Peter Adams

logos

2009-05-16T20:53:00.000-05:00

These are a couple of things I am working on for the church ministries.

TLFG

2009-02-11T08:52:00.003-06:00

I just got home from another exciting trip to St. Louis for our monthly TLFG (team leader focus group) with Terri and Leslie. It was pretty good this time, but what stuck out the most was a couple of the side things.

1. We got up up in the Marriott West on the concierge level. I had no clue what this meant until the next morning when I asked about breakfast and found out that there is a private lounge on that floor where everything is complementary!

2. The rental car place (which loves me because I always bring them Red Robin burgers) upgraded me to the '09 Dodge Challenger. That sucker can move! We got to St. Louis in 2.5 hours.

3. More bowling! Yes, the activity for the day was bowling. So I brought my shoes and bowled three games. I pretty much dominated all but one of the games and that's not saying alot since my highest score was a 136.

After a pretty darn good trip we got home to tornado warnings and a big storm coming our way, which actually cut off our power for a couple of hours. Good times.

Birthday Weekend

2009-02-08T20:45:00.005-06:00

I got to take the last 3 days off of work! YES! Bree insisted that I take all 3 even though I tried to scam my way out of it. Now I am really glad I did. So here's the recap of my weekend. I'll try and post pictures when I get them.

Thursday PM: about 9pm Jesse arrives as my Birthday surprise.

Friday AM: lazed around while waiting for Jesse to get up.

Friday Afternoon: I got a lead on a couple of caves out at Ritter Springs Park so I called the Forestry service and got directions to find them. "Go past the pavilion, to the lake, over the bridge, and it will be down the path on the right." Easy enough.

Jesse and I walked all over that park and couldn't find a darn thing! We ended up trudging through a field and jumping over the river to get back to the lake.

When we crossed the bridge we noticed a small path that ran along the side of the river so we thought we might do some more exploring. We found the cave and went in it. It was pretty cool. There were spiders, bats, and cave crickets throughout and it went back quite a ways. We, being old men with bad knees, decided to call it quits when we saw we were going to have to crawl on our bellies the rest of the way. Jesse got some great pictures. I'll post some later.

Friday PM: Greg and Rob came by and took us out to the Skinny Improv and got me embarrassed because they pulled me up on the stage for my birthday. It was funny stuff though! After that we went bowling and Jesse bowled a 204 with 5 strikes in a row! Did you know that 4 of them in a row is called a "bagger?" Me neither.

After that we went and got some pie with the worst service you can think of. It was fun to hang out with the guys though. When Jesse and I got back home we played some "Left 4 Dead." and went to bed about 4am.

Saturday AM: My parents, sister, and brother in law arrive from IL. We have our combined "Faith Peter" party (in that order of importance) and unwrapped all of our presents. It was really exciting stuff. I got a Wolverine transformer and the new Prince of Persia game for the Xbox 360. Faith got... I don't know. It took me forever to figure out how to transform Wolverine so I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention.

Oh yeah... Faith walked.

Saturday Afternoon: My dad, Jesse, Becca, Mike, and I all went to "Talking Rocks Cavern" because Jesse wanted to see a big cave. Too bad it wasn't that huge. I mean, it was big, but Marvel is much bigger and there's one here in town that they drive cars through, so I was a tad disappointed. But, leave it to the Adams family to make everything fun. Everything had a remark to it and a funny label.

On our way out we noticed this 10 foot tall wooden box that was divided up into 10 "floors" with a big sign that said "Speleobox." Since none of us knew what that was everyone tried to go in. I'm the only one that made it past the first "floor" and then had to twist and contort myself to get through all ten floors and then back down again! The entire thing I was sandwiched on my chest and had to pull myself through obstacles and holes and such. At one point we thought I wouldn't make it through a hole and they started to take panels off of the sides of this thing to get me out... but I made it. It was a blast!

Saturday PM: Dinner at the homestead with the whole family. Then we played games together before my family went back to the hotel. Jesse and I jumped online and played Left 4 Dead with Bobby for a bit, but called it a night early because I was singing on the worship team on Sunday.

Sunday AM: Everyone went to church. (Duh... you think were heathens or something?) Then we ate at Zeo's and everyone went back home. Now I'm home with my immediate family. Getting ready to get some sleep so I can hit the road tomorrow for work.

It was a great Weekend.

Birthday Suprise

2009-02-06T10:17:00.003-06:00

At 9:00 last night whilst I was enjoying a cinimatic adventure with mine offspring, my adoring wife (who canst remain focused for an excess of 45 minutes on a film) declared that all in the household were to get up, don our clothing, and remit ourselves to the nearest vehicular transport instrument.

After lazily meandering to the mass transit we utilize, she impared my vision utilizing a woolen neck warmer, and proceeded to increase the decible level on the auditory entertainment (which happend to be Dora sadly enough).

After a time, and a quick stop for frozen dairy enjoyment, we arrived at the terminal location (which litterally was a terminal) and I sprung from my passengers location to embrace my long term compatriot, Jesse, whom my dearest had flow from the state of Washington to enjoy the day of my birth in my presence.

I love suprises.
PS. I wish I had had my camera with me because the look he gave me through the window while Bree took of the scarf was priceless.

Brithday at Red Robin

2009-02-05T18:59:00.003-06:00

Today is my birthday! Horray! But I still had to work, like most hard working Americans. The differance is that when I got to work there was a party waiting for me. I got this fantastic plaque from my team to remeber how awesome it is to lead such a great team. They also had a superman cake that Josh's mom had made for me!

What was really cool was when I walked into my office to find the entire thing wrapped up in Transformer wrapping paper! Terri worked really hard this morning to make sure my birthday was special. I really appreciate that and the bunch of great co-workers that make it easy to come to work every day.

While I was counting down the money and getting the shift ready the cooks ran out and covered my car in Red Robin themed verbage that was just oh, so plesant to drive home with this evening. Thanks guys!

Abortion?

2009-02-05T18:56:00.002-06:00

No matter what your view on abortion is... this has a great point.

thank you Michelle for sharing

The Fight Against Cancer

2009-02-05T08:01:00.003-06:00

Last night at 10pm a couple of us met up at Red Robin to shave our heads. Gabe had come to us a couple weeks back anad told us that his mom was going to be going through chemo in a few weeks and throughout the course of our minds trying desperately to come up with a solution to his pain, someone suggested that we all shave our heads for the cause. And we did.

Of course more people said they would be there than actually showed up (to be honest I was racking my brain to come up with a way to get out of it since my parents and sister are coming down for my birthday tomorrow). Now I call you out: Ken, Jared, Joe, Tyler, and others that I'm sure I can't remember.

It actually was pretty darn fun and I'm glad my team cares this much about each other that they would be willing to shave thier "quaf of power" for the other guys' mom. Bring on the hope.

Red Robin Knows How To Party

2009-01-25T11:18:00.004-06:00

The reason I was in Palm Springs was to go to break out sessions, and general sessions, and mini meetings... sounds like fun eh? Well actually it was! Red Robin knows how to do it right. I wasn't bored for even a minute in anything we did. It was all interactive, entertaining, and interesting. Check out some of the stuff we got to do.

This is the crew from the St. Louis area

Top: (Left to Right) Scott, Adam, John, Sebastian, David, Rob, Juanna, & Kasey

Bottom: Me, George, Steve, Mike, and Collene

For our "Dine Around" we went to the hogsbreath and got some nice steak at Clint Eastwood's restaurant. You can see the guy with the white hair is Ed Talliferro (he's my boss' boss' boss). We hung out a bunch.

This is what general sessions were like. Lot's of energy, music, and trivia. They gave us all remotes so that we could try and answer all the Red Robin trivia during the down time.

To start off the session they brought out the fastest drummer in the world (according to the Guinness Book) and had them do some stomp-style drumming on Red Robin materials! It was pretty darn cool. At one point they brought out ladders and were drumming to the top and then jumping off to do it all again...all in rhythm.

After the welcome reception (open bar time) this marching band shows up and we follow it through the resort to the Smiling Burger Championships (SBCs)

They set up the SBCs like a UFC cage match. They had two contestants going head to head in make shift kitchens to see who could make the most "smiling" burger. This year we had a tie between 2 contestants and each got $4,000! It was awesome! They had bios for everyone and backstage interviews and such on the big screens. The announcers were hilarious as well.

Mike and David sat behind me at the SBCs. The remotes were for trivia in this as well.

After the SBCs we all went to a couple of places for various parties. At one of them there was some inflatables and pool games and such. The other one had big projection Wiis and this fun "keg" race. They actually moved really fast and a lot of people had some major wipe outs on them! Kasey and I just looked stupid on them.

I don't know of anyone that watches the "Ellen" show but if you did you would have seen the "speed painter" Dan Dunn

He painted three paintings for us in a few minutes between awards! They were pretty cool.

The weekend ended with Larry Pantelli and the Cagefighters and that was a fantastic ending if I do say so myself. Red Robin knows how to party.

Palm Springs Beauty

2009-01-23T20:45:00.004-06:00

I hate to rub in the fact that this last week I was in amazing weather and having a blast, but I have a couple more posts to get you in on the awesomeness of my trip. When we arrived in Palm Springs the first thing that struck me was the fact that the walk from the plane to the terminal and the terminal to the baggage claim is uncovered!!! No ceilings!!! You know it's going to be warm for that to happen.

We got in the van which took us to La Quinta resorts and that's when I saw how cool this was going to be.

This is the view from the lobby.

We all know how much I love waterfalls...and there were a ton everywhere!

Fountains and water and pools at every room!

The waterfall pavilion where we ate breakfast every morningThe calle to our room (house)
The second day I got a couple of people and we took a hike into the mountains / desert. They didn't want to climb up the rocks so I took this picture while I was climbing back down to meet them.

Palm Springs is surrounded on three sides by mountains and canyons

The view at the peak of our hike into the desert.

What a beautiful place to vacation. I wish I had my family with me just so they could enjoy it! I had a hard time telling Bree that I was hanging out in a pool with friends while she was at home in zero degree weather trying to get the car fixed... I truely felt bad... for a minute. Don't you judge me!

Larry Pantelli and the Cagefighters

2009-01-22T21:52:00.003-06:00

I'm still pretty busy getting back into the swing of things, so I will try and update you on my trip to Palm Springs in incriments... The first and most awesome thing would have to be the fact that I played in the badn for everyone on the final night! It was so awesome to rock out again! We played a nine song set and then did two encore songs for the screaming crowd... what a blast.

This is me smiling ear to ear while playing the bass that if you look closely at the horn... is broken! That's right, the airlines broke my bass on my rehersal trip to Denver last month.

But, what screams rocker more than a broken instrument? Well maybe on that you are smashing on the stage because you can afford to buy a new one rather than trying to play the broken one because you can't afford a new one... oh well.

Cool stage set up with lights and cameras and such... This was the warm up.

Jamming out at the studio a couple days before the show.

John Lutz(keys), Ernie(guitar), Gary(vocals), Chris(guitar), and Erik(drums)

Who rocks the party? Backup vocalists do! That's right I got in there with "Rock all night and party every day" by KISS.

