I helped organize and facilitate a missions trip to the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver BC toward the end of February. This trip and team came together faster then any previous mission trip I have ever put together so I know that God was in it for sure. We had opportunities to share Christ with people from literally all over the world. Click HERE to read the story.

Here is also a cool video from an Olympic Gold Medal snowboarder Kelly Clark.

Christmas Video 2009

Sorry youtube disabled the music… if you are a facebook friend you may be able to see the video with the music on there by following this link http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=301673803915 If you are not a facebook friend you still might be able to see it, not sure but try it.

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year… Really looking forward to 2010.

Starting My Video Blog

Ok, so on top of having regular written blogs I thought it might be fun to add a video component to my blogging. As I get going you will be able to click the “Video Blog” category to see all of my video blogs. You can also check out the video menu at the top for a few extra fun videos.

JOKES… ENJOY!

Seeing Things Differently

As of late I took a part time job at a mall downtown Portland. One of the main reasons I took the job was to be able to organize my time better, have some consistent income, and to be able to put more time into the non-profit GO Connect that I am on staff with (Non-paid Staff). I can talk more about that later…

Working in mall I have the opportunity to do a lot of people watching, especially during this holiday season. Have you ever noticed people are often on a path to get somewhere and many times do not sway from that path. It is always amazing how people avoid eye contact with others by any means possible. Maybe it is a city thing and since I didn’t grow up in the city I tend to look around a bit more then perhaps the average person.

The mall experience is primarily all about US and what we can get. It is often about the material things in life. Now I am not saying that going to a mall is a bad thing I just think sometimes we need to take the time to notice people around us in every aspect of life and yes that includes the mall. I too am guilty of often avoiding people when I don’t have time or simply do not want to get involved.

Have you ever gone to a mall to serve? This is just a question I was thinking about the other day. What would it look like to go to a mall for a day with the purpose to simply serve, whether that be opening doors for people, buying someone’s lunch, writing fun notes to mall workers, or even asking if you can clean a toilet. Ok so the toilet might be a bit much for most people and perhaps is the extreme but you get the idea. This thought takes me out of the normal mode of serving since we often think of service as something we do for the poor, homeless, or less fortunate. I would argue that we should be serving in every aspect of life and on a daily basis in the little things.

I think serving others often changes our perspective and allows us to see things that we would not otherwise see. When we begin to look around with a service mindset we see people for who they are and as God sees them. I often look back at scripture and the life Jesus as he traveled from place to place. Many times Jesus was headed someplace specific and someone called out to Him, or someone touched Him, or someone came to Him and Jesus took the time to notice. In fact often scripture doesn’t even tell us that He actually got to the location He was heading to in the first place. The thing that made it into the Bible was the fact Jesus stopped and took care of people.

So take some time today to look around and see people, and when there is a need see what you can do.

People Matter

Just Me.

Here is something I wrote probably 2 years ago maybe longer, it was interesting to run across it again so just thought I would share….

Buying Groceries

I had all of my groceries and was to ready to checkout. As I approached the front of the store there were only a couple of checkout stands open and the lines were long. I had to wait for a while before it was finally my turn to checkout. Waiting in line can be a very frustrating ordeal. Most of the time when I am inconvenienced by having to stand in line I put all of the focus on myself and my needs. I want to get through the line fast, I have places to go, I don’t have time to wait. (with the emphasis on the I) As I stood there I began to look around at all of the faces and people around me. There were some people who looked very patient and were content to wait in line and others that were tapping their feet wanting the line to move faster. I was one of the foot tappers. As I looked behind me there was a little old lady waiting very patiently and she only had a few items. As I noticed this little frail lady behind me something told me to bless her. So as I finally got up to the checkout line I told the cashier to run her items through on my tab as well. Before the lady knew what was happening the cashier rang up her items and I paid for them. She just looked at me in awe not knowing what to do. I don’t know who this lady was or what her story was but as I walked away I simply said, “God Bless You.” For some reason it hit me that if I am so impatient to get somewhere or to go to my next project I will probably miss the one thing that is most important, other people. God was telling me to slow down and care for others. Paying for this lady’s groceries in my perspective was more of a lesson to me then a blessing to her. Life gets busy and moves very quickly but sometimes God wants us to slow down and take time to see others around us that need Him.

Hello world!

I am a person that tries to be intentional about my connections with people but sometimes there are just to many people to keep up with.  It is not always easy to be intentional and requires effort, time, and energy and if you are reading this and I have not connected with you recently I am sorry.  Facebook has been a great tool for me to connect with old and new friends and at least stay some what updated on what is happening in the lives of others that I care about.  So needless to say I thought I might try my hand at blogging for those of you that may be interested in what I am up to, just another way to be intentional about connections.  I will try to do at least one blog a month with thoughts, life happenings, ministry, or whatever else I feel like writing. I am just playing with Word Press at the moment so we will see if I stick with it or if I find a better interface that I like better.