I was a fantatsic show (even if the sound guys weren't the greatest) and I wouldn't trade the experience for much of anything. Hats off to the Cagefighters.

Catch Up

2009-01-21T17:50:00.002-06:00

Wow, it has been a long time since I blogged! And I left it on such a downer. So here's a quick catch up.

1. We passed our second BER. I learned a heck of a lot and now feel a little more competant in my relatively new role as GM.

2. Faith is now speaking fairly clearly... in fact while I am writting this she is saying "Thank You" clear as a bell to her brother.

3. We bought a new van because Bree was in an accident... everyone's fine. We got a Chevy Venture. (It's pretty neat because it can seat 8 with three removable middle seats in the front row.)

4. We had a great Christmas. Yes it's been that long.

Sorry for being out of it... work has been very stressfull as of late and it looks like I wont be going back to college next semester because of it. I'm still trying to figure out how to make all of that wokr, but we're doing a lot of praying about it and leaving the doors open for what God wants us to do. Thanks for sticking with me. Here comes some more... and pictures even!

B.E.R

2008-12-16T22:06:00.004-06:00

I had BER today (Brand Equity Review). It's my big inspection for the restaurant that we get twice a year.

It's brutal.

I failed.

I'm sad.

I blame myslef for not being strict enough... that's gonna change. Every great leader has to tow the line and set the standards for them to be followed.

No one ever wakes up and decides "Hey, I'm going to work harder than my boss wants me too... or makes me."

If anything it's more like, "Hey, I'm going to see what I can get away with and not do... and then pretend like it's no big deal or that I didn't know any better."

Frustration.

I leave for Denver tomorrow. I'll have fun with this issue at the manager's meeting on Monday.

Need Prayer?

2008-12-14T21:05:00.006-06:00

I posted a little idea I had on Facebook earlier this week. I thought I might stand on the side of the road with a sign saying "Need Prayer? It couldn't hurt. I'm here. I'll pray with you." I figured that someone would tell me I was crazy and shouldn't do it... well no one said anything so today... I did it. From 12:00 - 1:15 I stood in front of Mardel's book store at the intersection (which is very busy) and held my sign.

Lots of people went by and I didn't think anyone was going to take me up on the offer. My daughter came out of the van (they were in the parking lot in case something happened) with this picture for me.

Not 5 minutes later I had the first person pull in and pray with me. I prayed with a couple of people and had a lot of people giving me thumbs ups and such. Not a single person yelled or flipped me off, or threw anything. I guess I just expected that kind of thing. I'm going to make this a habit I think. The world needs it and it doesn't require anything from me besides what I should already be doing... praying for people.

My Genius Daughter

2008-12-09T16:40:00.004-06:00

Most four year olds will tell Santa what they want for Christmas... mine WRITES HIM A LETTER!!!!

That's right. At 4 years of age Joy is writting full blown letters. We had no clue what she was doing when she was asking how to spell certain words until she showed it to us. What's more... she can read pretty darn well now too!

I would take the credit (good genes and all) but Bree's the one who's been working with her every day while I'm at work. I'm just so proud and blown away!

Josh Blumenshine

2008-12-08T19:37:00.005-06:00

You may remember this guy from my earlier postings on my trip to Denver. This is Josh Blumenshine. He moved to Kenai, Alaska my senior year and co-stared in "The Importance of Being Ernest" with me (where I perfected my English accent on stage... or Australian depending on your interpretation). We were great friends for that year until he enlisted and off he went. He's now in the Air Force telling Pilots how to fly their planes correctly.

He calls me up on Saturday night and says that he is in Little Rock, AR and is going to be driving up to Springfield to eat at Lamberts. Needless to say we hung out. I took him to my restaurant, the Bass Pro shop, and Sequiota park (a cool cave park). Then we went back and talked at my place until we needed to take off for dinner.

He treated us all to Lamberts. You may have heard of this place... they throw rolls at you! Seriously, they chuck them at you! It was cool. It's all you can eat, but I barely could stuff the head sized chicken fried stake I ordered into my mouth. They came around with fried okra and macaroni with tomato sauce (I didn't try that) that they would put on the napkins for you to eat until your meal arrived. It was a blast and quite the experience!

After dinner Josh and I chillaxed at my homestead and played up some Rainbow 6 Vegas 2. It was a great time seeing my good friend again and remembering why we hung out in the first place!

Comic Books

2008-12-08T19:10:00.007-06:00

Some of you may have seen it before in person, but some just don't believe me when I tell them about my father's comic book collection. He has literally hundreds of thousands of comic books. Here's the proof. These are his comic book rooms. They take up 2 rooms in the basement of their house and grow every day.

We will start inside his "office" which isn't even one of the two rooms, but is the entryway into his world. Here you can see the one's he's "working on" (he catalogs all of them in an excel spreadsheet by date, title, illustrator, writer, brand, ect. so he can cross-reference them). He also has his "Who's on First" stand up and t-shirt, as well as his picture of the original K-Mart building (he's been working for K-mart for 27 years)!

Now we can enter into the first room which has three shelves full of comics and various memorabilia hung and displayed throughout.

Finally we enter into the depths... a room lined with comic boxes (each containing something around 200 comics) with an island of comics in the middle. I mean seriously... can it be cooler?! This is the stuff I grew up reading. (Explains a lot eh?)

To top it all off, locked safely away in his fireproof vault, is my dad's prized comics. Some of these babies are worth quite a bit of money all by thier lonesome. You may catch a glimpse of the origional first appearance of Spiderman, Hulk, Iron Man, and Dr. Doom. There's a batman comic pictured here that is so old he doesn't even have the yellow circle around the bat emblem yet! Not pictured would be my dad's dual copies of the X-men #1 and an entire collection of the origional Avengers. Read 'em and weep... I have literally done so (hey they can be quite moving).

Old School

2008-12-08T18:37:00.004-06:00

At my parent's house while I was away my children dug into the long forgotten, yet never truely forgotten, realm of awesomeness that is my collection of old toys.

Needless to say I was excited to play with them all over again and to see Joshua's face light up as I explained who each character was and what they did.

After a few minutes I would hear "who is this guy!" then... "Who is this guy?" ... Then "Who is this guy?!"

It was a blast. I ended up pulling out the old Snake Mountain from my He-Man set and they had a ton of fun!

Where to Begin

2008-12-07T13:14:00.004-06:00

This week we got a chance to go out to a party in St. Louis for all of the Red Robin managers in my region. We took the kiddos up to Oma and Papa's house for the night and then drove back down to St. louis. Only 15 hours of driving in two days, but it was well worth it.

I'll move on to the main event and then I'll fill you in on a couple of other "blog worthy" things that happened at my parents' house.

We stayed at the Chase Park Plaza. (5 star hotel) It has three restaurants, a bar, a 5 screen movie theatre and a full spa located right inside of it! It was pretty darn fancy. The bathroom was the size of my living room and everything in it was way nicer than I am accusomed to. It was actually kinda wierd being there, becuase I didn't feel like I deserved it (or was good enough or something).

We were the only couple that got to stay at the hotel because of our drive up to St. Louis, but everyone got to have dinner at the Eau Bistro (award winning even). When we got there they served us appatizers that were so fancy that I felt like I should put in in my pocket... not my mouth. (Tuna with wasabi pate' and Bruchetta something or other)

When everyone got there and most of them had consumed a bt too much wine already, we moved on to our salads. I got the spinich salad wth strawberry vinagerette dressing and goat cheese. (No I didn't eat it, for those of you that know me at all, instead I swirled it around so it looked like I ate some and then had Bree take a few bites of it too.) I did try it though.

We had a choice of Beef Tenderloin, Seafood Plate, and Chicken for dinner. Bree and I both had the beef. It was the best steak I have ever eaten in my life! It literally melted in my mouth and was so stinkin good! (No offense Bob)

For dessert they served us little morsels that looked so good I felt like I needed to put them in my pocket, not my mouth. But I did put them in my mouth... a lot of them... and they were great!

At the end of it all we went upstairs and enjoyed the view and hung out. It was a great evening.

Coming soon!!!

2008-12-05T22:59:00.002-06:00

No comments eh? Well let's pick it up a bit then... coming soon (as in probably tomorrow, but definately Sunday) will be a couple of new posts coving the last two days which will include pictures that will blow your mind! *Can't you just hear the movie announcer's voice on this thing?*

It wont cost you $37 to see them in theatres, but you really should respond... it just makes me feel happy that you care. (I'm lame)

Thanksgiving

2008-11-29T19:04:00.018-06:00

What a great couple of days we had at our house for Thanksgiving! I had the day before and the day of off of work (mostly because we close the restaurant on Thanksgiving). I did have to run by and do a security check, but that was nothing.

Bree made an excellent dinner from scratch (when doesn't she) and then we spent the afternoon putting up our Christmas decorations together.

In case you hadn't heard, Joshua burned his finger on the curling iron the same day we went to Silver Dollar City, but it is looking much better now... see.

After we put the kids down for bed, Bree and I hung out and watched a few episodes from the first season of "30 Rock."

We didn't really like it at first but it is getting much better as it goes on. It's cool because we have a two week free trial of Netflix on my Xbox, so we can watch a ton of movies and shows instantly on our tv through the Xbox live system.

We also watched "Kickin it Old School." (Which was a poor performance by Jamie Kennedy but a hilarious movie over all) I found out that my wife thinks I look like the actor who plays Lex Luthor when he has hair... fear me.
A great couple of days. Now on to the busy days ahead.

The Force Unleashed

2008-11-26T13:52:00.004-06:00

Because I sucessfully completed my first semester of Master's work my awesome wife bought me "Star Wars: The Force Unleased" for my Xbox 360!

I've already logged tons of hours into this game and absolutely love it! It does what it promised... allowing you to kick people's butt using the force. Even at a low level you enjoy just pushing people and objects around and smashing things. Then it becomes cool to mix and match your abilities as they grow to take on some pretty awesome foes (like the rancor monsters on Falucia!).

A couple of levels could have used a little more strcuture to them so far, but all in all it is a great game to just log on and play for a bit, enjoy it, save, and move on. (This is a nice change to the games that require you to sit there until they say so and suck the life out of you.)

Yes I am a dork, but guess what? I'm a dork that has an awesome wife!

Larry Pantelli and the Cagefighters

2008-11-25T23:59:00.004-06:00

Saturday and Sunday I found myself on an adventure to Denver Colorado.

What?

Yes, Denver.

Red Robin payed to fly me out there so that I could spend two days in a recording studio with five of our company's executives playing music on my bass guitar. The whole thing is a pretty cool deal. I'm part of the corporate badn put together to play in Palm Springs, CA as the entertainment for our yearly GM conference. I'm the youngest guy in the band, and they are some very talented guys. (not to mention funnier than all get out.)

From the moment I got off the plane I was driven to the studio and played until we went to bed and then got up at eight to do it again the next day until I had to get back on a plane. We nailed down 7 of the songs we are going to perform and I go back again for two days in December to do it all again.

It was really fun just to play with a real band again, but even cooler that these guys are my boss' boss' bosses. They gave me some huge complements and pushed me pretty good, but I got it done and it looks like we are going to have a rockin set of covers that range from "Rockin in a Free World." to "Learn to Fly." (That actually was my addition to the list

My bass broke part way through the first day so I had to run to Home Depot, buy a soddering iron and soder, and put my input jack pack together. I think that impressed them the most. They thought I was done when my bass stopped working, but I just asked where the nearest hardware store was... respect.

It was a great trip and I can't wait for next months, even though my fingers are raw and my back is killing me. I've gotta get back in "rocker" shape.

On a side note: I walked on to my plane to Denver and saw Josh Blumenshine (a guys I graduated with and haven't talked to in 9 years) after I was just talking to Jenny about him the week before. What a small stinkin' world! I got a chance to talk to him while we were waiting for our baggage and I'm going to try and have dinner with him on the next go around.

Silver Dollar City Christmas

2008-11-21T10:33:00.005-06:00

Yesterday we took a jont up the road to our favorite theme park of fun (locally of course) Silver Dollar City! It was so freakin' cold! We had bundled everyone up, but it didn't stop the wind from whipping through.

We jumped from one shop to another to try and stay warm. (The glass blower's shop was the best place for that.) But we're the Adamses and "No one has more fun than the Adamses!" We muscled through it to find the great parts.

Joshua rode on his first ride by himself! He loved it. Of course the lady bugs are aptly named for their calm natured, almost lame, ride.

He and joy rode the frogs together.

Then we waited for the lighting of the tree by watching a frosty the snowman sing along live show! We, unfortunately, missed the Dicken's Christmas carol (but that's the joy of season passes!) we're going to catch it the next time.

The tree lighting was fantastic! It was a light show to carol of the bells and the transsiberian orchestra! The entire square's lights were a part of it, buildings and all! If you have a chance to check it out you should. I think I'm going to nab some video of it the next time we go.

We headed home...picked up some Long John Silvers chicken (YES!!), and got to bed. I'm headed to Denver, CO tomorrow to play bass for the Red Robin corporate band. I'll keep you posted.

Pentecostal Heritage Final

2008-11-11T14:32:00.002-06:00

Well, it's done. I've completed my final project for Pentecostal Heritage class. It's now here for you to enjoy. So do it...enjoy.

Psalms Final

2008-11-06T22:21:00.007-06:00

I did it! I delivered my final paper for my Psalms class a couple of hours ago in front of my professor and class on Psalms 112. It went great! My proffessor even asked me where I did my undergrad work at because my paper was so throuroughly researched and well presented.

Just to show you guys what I have been up to, this is how I study....

This is how I play...

A huge thank you goes out to my parents (who have supported me and continue to support me in so many ways as I continue on this path), my grandparents (the Shepherds for the help with research and the awesome commentaries that I used, the Adams for helping put me through my undergrad work), my wife (nuf said), and of course everyone out there that has believed in me and supported my walk through this and in the past as I am growing into what God has for me. Thank you so much!

If you are curious here is the powerpoint for my presentation:

Now it's on to prject #2 due on Tuesday... A historical look at the conflict between the early pentecostal groups and the Nazarene church. It's going to be fun.

All day long

2008-11-05T17:18:00.002-06:00

Wow... elections...that's it.

Today I spent a good 8 - 9 hours working on finishing up my final project on Psalms 112 for my class. I now can pretty much tell you what each of the Hebrew words is, means, and how it fits with the prose of the Psalm. I don't think this makes me smarter, just much more tired.

I got a chance to go out and play with my kids for a bit though on the swings and mowed my lawn. Now I'm going to head to church for worship practice. Adios.

Back to work

2008-10-28T16:53:00.003-05:00

Monday came, and I went back to work again. Yes, I did the responsible thing and went back to the place I love to make my living at. No, it's not the chaplaincy (helping people recover from PTSD, giving hope to those who are dying for our country, being in a war zone to support our troops, negotiating hostage situations, and so on...) but it is still important.
It definitely wasn't an easy transition, especially since I stayed up with my wife watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the crystal skull until 10:30, but I made it. I missed the fun that comes with arguing with the vendors, the computer, and the team to get the numbers that ultimately go "BLING" in a triumphant fashion. What do I do at Red Robin? I make people happy. The guest, the team, and the share holders (well sometimes on all of those) which is not something to shake a stick at. We made food cost again for the second week! Yeah Terri!
We're waiting for Alicia to get back from training, and then the fun begins. We'll finally be fully staffed and I get to run a restaurant the "real" way. I think now that I'm used to running the restaurant this way it's going to be weird though. I don't really see anything wrong with the peeps in place right now. We'll see... I'm sure looking back on it I'll wonder (like I do anything else in my past) how on earth did you do all of that? The same way I did everything else, with a little help from my friends. (I think a famous band said that.)

CRASH

2008-10-24T20:29:00.003-05:00

ARGHH!!! My computer crashed. It refused to load. Then I put back in my old hard drive with it to see if I could pull some files off of my computer (i.e. the last 6 months of pictures of my children and all of my music files!) and it told me that the drive needs to be formatted. I say no way to that and I'm currently using some hard drive recovery software to see if I can get to those files. But at least I had my old hard drive so I'm not totally out of the loop. I hate being irresponsible and forgetting to back up pictures and such. Sadness.
Now I need to fix my desktop and figure out a way to get a laptop for school... computers and I have a love / hate / hate relationship.

Hostage Simulation

2008-10-22T20:34:00.005-05:00

Today for my Counselling in grief and crisis situations class they put on an awesome "mock" hostage situation that taught us a ton of stuff. I don't have much time, but this is the link to the news article and TV clip of it... check it out. AGTS is awesome to put this together for just our class!

http://www.ky3.com/news/local/32563854.html

The second day we went to the hospital and got shown through the ER and trauma centers while the lead chaplain told us about everything he is responsible for in detail (a very humbling and eye opening experience), then we had a funeral home director come and talk to us about the family grieving process and the preparations/decisions that have to be made in the event of their family member's death.

Yesterday we had to role play giving death notices to families and tomorrow we have to perform a funeral for a person who committed suicide, a 5 year old, and a homeless Vietnam veteran. I can't think of a better class for chaplain candidates to go through.

I say I'm learning something would be an understatement. It's worth every penny I'm paying... and then some. By the time the class is over I will be certified to be on a critical response team and FEMA level 1 certified. It just makes everything else seem so mundane when I think that this will be my entire life in a few short years. Patience is a virtue that I wish I didn't have to possess!

Stress

2008-10-19T14:58:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to take a moment and update an apologize. I'm actually taking about 15 minutes out of writing two papers after extensive reading for my week long intensive on Ministry in Crisis and Grief Context. That's going to be my next week (which I'm taking 5 days of vacation for). Hopefully after that and finishing my finals for this semester I can get back into a semblance of routine...

I may have to post a couple of pictures though in the next couple of days because last weekend we went up to Illinois and visited my family. My brother was on leave so my Grandma Adams (Gigi) flew in from Cali. and Becca and Mike made the trip from Chicago. So the whole family was together for a bit which was great. I played "wall ball" with Mike, Stephen, and one of his friends Denver. Of course right before we left our coolant system went out on the van so I had to get the pump and thermometer replaced.. whoo hoo. But it was worth it, and my parents helped with that cost.

This week was crazy, but I made it through and got all my homework done. I'm running A's in both of my classes this far and hope to keep that up. I'm learning a ton! Work keeps me crazy busy, but I still manage time to sit down and watch Smallville, Heroes, and the Office with Bree.

Yesterday we went to the pumpkin patch with Terri and her family (I'll post pics later) and today after I Finnish my papers, I plan on having some people over for a bonfire in my backyard. Good times.

Well, I hope that gives ya' a little glance into my week. Sorry I don't have time for humor or witty remarks, but I have to save those for my papers to detract from my lack of intelligence on the subject matter. Thanks for suffering for my grade.

The Economy

2008-10-11T08:43:00.003-05:00

I find it hard to accept the place that our economy is in right now. But I know that it is affecting people. Our sales our down at work, which makes it really hard to give anyone hours. This in turn has the affect that my team is having a hard time living on what I can pay them. It's just so weird that everything seemed fine just a month ago.
I do have a harder time though sympathising with the people that come to me saying they can't make thier rent, but I know that they were just out spending money on alcohol the night before, copeous amounts of it. This is even worse when they are smokers...really? When you are spending more money on a cigarettes then you do on gas there's a problem.
And really, is it the government's fault that people have overspent, overlended, and put us in this possition based on the need for things we can't afford? If I could go back in time I would have torn up every credit card offer I ever got and never taken out a loan for anything. The Bible wasn't kidding when it says "Neither a borrower or a lender be." Who's getting hit right now... borrowers and lenders.
My two cents...and people are saving pennies again.

Everything has a RESET BUTTON. I guess the economy's no differant. At some point you just stop paying more for stuff.

Fellow's Lake

2008-10-09T22:32:00.006-05:00

It's beed a smash and grab week. I just got home yesterday from St. Louis again and my mid year review (which went well. Thanks for asking). I added a second class to my Master's load (which has been interesting but very deep). We will be leaving tomorrow after I get off of work to head to see my family, including my brother and Grandma, in Springfield, IL. It just doesn't seem to stop for me. It's worth it though. I can't wait to be through all of this and actually ministering in the Air Force rather than this "meaningless" work. (I know it's not meaningless and I know to some people that can be their calling... it's just not mine so I find it hard to be satisfied with it, let alone find joy in it.) I like school though. (how infantile of me... "school is fun.")

Bree is going to be watching a two year old girl to help bring in a little bit of income because I'm not home enough even to know she's doing it. We'll see how that all works out. I'm not so jazzed about it, but we could use it and I know she wants to contribute, so unless it interferes with her ability to parent our children, I don't see why not.

Today, after picking up our van which had to have the water pump and thermostat replaced (which my parents are lovingly paying for) and then buying a textbook for my Psalms class, we decided to do something fun and went to Fellow's lake. We took some great shots of some weird stuff. Check out some Missouri wildlife!

That's dog food in Bree's hand.

Just a glimpse of Fellow's Lake

Joy and Joshua about to drop the dog food in the water to...

FISH!!!

Close up. They were really hungry.

They gather all up and down the dock and are piled on top of each other.

Stop looking at me swan!

Of course Joshua had to get closer.

We found a playground and Joshua started a "Superman" party.

Joy loved the giant slide

Bree and Joshua. He was laughing the entire time.
Me and Joshua. He was whining the entire time.
What?!!! A real mary go round! I thought they banned those!
Because idiots couldn't be carefull on them. No Joshua, this one's for daddies only.

(When I ultimately did let Joy and Joshua onto it they both cried because they thought it went "too fast." Boy, do I miss these things.)

Smiling Burger Championship

2008-10-06T16:54:00.006-05:00

Today was the day of our restaurant's "smiling burger championship" qualifier. I got up at 3:00 this morning to get in to work and have everything done so we could focus on this and our auction for our Heart of House team that has worked so hard to keep our Production time percentages way high. When I got there I found out that our marvolous CDT team had done a great job of setting up the restaurant to show our pride. When John (my boss) got there he was blown away at how many people we had show up in the morning to compete and help out.

The "auction" table

The Judges booth

Awesome "Transporter" hat for Sam who moved all the burgers from the window to the judges so they wouldn't know who's was who's.

Check out the hanging decorations in the window. There was one for every cook with their name and a symbol of power (i.e. pickles or safety)

The contestants.

The hecklers... "We've got a red check in the window!"

Timekeeper: Meleah, Safety Patrol: Joe, Wall Securer: Ken

Our Fabulous Judges: Katie, Ryan, and Shawnda

Gabe wrappin it up came in 3rd

After much deliberation... the winner is...

These two beautiful burgers wrapped in 6 min. by Ashley! She's going to St. Louis to represent us for the region!

After that we got the team together for their auction. Great prizes. Great threats of violence. It was a blast.

The Greenway

2008-10-01T19:55:00.005-05:00

Springfield has this interconnected series of paved and maintained paths that roam throughout the city and the countryside called "greenways." When I first moved here I fell in love with them and any time I wanted to walk and think or meditate I would go out and walk for miles through the fall colors and streams. It's pretty darn cool. Yesterday we took the kids for a "walk" along the paths.

I say "walk" because Faith obviously wasn't into that and rode the whole way in the stroller and Joshua in turn didn't want to be left out so he "piggy backed" on the stroller for a bit. Joy, Bree, and I were the only ones walking. Joy made sure we knew this over and over again. When we got back I decided to play with the camera... yeah for you!

Electrocution

2008-09-30T09:23:00.003-05:00

I thought I could repair my wife's broken hair straightener (thinking it was only a loose wire or a disconnected component) last night. I went to it with fervor and thought I had gotten everything in place so I had her plug it in... still nothing. Still broken. So I continued to poke and prod around until... ZZZZAP! My hand cramped up and went numb and there was a cool metally / plastic burning smell in the air. Oh yeah, that was awesome! Luckily it had an internal fuse that blew preventing a much worse accident. It took a little bit for my hand to quit throbbing but by this morning I'm perfectly fine. (Unless my encounter left me with some residual super power that I have yet to discover and will stumble upon in a moment of extreme duress!)

DVD trunk

2008-09-28T21:18:00.003-05:00

This is my newest thing. Now that I am having to get serious about school I had to bring in all of my books from the garage. This is difficult because all of the prime bookshelf space is eaten up by dvds! So I had the genius idea to convert one of my son's toy chests into my dvd chest and use it as a coffee table in our living room. Check it out!

What's this? A pain old chest? But wait... THERE'S MORE!!!

This is a full 8 foot bookshelf's worth of dvds! It fit a lot more than I thought and I still have room to expand! (Of course all of my kid movies and "tv series" dvds are in another place though)

I used "luggage straps" stapled into the chest to hold in the upright dvds so I could have access to them and still see all of my collection.

Does anyone know how I could market, sell, and ultimately make millions on this thing? That would be nice. If I had a shop I would "make" something a little more official and handy, but this will have to do for now. Pretty good for an old tote, a hammer, scissors, a lighter, some pliers, staple gun staples, and luggage straps.

My weekend

2008-09-28T21:07:00.004-05:00

My mom and dad came into town on Friday night. Sadness, I had to work on Saturday. But, I took off Sunday from church and hung out with them for a while. We got to talk for a bit about a lot of things. My mom put cushions under my couch and raised them up a bit (I think they look goofy but we'll leave them there for a bit and see).

My kids loved hanging out with "Oma" and "Papa" when they went to the park. We also took them to the "Bass Pro Shop" and looked at all the animals there. I loved the turtle stack up that was going on.

After they had to go I started up the backyard bonfire and had the Williamsons over for a bit to enjoy our awesome Missouri fall weather. I love the fall here. Plus I have a huge pile of limbs in my backyard from the "ice storm" this winter so I have to burn it all. That is going to be fun!

Springfield Lake

2008-09-28T21:00:00.002-05:00

On Thursday, my day off, I read 146 pages for school and then I had to unwind. We decided to check out Springfield Lake Park for the first time. It's weird because we thought we had seen every park in the city over the course of the year, but we missed this one somehow. Maybe that's because Springfield Lake is less of a "lake" and more of a "swamp." It was a tad disappointing when you think about all of the amazing parks we DO have in Springfield. As you can see we took a "picnic" of some McDonalds with us. (I like to splurge every once in a while!)

TLFG

2008-09-28T20:41:00.004-05:00

I went up to St. Louis on Monday for a TLFG (team leader focus group) on Tuesday with Terri and Alicia. It was cool to see that half of it was stuff we had already implemented in our restaurant and were ahead of the game on. The other half made me a tad bit uneasy. They are overhauling the entire hiring and training program (my favorite part of Red Robin culture). I'm gonna go right along with it... silently screaming the entire time.
After the TLFG the entire group went to Hard Rock Cafe and then to a St. Louis Blues hockey game. We got set up in the Budwiser box seats and had them cater us and the whole nine yards. Of course the big part of that was the free beer and shots for these guys and they were all trashed by the second period. Guess who didn't drink... the team from Springfield!
When I was done being told how "positive" I am by our recruiting manager from corporate, we took off amid the field of "I love you man"s and "I'm gonna miss you"s. It was fun, but I just don't enjoy those kinds of situations. I just have never become accustomed to that scene.

I got a good mobile picture of the seats but, alas I'm not willing to pay for the mobile service that would allow me to post it here right now.

Sega

2008-09-21T21:25:00.005-05:00

From the first sound it emits I am captivated... "SEGA"it sings to me. Yes, I hooked back up the old school action in my homestead and I introduced my good friends to my children. Those friends would be Sonic: The Hedgehog & Bubsy.

They loved it! We had a good few minutes of exciting game play before the inevitable war between them for who would have the controller broke out. Joy actually was getting the hang of it. Poor Joshua couldn't get his hands around the controller to push the buttons correctly. He'll figure it out soon enough though, I'm sure. For now, I'm just glad to have my friends back and being enjoyed by the next generation of nerds.

Falling Up

2008-09-20T20:15:00.004-05:00

I got sick of the music I was listening to me my Jeep so I searched around while I was driving and found my old "Falling Up" CD. What an awesome sound! Of course it also matters what was going on in your life when music was introduced to you that can bring about a great feeling as well. Falling up definitely reminds me of United, The core group of Focus 20, and some great times developing something that was so much fun and rewarding all at the same time. Cruising around in my Jeep with the top down blaring "Christian Rock" is the best. Even in Missouri you get some strange looks when you are singing at the top of your lungs to your favorite tunes in your car.

PS. They're releasing a "best of" album soon.

Wedding Rehearsal

2008-09-19T23:03:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I was a part of a wedding. Pretty much a year. (Happy anniversary Jesse and Danielle!) And this was quite the experience. I forgot how much people care about the tiniest things in weddings. How there can be that one thing that will have to fixed the certain way. I've never run sound, lights, and powerpoint for a wedding before and working "for" another pastor is quite the trip. This is what I will be up to all day tomorrow... and reading for my classes of course. (because that is my life now... sadness.) I'm excited to see how it all turns out!

Response

2008-09-19T22:10:00.003-05:00

Wow, people actually read my blog and care... how reassuring... and disturbing. I feel like I need to respond to my last blog and clarify a tad bit. First off, most of that was for me... a challenge to myself, if you will. I blog, and will blog, about things I am struggling with and working through. To say that I'm in a better place or that my church is in a better place would be grossly misinterpreting my motives.

I didn't say that any one of those things in my last post was a bad thing. In fact I didn't knock "worshiping" God at all. (Although I wonder how much emphasis we place on the "singing" versus the worshiping.) What I did do was question the balance. I even sighted those things as being important. My point was that we focus on "singing worship" so much and the sermon that it seems like all we do on Sunday. Yes, I know all churches pray on Sunday. But do we take the time to do more than agree with what is being said while closing our eyes for 2 or 3 minutes? How many of us (myself included) actually take the time to "talk to God" by ourselves, where He can converse with us? I know some awesome people that do, but I also know a lot of people that those 2 or 3 minutes (outside of a crisis event) are all they get. We're just so busy! So, what are we prioritizing in service? I believe that prayer is an essential part of worship as well, and I enjoy the fact that we pray for our offering, but that can't be it. What happened to the alter time? (And this may just be my church but I have noticed this in the last few I have been a part of.)

Yes, I think that organizing to help out our communities, and feeding the hungry, taking care of the poor, the widows, and the orphans, is our duty and a very important one! How much are we actually doing this? Or are we putting together programs that just make our lives easier... the people "in" the church? This isn't a recent beef of mine and I don't have the solution, but I have (Since reading "Blue Like Jazz") wondered how much more effective the church would be if we did what we were told in this area.

I think pastors, churches, and Christians care a lot about what we do. I think the fact that there is even dialogue on the subject proves that point. We try our hardest to do it the right way. To set up the great service that will bring people to Christ. I think that until we get to heaven the perfect church service wont be attained, and the perfect church... far from existence.

I'm wondering (even pointing the finger at myself) when we became so skeptical? When we decided that certain things were ok in church and the "service" and others weren't? Who decided what services should look like? (1 Cor. 14:40) Are we zealous for our faith and Jesus or zealous for tradition? (Gal. 1:14) I just think it's a bit strange that when you "wikipedia" church service you get the same structure that can be identified throughout all denominations... doesn't that seem... well... I don't know. I'm not trying to be judgmental. My church isn't in a better place either. The church I started wasn't in a better place. I'm not in a better place. But you would think if we actually believed what the Bible said things would look a little bit different. I don't want to seem like an extremist here but check out Mark 16:17 -18. "And these signs will accompany those who believe:..." Why don't those signs follow us anymore? And when they do why are we so surprised? I'm just sad because I know that when I hear about someone being healed the first thought that "pops" into my head isn't "Praise God" but really??? I want to be more like my namesake and less like Thomas... but I can't get past wanting to see the nail scarred hands. That's why I think there has to be more than this. There has to be. And I'm looking for it. Praying for it. I'm asking God for it. I'll keep you posted.

Interesting

2008-09-18T20:58:00.004-05:00

Interesting how I post about my family and put a couple pictures up and people comment. When I post about God healing someone... silence. Interesting. Do we just not know how to respond? Are we just so skeptical and hardened that we don't believe it even when it is seen through a friend's very own eyes?

I had the mormons return to my house and talk with me for a bit before I had to run off. Actually they came, I handed them water, and I did most of the talking while they drank. They must have liked the first conversation we had because the same guy came back with a new friend. I asked them about the Holy Spirit and if they had ever seen anyone healed. I asked if they thought it was possible. I pointedly asked about the second chapter in Acts and what that means for them today... I asked them the questions I think I would be scared to ask some of my "Christian" friends for fear of the heart-break I may feel from their responses. How do you reconcile the actions in Acts? Was the ever so prevalent actions of prophecy, speaking in tongues, and healing just a thing for the early church? What separates them from us that they would be more deserving or more loved? Most of them didn't hear about Jesus until after His death the same as us... so what happened? Why are we so clueless? It just seems so matter-of-fact that these things would accompany those people that met in the name of Jesus. Just so beautifully anticipated.

The mormons talked with open minds and I challenged them, since they can only read the Bible and their additional religious material while on their missions, to look through Acts and come back and talk to me about why we don't expect those things any more... not really anyway. Even "pentecostal" churches are looking more and more structured. More worship songs. Less prayer. More preaching. Less prophecy. More programs. Less conviction and repentance. We can get so lost in what is important that we loose sight of what is at hand.

I'm challenged so I say "Interesting." "Who do you say that I am?" (Matthew 16:15)

Veritas

2008-09-17T18:27:00.009-05:00

Tonight we tried something new with our "Veritas" group. We met last year at the house on Monday nights, but because of my lack of time for anything and Jay wanting to consolidate things closer to the church for childcare reasons, me moved it to Wednesday nights. I had one person show up... awesome.

But this actually turned out for the better. We combined up with our youth team and they worked with us through our passage in Galatians. We then started to pray for anything and everything that we wanted. Caleb, one of our High Schoolers, came in with a hyperextended elbow that was hurting him pretty bad. It was all wrapped up in the tape, and such, from the nurse. We laid hands on him and prayed that God would heal him. (This was about midway through about an hour of prayer)

When we finished praying he ripped off the bandages. HIS ELBOW DIDN'T HURT ANYMORE!!! Praise God! He was healed tonight! After he got the tape off, which he complained about the tape ripping off his hair, he found 2 gallons of milk and started to curl them to show that there was no more pain. It was a miracle in the middle of our prayer group! It is awesome... I can't wait to see what God does next week!

Nathaniel Greene Park

2008-09-17T18:27:00.004-05:00

Today was a good day off. Of course I forgot to grab my cell phone off my desk this morning before I took of early for the church to help Bree and the Williamsons rearrange the children's rooms and throw out all of the old stuff. This, although it freaked me out not to have it, lead to a day away from any interruptions with my family.

After working at the church we went to Nathaniel Greene park and played on the playground, Joshua chased some geese (he's worse than a dog. He wouldn't leave them alone!), and jumped a fence so I could take the kids closer to the waterfall. Here's a couple of pictures...

"Too High!"

The lighting just makes the picture.

She's learning to "kick" by trying to kick me in the face.

Chasing Geese

The waterfall... before I jumped the ledge past the fence, one child at a time on my shoulders to get them closer. Isn't that what dad's do?

MacGyver

2008-09-15T18:42:00.006-05:00

I got to thikning today, as I was fixing a couple of pencils for Terri... again, about how many things I have repaired or adjusted in the last week at the restaurant. I think they should just call me MacGyver!

See this mushroom slicer...

... fixed it with a drill, pliers, a bit, and a hammer.

See this toilet...

... fixed it with a plunger and brute force. (what else?)

See this sink...

... fixed it with my bare hands!

See this TV...

... fixed it with the remote and a lot of technical know how. (Even MacGyver would have had a tough time with something buried in the ground and encased in glass!)

See this freezer unit...

... fixed it with the touch of a button and some tweaking of the knobs.

See these shelves...

... a ladder, a hammer, and upward force remodeled them.

Sure I didn't use a toothpick, stick of gum, or duct tape at all in the process, but hey, I'm just getting started!

My Week at Red Robin

2008-09-14T17:00:00.000-05:00

I'm going to break up this update into a couple of posts for all you fun people out there who have been anxiously awaiting my week from hell post.

First off would have to be my excruciatingly painful B.E.R. experience (Brand Equity Review or Prostate exam depending on your take). The event was Thursday and Friday so we have been focused on getting things in place all week long.

The first sign that things weren't going to be awesome would have to have been me "peeling" the office door. I got it into my head that when the opportunity showed itself I would peel the paint like sunburned skin on my spouse's back (yummy!). This lead to the revelation of another layer of paint underneath, which also looked like junk. So I added some spray on paint thinner (safe for indoors and smelling like citrus heaven) and scrapped the door down to the metal. Which only took me a total of... ALL DAY LONG!

The next day (my day off) I brought Joshua in with me and we painted that door and touched up other doors. Sometimes painting is just easier than cleaning I say... or I said this time at least. After that the restaurant looked awesome and I thought we were ready for B.E.R. Terri and Ken had spent a lot of time organizing and labeling everything and the HoH looked great!

Then he came. John swept in and for 3 shifts ruled my life like a jester on a power trip. It was great to start. He loved the improvements and said we were the cleanest and most organized he had ever seen the restaurant! YEAH! Then one of our servers came in late which threw off our groove, one server was sick, my hospos just blew it hard core, and a cook had the runs. All in all we passed the BER, but we did so with the lowest possible passing score. All because of my Front of House! In 8 years I've never seen a restaurant fail due to their FOH. It was an embarrassment. You'd better believe I was on the rampage... and I haven't stopped yet. So far only 2 in tears but I'm sure to rack that up as I move forward.

And that was my week at Red Robin. Thank God it's over.

My Week at Home

2008-09-14T16:30:00.003-05:00

After everything else going on this week you may ask yourself... Did you even go home? The answer is: Yes, silly. I had to sleep, and the Jeep is way too uncomfortable.

But really I did get the chance to come home a couple of days while my children were still awake. Here are some samples of what I get to enjoy every day!

My Week at School

2008-09-14T16:24:00.003-05:00

I have my first paper due for my Master program on Tuesday so I spent this afternoon getting it done and ready. It is a comparison paper between two books that I had to read (over 600 pages of reading!) and analyze. Now that it's done though, I'm pretty confidant that I can handle this quest. It only took me an hour and a half to write it out and get it ready. I could have easily written another 3 pages though. This happens to be a problem of mine. In Ireland they would call it a gift. The gift of "gab." I have kissed the Blarney Stone after all.

Internet

2008-09-10T16:10:00.003-05:00

My Mediacom cable is going to be out until Friday. This will leave me blogless, emailless, and phoneless until then. I'll catch up after that!

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

2008-09-07T21:14:00.002-05:00

Tonight we went over to the Williamsons' house so that I could field questions about what our church believes (mostly just to hang out and have a good time though.) The Relaford's and Sarah were there too. Another couple couldn't make. We had a blast though and then we got down to business. I got to share with them our denominational stances on a bunch of stuff and help explain to them some of the things they and I have experienced about God and the Holy Spirit. It was a really honest and very cool time. Even though we have been friends for a little while now I think we definitely took this thing to a higher level.

At the end of everything we prayed. I mean, we PRAYED. It was awesome! We prayed for healing, safety, absence of fear, provision, and all kinds of things. God spoke through prophesy in a couple of cases and through a vision in another. We had some prayer language action happening and really just felt the presence of the divine very clearly on that back porch. God is so awesome! It was really tough for us all to actually stop and go home tonight. What are we missing by just living our lives and leaving out these amazing opportunities every day? We've been hanging out for months now and I shudder to think of the amount of things we could have been sharing together in before now. This is the church. This is what God wants.

Weekend

2008-09-07T20:56:00.004-05:00

Wow, life must be getting a little busy because I haven't blogged EVERY day, as I am in the tendency of doing... or was. Now that I am in school things may get a little bit more sporadic in appearance. This week was pretty much a nightmare at work, ups and downs of course, but not one I will look back fondly on. I'm glad to start anew tomorrow at 5am... grrr.

I had a blast with Greg, Rob, Dustin, and Jacob last night. They took me out to "The Skinny Improv." A great place downtown here in Springfield where they do improv games and a 2 hour show. It's all clean and if you make a "naughty" suggestion or one of them goes in a negative direction during the improv then you have to wear this nasty hat thing and get "shamed" by the whole audience. Then you have to apologize in whatever fashion the audience wants. Of course for the demonstration of this the MC picks me out of the audience to get shamed... it was hilarious! I'm going to take Bree some time.

They had two guys sharing a coat that had to speak all their answers at the same time. One of the audience asked them to RAP! It was awesome! I could just write and write about how funny it was. It reminded me of back in the High School days with our improv-a-thons... "What are these band-aids doing in here!"

Then we went out and ate pie for a couple of hours and talked about blowing stuff up mostly. At around midnight (just so we could say we stayed out that late... we're rebels) we had to go to Walmart to pick up some chocolate for Jenny (Greg's wife) because i said something stupid before we left their house and had her and my wife all upset at me. It was a miscommunication, but I took it upon myself to fix it. (Happy wife, happy life.)

All in all an awesome night that ended at 1:30 am. I had to get up this morning for church and was late of course. I'm too old for this stuff.

Starting

2008-09-03T21:39:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, after a long day at work, I ventured into the realm of the unknown. I made my journey to the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary where I started my long sought after education. Wow, I'm actually doing this thing!

I got there, after missing my first class for a TLFG last week, and found out that the first half of class we would be joining the other students for "Spiritual Formation Chapel." I was excited because I figure sitting in church is better than sitting in any class. Which it turns out was pretty true. I have been struggling to get my books because they are uber expensive and two of them are out of print! Luckily the second guy I ran into before class was John. John, who is in my class and studying to become an Army chaplain, had gone to the library and scanned the book that was out of print into his thumb drive. (I know... time consuming but awesome!) He then proceeded to take me to the library and print out the entire thing for free! I've never been to a library that didn't charge you to print off documents, but my school rocks that hard.

Spiritual Formation Chapel was a tad bit of a let down. It was very old school and had only an acoustic guitar leading cliche worship tunes. I did get to listen to the Dean speak about how the Board is going to change the name of the school. (either Seymour, Pnuema, or Antioch: Theological Seminary) I wasn't jazzed about the options but they think it will open the door to intra-denominational students. This would be a good thing considering out of everyone in my class I am the only one not Assemblies of God or Baptist. I miss the West Coast for this reason.

After sitting through class, which was not painful in the least, I realized what I have gotten myself into. I have a bunch of reading to do and papers to write and half of what she is saying goes right over my head. (and I'm not a stupid person.) I figure if she's over my head and I catch some of it it means I'm getting smarter somewhere along the way... I hope. I met two other guys wanting to be Army Chaplains. I haven't met any Air Force bound yet though. This will be a good thing in the long run... less competition. (Only 1 in 5 is making it in right now.)

Today I read through half of one of my text books (3.5 hours of reading) and figure if I keep up this pace I might have a chance of passing the course. Keep me in your prayers. I'm praying for God to provide for me in a special way. I'll keep you posted. Ha ha "posted" like a blog "post". I kill me.

Another Day in Paradise

2008-09-01T17:55:00.006-05:00

Monday morning, and my day is just fantastico... or not. I can't seem to get things together. Numbers suck (except for food cost, which Terri has nailed down like a coffin.) I spent thousands of dollars repairing my restaurant and now the bills come flooding in! That'll send your stuff straight to the pooper no matter who you are.

Joe arrived today though. We've been waiting to get him in the restaurant for a while now and on his first day he meshed with the team well. He did manage to knock some drinks onto a couple guests but he definitely helped!

Sometimes I think I am leading the cast of the Addams family though. Which you would think would be easy considering I am and Adams. That second "D" makes all the difference! I feel like lurch stumbling around going "URGH" and "You rang?" All this while cousin It is shedding hair in my burgers and Thing is crawling on the expo line!

My wonderful wife brought my kids in to the restaurant with bags of cookies. I thought it would be fun to take a picture of the opposing forces of my day right next to each other... my P&L vs. the wonderful extension of love from my family in the form of home made peanut butter cookies and sweet sweet Mountain Dew. Enjoy.

Sunday's Sermon

2008-09-01T17:50:00.002-05:00

I know I said that I was going to post my sermon online. But I've tried 8 different times to do it and it just wont work for me. If you want to listen to it I'm sure that www.gracechapelchurch.org will have it "streamable" in the next few days. Especially if a couple of you pester them for it. The sermon went well though. 4 people raised their hands in response to the alter call and many more asked for prayer. I think that is what I live for. It's my heart's cry to see people commit to Christ. I think that is why after a long day at work and a long day tomorrow starting at 6, I'm still planning on having a bunch of people over for a Bible study. I'm crazy go nuts!

Sermon Prep

2008-08-30T20:54:00.005-05:00

Pastor Jay's son, Jacob, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on Wednesday. With the whole family down there and taking classes on how to care for him from here on out, Jay has asked me to preach tomorrow. I felt like preaching on Joshua 1:5-9. For just a sneak peek here ya' go... I'm going to try and post the entire sermon tomorrow.

Are you frustrated, mourning, and broken? Be strong and of good courage. Look death in the face, and summon your energy to meet the falsehoods of despair. Are you failing – “not gonna make it,” confused, and all but in despair? Be of good courage, for consistency of spirit, is sufficient for what you have to do.

Strength goes with it. The momentum of a projectile is the product of its mass and velocity; and a lighter hammer, if driven with greater force, will do all the work of a heavier one that moves more slowly. And this law of mechanics is true of souls. There are many souls light, fragile, and weak, but which hurl themselves with amassed energy against resisting forces, that have the power to overcome far in excess of that possessed by many other natures.

Be strong and of good courage. If God appoints the task and leads the way, you are on a course in which fear of failure is worthless and unnecessary.

The Coach

2008-08-29T20:57:00.005-05:00

Uncovered is covered and hidden found out.

A horn is quiet and the silent a shout.

Confrontation revealed never as it seems.

There is only the issue that one deems

Worthy of time, of pressure, of worry,

to hopefully find the lesser of fury.

The lies on your tongue; such eloquence

Seeing right through it to selfishness.

Where do you get the right to choose

To change the game so I might loose?

To add to the fray those that may

find a way... to hold me at bay.

You take what was never yours to give

I stand in the gap so that you may live

Try and make this more about you

Try and focus, I'll give you a clue

To find what you've lost but what is the cost

A friendship, respect, or even holocaust?

Fear or love where do I draw the line

Teetering on angle in my mind.

The price of one but loss of another

Is not an option in the eyes of a father.

Accept for me please a small amount of these

and our friction will be at ease.

Retribution

2008-08-28T18:37:00.002-05:00

Why is it that when we hurt, even if it is our own fault, we require that someone else feel our pain. We try to enact our form of justice, or formulate something to hurt someone else in an attempt to ease our own pain. We think that by exacting our pain on others that somehow we will find healing? That maybe we will see the world as "fair" after that? What a ridiculous notion. What happens when the person you try to hurt refuses to react, or does so in such a way that repels the pain you've tried to cause. What then? I say then you hurt worse than you did before. This is due to the fact that you now realize that they have succeeded where you have failed. Where they stand above reproach when you are still criticized.

I'm pretty darn glad that Jesus didn't feel the need to make the world fair. That even though His place on this earth was one of rejection, ridicule, and pain He didn't feel the need to make others feel that. Instead He rocked the system, turned it all around. Offered to have people feel acceptance, peace, and joy. Oh, to be like Him would be such a wonderful thing. But I fail. I want justice. I want sympathy and for people to feel my pain. I am broken and I am selfish. Can I blame others for being the same?

Mormons

2008-08-27T12:42:00.004-05:00

I just had a very long and interesting conversation with Mormon missionaries again. God seems to like to set me up with these conversations. I think partly to open my eyes a little bit and partly to open theirs. I will never be convinced that the Book of Mormon is new revelatory scripture. No more so than the Koran. However, after reading both and "The Pearl of Great Price" I do believe that they are an interpretation of the Bible and it's concepts put into a format for a given lifestyle. Of course they didn't like this idea of mine, but we moved past it. Once we moved past it and into the Bible it was amazing the great conversation we had about Grace and Freedom. Wow, these guys actually believe in Jesus, try to follow Jesus in the best way that has been revealed to them, and are actually in the community donating their lives to it. Can I say the same? That's admirable.

For those of you that don't know where I stand on this issue and the issue of other religions I'll sum it up quickly. If you believe in Jesus, I believe in Jesus, you've asked Him to forgive and save you, then we are brothers in Christ. They may be holding themselves to restrictions and guidelines that I view as unnecessary, but they aren't condemning me to hell for not doing it. I know what I believe is true, evidenced by my experiences in my life, and affirmed by my life. Do I know what heaven is like? No. That is just one of the many mysteries in the Bible that allows for the various interpretations of it. Some things are Black and White, some we'll never understand. The problem comes when we quit loving and instead embrace the differences and hate.
I was taught to fear, mourn, and despise Mormons. That they were liars and leading people astray. The two nice teenagers I just talked to were honest men, who weren't condemning, were very loving, and (after two hours of talking) are following Jesus in the best way they know how to. I'll see them in heaven I am sure.

TLFG

2008-08-27T09:47:00.006-05:00

Well yesterday was the first day of classes, and where was I? In St. Louis at a (Team Leader Focus Group) TLFG. It actually was not bad at all. I took my AKM (Assistant Kitchen Manager) with me. There were a couple of ups and downs to this thing... lets' see.

Up: When I went to go rent my "economy" car from Enterprise I brought them a couple of burgers and a salad just to spread some "burger love." This resulted in them literally calling me "the man" and offering me any car in their lot at economy rates! I picked out the Dodge Charger and got to drive that awesome vehicle to St. Louis and back. There are rumors that I was doing 110 up hill and around a corner, but those cannot be substantiated... really 110! The thing wasn't even shaking at that point!

Down: John cancelled on dinner so we were on our own when we got there. We decided to try and find a Chinese place on Olive Road. We drove for a bit and finally found one. The sign on the door read: "Sorry, closed Monday. Please come again." Wow... now I'm kinda worried as to why a Chinese place would be closed on a Monday and have a paper sign on the door...

Up: As we were leaving that place Mike Jones, the GM (general manager) of Chesterfield Red Robin called me up to find out what we were doing for dinner! Yeah! We all went out to the Chinese place next to his restaurant and got to talk about all kinds of things. He's a pretty cool, Christian, guy who talks about his family a lot, so we get along. I think he believes I'm a punk kid though because I'm the youngest GM in the region by far. But he still is trying to help me out and is being awesome!

Up: Stayed in the Marriott. Great big TV (television) I know there are a lot of acronyms running around out there so I just thought I would continue to help you understand them.

Down: Got lost trying to get back to it, ended up at a college, and didn't get to sleep until 11:30

Up: Had breakfast with John and did my one on one

Down: It was at 6 am.

At that point we went to the TLFG which was pretty good. I wont bore you with all 8 hours of details but I will continue with the ups and downs of the rest of the day.

Up: Joe (my soon to be AM (Associate manager)) was there! I had a debrief with his trainer and he is due to hit my restaurant on Monday!!!

Down: I got the Golden TP award for having the worst supplies variance in the region... way to go Terri. I took the blame and told them that if they only had 2 managers running a restaurant see if they were anywhere close to what I had! Oh well, I'll give it to someone else next period.

Up: Went and played beach volleyball with a bunch of the other managers. Sand is fun!

Down: I suck. We lost. 4 games.

Up: Got to drive the Charger home and made it home VERY quickly.
Down: I'm sore from beach volleyball.

Monday Morning

2008-08-27T09:16:00.003-05:00

Mondays, what a fun day. I knew I had to be out of there early so that I could run by and pick up my rental car, check out the newly discovered storage unit that my restaurant has had but I had no idea about, and then make it up to St. Louis in time for dinner with my boss. (who later cancelled, but I'll let you know about that in my next post about TLFG.)

Unbeknownst to me, the mother load of HR issues was going to hit me in the face that morning! I finished my numbers and then sat down with Terri to brief on the week to find out a couple of interesting things. I wont write any kinds of details here because I think that would leave me pretty open to liability. But, I had 3 different issues involving no less that 6 people that I needed to talk to and figure out what was going on before I could delve into the appropriate actions.

I had one sexual harassment issue, one involving someone throwing a knife at someone else in my kitchen, and then last but certainly not least a team member that I had to fire due to extensive drug usage (not to mention the fact that I was lied to my face about it all). Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh HEY!

Luckily, I'm a decent manager of people and "dealt" with the issues, picked up my car, check out the storage unit (which was filled with useless crap), and hit the road by 3pm... right on schedule! YES!!!!! What a day.

Sunday Afternoon Walk

2008-08-27T09:00:00.003-05:00

Sunday Afternoon, after Church and naps, we called up the Relafords and the Willaimsons and we all went on a walk down the Wilson's Creek Greenway here in Springfield. It was a little hot and humid outside, but when isn't it around here right now, so we were only out there for a couple of hours. The first 45 minutes we were waiting for the Relafords to get there before we could go walking so Rob and I compared cameras and took some shots. It was really nice to get outside and enjoy the area. We had 9 kids running around with us between all of the families.

Afterwards we headed back to my homestead where we ate homemade pizza. We talked and played acoustic guitar. It was a blast! Lots of fun and laughter.

Silver Dollar City

2008-08-24T13:54:00.005-05:00

Because I got to go home early for my "sensitivity training," (see previous blog) I decided/was coerced to go to Silver Dollar City with my family. We have season passes there that were given to us for Bree's birthday by her dad and Cheryl. We have used the heck out of these things. So this time around we did a few new things...

1. We saw a comic magician. This was pretty awesome due to the fact that he was funny AND happened to be good at some tricks. The ones he botched he just turned into a joke! It's a "must see" in my opinion. The only down side to it was it wasn't a big enough act to make it to an indoor stage (this is ridiculous because the rest of the cats were all country music singers and folk junk. who wouldn't rather see funny magic?) so we had to sweat in the heat.

2. We found out that Joy and Joshua are both now tall enough to ride the big rides in the kids area. This is like the intermediate section of the park before you actually get flipped around but they move you so fast you still get sick. I took Joy on the "dumbo" ride and then put Joshua on the "Pirate Ships" with me. The Dumbo ride was awesome! Joy pushed the button and made it move all the way to the top. I figured if that was how mild these things were then Joshua's pirate ships should be a breeze...WRONG! As soon as they started my son, whom I had to convince to whimperingly climb into the ships with me, started to scream as it took off at mach 3. I mean if real ships moved this fast we wouldn't need air travel! Finally I calmed down enough to start to calm him down enough by screaming "ARGH!" at the tops of our lungs. His response..."Do Gain Daddy!" No.

3. We watched the nice lady make pots. It actually wasn't that lame, and the kids loved it! She made pots, and pie plates, and other things but it was neat to see them doing all of it right in the shop. Bree now wants me to buy her all kinds of things from that shop because they match our current dishes. I didn't buy anything this time....

Then we did a few things we've done a bunch:

1. We went back to the regular kids rides where Joy jumped on all of them by herself, but Joshua (severely traumatized I fear by the pirate ships) refused to even ride the lady bugs with Joy. Sadness. Soon enough I fear he will be pulling me onto the rides I no longer have the physical capacity for. We'll see.

2. We went to the water park area where they ran in the water and got soaked... not a problem because it was so humid and hot that they dried up almost instantly no matter how wet they got!

3. Played in the "fun house," where vacuum powered guns launch foam balls into the air and then hoses on the ground suck them back up so you can do it all over again!

4. We went back to the van exhausted, sweaty, and burnt to head home. It's great having a, family safe, amusement park so close!

Sensitivity Training

2008-08-24T13:51:00.003-05:00

I didn't get a change to blog yesterday because I was up until late finishing 4.5 hours of online sensitivity training courses for work. What a pain in the butt. This is especially painful because this would be the second time in less that 4 months that I would be doing it. (You would think I would have stopped making those comments after sitting through the first set!) Really, they made me take it when I became the GM and now everyone in the company is re-taking them, not just the GMs. So I take a little bit of pleasure in knowing that Terri had to sit through this junk too. At least I got to go home early to do it!

The Boiler Room

2008-08-22T20:16:00.009-05:00

What do 2 hot water heaters, 4 phone lines, an alarm system, a fax machine, and a T1 internet network have in common? All of them went down at the same time today at 7 am! Due to the fact that one of our space heaters in our boiler room at Red Robin decided not to shut off when it reached the correct temperature in the small room that connects everything, the room reached a temperature of roughly 150 degrees inside and set off our fire suppression sprinklers after managing to melt our phone lines.

I got a call from the Alarm company saying they had dispatched the fire department and then one from my Kitchen Manager telling me that there was water EVERYWHERE!! All this on what was supposed to be my first day for new student orientation at AGTS. Luckily they pushed me through and finalized everything so that I could head to Red Robin and spend the rest of my day talking to 4 different plumbers, 3 different telephone technicians, 2 alarm techs, and (a partridge in a pear tree?) multiple corporate Red Robin folk. All of this on a Friday lunch before schools go back in... it was a beautiful catastrophe. I love my job.

The Journey: Step 1

2008-08-21T22:00:00.001-05:00

Before I post my news for today (coming later tonight for you faithful and addicted bloggers) I wanted to take a second and get everyone up to speed with how I got to where I am in my journey.

I guess it would have all started the day I got saved, which was an amazing day when I met Jesus as a person and asked Him to take control. Take control He did, but I didn't truly surrender for quite some time... and still struggle with that. From that moment I knew I was supposed to be a preacher. But I still wanted to be a marine biologist more.

After high school my parents left me in Alaska with a huge multi-level house to live in. I got into some trouble and wasn't living life in the most positive way or with the most positive people. So I decided to go back to the one place that I had last felt happy, felt meaning, felt a purpose to my existence. That was the Nazarene church in Nikiski, Alaska. On my way there the most amazing thing happened. God called me. The conversation went something like this:

Ok, so I'm going back to church talking to God but I don't even know if You exist, or if I want you to.

I want you.

Great. I still don't know if You exist... What did You say You wanted?

You.

Me?

Yes.

Well I don't know if You've heard, but I'm kinda a big deal. What are You going to do for me?

Ask.

I want to see a moose when I turn the corner.

...

When I turned the corner, sure enough there was a moose standing there on the side of the road... the passenger side. I can still picture it. But we're not done.

Ok, so there was a moose on the side of the road. I live in Alaska. It's winter. There are moose everywhere! That doesn't mean anything.

Really?

Really. I'm quite the skeptic... You of all beings should know that.

Ask.

If You are God (and not some weird moose bearing voice in my head) Then You could do it again... but this time I want the moose to be bedded down in the middle of the road.

*Pause for a quick moose fact*

Moose will not bed down in the middle of the road for 2 reasons. 1. Asphalt is colder than snow. 2. It's not safe. And as dumb as they are, they're not that dumb.

Sure enough I turned into a blubbering pile of mucus and saline when I turned the last corner before entering onto the Spur highway to see... a moose, bedded down, in the middle of the road.

What do You want from me.

You. To do what I Called you to do. Do what is good for you. Be a Pastor.

The Journey: Step 2

2008-08-21T21:29:00.007-05:00

Of course I'm going to skip some pretty important parts of what got me to where I am. (Like moving to California before deciding to move to Washington to go to Northwest University.) But I am going to do my best to give you the mile markers on my journey to today's events.

All my young adult life I have based my perception of value based upon what members of the opposite sex thought of me. I couldn't be alone and be satisfied with who I was without someone else. It was midway through my Jr. year of college at Northwest that I realized this. After searching for what I should do I found myself alone... still struggling with my need for that need affirmation from a woman... because I felt like God wanted me to find out who I was.

Roughly a year later (Jesse will argue my year mark to his death so I put in roughly) I met and started hanging out with a wonderful woman named Breanna. I mention this event because it is very pivotal to who I am. One night while she and I were in the car together *talking* I wondered if this was the one. So I asked.

God, is this the woman You want me to marry?

...

God?

At that moment 2 wolf cubs ran through the campus of a major metropolitan area near Seattle. WOLVES!!!!

Bree: Wow, that's neat. Did you see those wolves?

Yeah... neat. Hey do you want to marry me? (ok, so I saved that for a little while down the road at a concert my band was performing at, but still...WOLVES!!)

After we were married we lived in a 2 bedroom apartment in Redmond where I was the youth pastor for Hillside Chapel under John Bangs. It was on a couch in this apartment that I realized was meant to be something other than a church pastor. When Bree walked in to me sobbing while watching the bombing scene of Pearl Harbor (yes I know it was cheesy and quite the horrible movie overall) she and I both knew that my heart was designed for something other than civilian life. That I had a heart that broke for the men and women of the armed forces. I was meant to be a chaplain. This was confirmed through prayer and wise council but afterwards I knew that was the journey God wanted me on.

The Journey: Step 3

2008-08-21T19:00:00.001-05:00

After a few years of youth and associate pastoring at Hillside Chapel in Redmond, I woke up at 1 am, turned to Bree and said, "Babes (I call her that) what would you think about planting a church?" She was on board. I called up my best friend Jesse (yes at 1 am) and said

"Jesse, what would you think about planting a church?" He responded.

"I've been waiting for you to do something."

Out of that and the small group we had started called "Focus 20" came a church planted in Monroe on Sept. 11, 2005 called "United Foursquare Church." With 7 of us initially starting it, we had high hopes about impacting a young community for Christ. With me continuing to work at Red Robin as a salaried manager it became difficult to give it my all. We did see a lot of people come through, learned a whole ton about loving people and building a church, and went out and worked in our community as an ACTIVE church. Our core values were: CAPTIVATE, ACTIVATE, INTEGRATE, and INITIATE.

After two years of ups and downs, two locations, and a part-time Sr. Pastor. I had a nervous breakdown. Like, a real one. I cried on my wife, then on Jesse, until I couldn't cry. I just didn't know what I was doing. I think that was the beginning of the end of this Step of my journey. We had awesome worship, were on an upswing in attendance, and I had sermons planned for 6 more months when I felt God tell me it was time to continue in another direction. I announced my resignation and started to look at what was next.

The Journey: Step 4

2008-08-21T18:00:00.003-05:00

I packed up everything (this was quite an adventure that you would have to ask my father about) and moved to Springfield, MO. You may ask why... you may ask... because so did I. We moved half way across the US to a state we had never been to, moved into a home we had never set foot in, and I took a job transfer that was miraculously arranged. All of this because there is something unique in Springfield, MO. The Assemblies of Theological Seminary where I needed to go get my master's degree. (It's a requirement of all Air Force Chaplains)

Because I went to Northwest all of my credits would transfer, I was guaranteed a scholarship, and I would already have some of my credits count towards my degree program! Not to mention that, as far as pentecostal schools go, they have pretty much the only master's program designed specifically for chaplains, taught by chaplains.

God provided in so many ways for us to get out here it would take me days to tell each story.

He gave me a job: Red Robin could only get me as close as St. Louis (3 hours away) until miraculously one of the managers from Springfield decided he liked St. Louis better! Then I got promoted to General Manager 3 months ago which provided more financial stability.

He provided the money: Red Robin agreed to pay for the entire move when that is really against policy because it was my decision to move!

He provided a home: Even though we were in a bad financial spot a company still accepted us and gave us a home with us not being there until moving day! Not to mention it has a huge backyard!

He provided a position: The associate and youth pastor at Grace was leaving to take a Sr. Pastor position in OK only a month after we arrived.

That brings me to today. (With plenty of holes in the story.)

Scholarship!

2008-08-21T17:03:00.001-05:00

First off: If you haven't read the steps in this journey (my last 4 posts) stop now and read them... I mean it. Stop now.

I registered for classes last week and then figured out that because of our finances I would be roughly $900 short, a semester, to pay for classes and still feed my family. I was set to drop my classes and spend another 6 months saving and getting ready to start when I talked to Amanda down at AGTS who told me...

"Don't do THAT! Let me talk to the committee and see what we can do. I'll get back with you next week."

So I waited.

Until today.

I didn't tell them how much we were short. Bree and I just prayed. "God, if you want us to do this right now open the door. If not that's ok too."

Today I was resigned to the fact that I would be going down there and dropping the classes. When I got ahold of AGTS Amanda told me that they had reviewed my file and that they were giving me (on top of my already $750) a $1000 a semester, automatically renewing, scholarship!

I start classes on Tuesday. It still wont be easy, but God is awesome!

And my journey continues yet again.

New Sound System

2008-08-20T21:44:00.010-05:00

Tonight Allen and I installed our church's new sound board and put into play a couple of our new microphones. This is the first step in a long awaited upgrade to the sound system at Grace Chapel. We have a drum enclosure that we have drum mics for now and will be getting the stands to make that happen for next week. We are also looking at a new computer to run our visual projection and displays during service. After we have all of that figured out we are going to move on to the final step for now which is to install the new headset monitors for the band which would eliminate stage volume and give the musicians control of their own mixes, while allowing the soundman more power to control the main mix, without having to battle stage sound. All of this is so exciting! After practice (which had our vocals sounding so good!) I took the team back and showed them why the sound could change so much. I don't think they quite appreciated the power at their fingertips, but they were in awe of all the buttons and knobs. (I can understand that.) Thanks for teaching me so much about sound Bob and Bobby! You guys Rock!

Superman

2008-08-19T20:58:00.004-05:00

Tonight I sat down with my children and watched "Superman Returns." I hadn't watched it a while, and I don't think my children had ever seen it. What a masterpiece. It holds so true to the iconic figure of the comic book, the image set by Christopher Reeves, and the societal needs of the world today. Superman wasn't re-invented, or re-done; it was something in between that turned out amazing. Of course I am a superman fanatic.

All of this not even to mention the obvious ties in the movie to Superman and Jesus Christ. The scene of his beating before he sacrifices himself for the world ("billions will die." ~Lex Luthor) and then him plummeting to earth in the position of the cross. What a great parallel! Of course as many would say... all stories are derived from the one story. The story worth being told over and over again of a God trying to redeem His fallen people and sacrificing all things so the people could live.

There was a downside to this experience though. I didn't think through allowing my son (who idolizes Superman as he watches the movie in his Superman Pajamas screaming "look mom, dad... SUPERMAN!!!) to watch. He was literally whining and crying while watching Superman getting beat up on the island. He didn't understand. All my daughter could muster was, "Those are bad men aren't they daddy?" At 2 and 4 they are subjected to their hero and the movie's savior getting kicked around. I'm definitely not allowing them to see "The Passion of the Christ" until they are closer to... um maybe never. I can barely handle that, and I think I have just subjected my son to the child's equivalent. Needless to say I'm feeling like an awesome dad right now.

It can't be too bad though when your daughter says, "You're my Superman daddy."

12 - 5am

2008-08-18T17:53:00.003-05:00

My mom always said that "nothing good happens after midnight." I know that she's pretty on the ball with that thought, but my question is... how long does that last? At what point do things get good again?

Having to get up at 5 am this morning to go to work I would say that nothing good was going on at that point. Who in their right mind, out of their own motivation, gets up at 4:15 in the morning? Not me. Not of my own motivation. As I drove to work I saw all the faces of the people trudging to their places of employment. I submit to you (yes Jesse I said it) that nothing good starts well after 5 am. Like closer to 6 or 7. I wouldn't put it anywhere past 9 though. If you are still asleep at 9 then you were doing something after midnight or just need a heck of a lot of sleep. So, with that I say: stay in bed. If everyone stayed in bed an extra hour no one would have to get up at 4:15 in the morning.

5th Anniversary

2008-08-17T20:45:00.006-05:00

Today was Breanna and my 5th anniversary. It's pretty spectacular simply for the fact that we actually get to celebrate it together by doing something we want to. Over the past 5 years on this date I have been: 1. Gone at youth camps 2. Doing weddings out of state or 3. In the process of packing, handing over a church, and moving to Missouri. Quite a man, I know. All the ladies should be jealous of the loving affection I show on my anniversaries. But this year, to everyones surprise, I actually planned something! I was going to get us reservations on the Branson Belle to take a cruise of the lake with dinner and such. But after last night's battle with Faith...

*Story Time*

Last night Bree went out with some of her "gal friends" to see "Mamma Mia." (I know, I know)

I let her head out around 7 and took care of the kiddos. I watched Larry Boy with them, got them bathed, and then put them into bed with no ordeals. Then Bree calls at 10:15 saying she was going to stay out a little bit longer with the ladies at a coffee shop. This wouldn't have been a problem (and I told her to continue in her fun) but when she called she woke up Faith. Faith would not stop crying! I tried to give her a bottle, which she spit out, gagged on, and screamed more at. I tried to sing and play and hold and snuggle and you name it but nothing worked. She was hungry and I couldn't give her what she wanted. (Not quite anatomically equip for that.) So I had to call Bree and have her come home a little bit early to a screaming child and me frustrated out of my mind.

*End Story Time*

...Bree didn't feel right leaving the baby with our friends until 9pm. This made me sad but I quickly came up with an alternative... Incredible Pizza! (Actually this was my first idea but my kitchen manager shot it down as being not just unromantic but ANTI- romantic.) What can I say, I tried.

Luckily I married an awesome woman that loves to have fun so she went right along with it and we had a great time playing mini-golf, skee-ball, video games, air hockey, and gaining tickets. We ate a pizza buffet and some dessert while watching a Don Knots movie in their "drive in" cafe area and then got the kids some prizes with our tickets before ending our date. It's just so us.

5 Years and I'm still the luckiest man alive. I actually found a woman that doesn't just put up with me... she thinks I'm awesome. (She's also a major hottie.) That makes her the best wife ever!

Joey

2008-08-16T15:03:00.005-05:00

I have a brother named Joey. He's wicked smart, writes poetry, is so open to anything and treats everyone with so much compassion. The problem with Joey is that he's an addict. Today I left work early because he OD'd on Heroin and wasn't supposed to make it. He literally died. His heart stopped and they revived him. We prayed like crazy... and he woke up. Now he wont accept any kind of help and wants the people who were there out of love and concern to go away. He's been living on the streets of Seattle for months now and has all kinds of physical problems. He keeps slapping the hands that are trying to help. It sucks because we keep mourning him and he keeps making these decisions to live a craptacular life. I JUST DON"T GET IT!!! Why? I wonder if this is how God feels about my selfish actions that continually chosen have been leading me down a path that hurts Him and takes me further away from anything good? Common Joe, wake up.

On a positive note, the team from Red Robin immediately jumped all around this and covered my shifts for a week in case I needed to take my family out to Washington for the worst case scenario. My boss even told me not to take vacation but that they would cover my pay and help out with the plane expenses! How awesome is that? I truly do work for the best company in the world. My pastor sent one of our friends over to be with Bree until I could get home as well. What a great place to be right now. It's not until something does go wrong that you realize how much people do care for you.

Jelly Beans

2008-08-15T20:53:00.007-05:00

Today at work Terri broke out the Bean Boozled again. It's always a blast watching the teams faces when they think they're getting "sweet pear" only to bite into, what legitimately tastes like, booger! Ah, fun times. We have tried to find these things in bulk; but, alas, they only come in novelty sizes. Come on Jelly Belly, release the mixed up goodness to us!

Leslie started her first day in a manager's shirt... (clapping is approved of). We walked through the 18 steps of management (which isn't like a 12 step program to healing but more like a bunch of steps closer to insanity every day). She'll rock it out of the park next week. We're really building a strong team in Springfield. I'm not so afraid of going to college and leaving it in their hands for a little bit.

Rules

2008-08-15T20:41:00.004-05:00

Just a quick thought. What if God only gave us rules so that we would always know that we need him? What if He knew we would never come close to being able to do it all without Him so He made it very obvious that it wasn't about the rules, but about our need for Him to help us become better... become more... become a part of His relationship. It's blowing my mind right now. A world without the religious rules... without the struggle for power through putting others down because they cannot live up to your standards? What would that look like if we stopped caring about following the "rules" and who is and who isn't, but rather cared about loving those around us, God, and even those people we can't stand because they are different. What a beautifully anarchistic thought. Read "The Shack." It'll make you think. Then read "The Bible" and it makes some sense.

Japanese Stroll Garden

2008-08-14T16:28:00.009-05:00

Family time at the Adams' for my day off took us to Nathaniel Greene park and the Japanese Stroll Garden contained therein. It was a blast. Then the kids got tired and quit posing for the awesome pictures. So.... PICTURE TIME!!!!

AGTS - The future

2008-08-14T13:39:00.006-05:00

This morning I went to AGTS (Assemblies of God Theological Seminary) to register for classes and see how much it would set us back. I did find out that they have changed the master's program from a 90 credit hour program to a 75 credit hour program... woohoo. We aren't going to take out any loans for this thing though.

After getting my courses selected, adding on my $750 a semester scholarship... we're still a little bit short. So I called the Air Force and talked to them some more about the chaplain candidate program. It's all too much to take it right now. I think we're going to wait another semester and then go in after we've saved up a little bit o' cash. That's discouraging, but you never know what God can do. I've got a week to figure this out before classes start so we'll see. I guess there is still a possibility that the scholarship committee will grant me some more $ towards this semester. If that happens my journey will have finally begun!

To go in for the chaplain candidate program would only require for me to be gone one month a year in the reserves. (Not even the one weekend a month!) I'm all set for that and could go in tomorrow which would help in the long run but the way that works is that you pay for all the schooling, and then when you pass the class they give you up to 75% of the tuition back. That doesn't help me much right now and with my time table it wouldn't do me a lot of good to go in until I've got one year of my master's program under my belt.

Bree is really pushing for me to go in, but it just seems so selfish for me to go back to school if it hurts my families quality of life so much. I just can't seem to justify putting my dreams ahead of my children. Will it put us in a better place in the long run? Is it what God wants for our family right now? God has always given me great direction in the past... sure unwavering strength. I can't seem to find that in this. So what do you do if you are unsure? Keep moving forward until the road is gone or a turn is revealed.

Training, Meetings, and worship

2008-08-13T20:50:00.006-05:00

I started my day praying with my wife (yep I actually am going to try and do this on a consistent basis). It gave me a focus throughout the day and really put my mind in the right place, even at 5:00 am. I opened the restaurant and got a chance to train Leslie in the Heart of House (kitchen) today. She'll start legit management training Friday with me.

We had a good sit down with our host staff, I told them they all need to be Red Robin Cheerleaders and make this place rock! They seemed to buy in but we'll see how effective I am in a couple of weeks. Then I got to go to staff meeting and worship practice.

I love worship... the singing kind in particular. I know that everything we do is supposed to be worship, but I think that God gave us something special when he gave us the ability to create music. I think that was designed with worship in mind. It just feels so right. I had a blast talking with the group about songs and being listened to. It's good to know that they would rather have me sing than even play (which is a new thing for me). We are working on upgrading all the sound equipment in the church and should see some awesome new stuff in the next couple of weeks. It will be good to have the set up to facilitate the band and the congregation. They are talking about having me play Djembe when the regular bass player comes back (even though they think I'm doing great). I think they might change their minds when they hear my percussion skills LOL.

The Simple Things

2008-08-12T21:10:00.004-05:00

So today I got up ready to go to work for a swing shift (the worst because you don't get to see your kids more than 2 hours in the whole day) and was motivated by the simple things.

1. Setting up a train track and playing train with Joshua before taking a shower
2. Building towers out of dominos for my children to take turns demolishing
3. A goodbye kiss.
4. Being told I am a good boss.
5. Listening to a friend and being able to encourage them.
6. Realizing the way we impact each others lives all the time...

*Pause for a quick story*

I was roommates with a guy named Chad at Northwest Bible College in Kirkland WA and he had a buddy named Justin. The two of them used to eat my food and play my video games while I studied... but they always invited me to have fun with them. I don't think they knew how much that meant to me. Anyway, Justin walked into my restaurant yesterday (yes, in Springfield MO!) looking for a job. Man you just never know. I encouraged him to find something else but if he couldn't... of course I would hook him up!

*Story Done*

7. Utilizing only 2 screwdrivers and a hanger, unlocking your van's door to retrieve the keys your wife had lock in it. MacGyver!
8. Children running to meet you at the door
9. Your daughter falling off the couch but not being hurt
10. This video...nuff said.

My life may not always be fun. But it's so worth it.

Work

2008-08-11T19:13:00.008-05:00

Today was Monday, always a brutal day at Red Robin, but I made it awesome! Me and my team in Springfield managed to do something the previous regime could not do in their entire first year... we held an entire period (4 weeks) at green food cost with positive (above budget) sales! My boss, John, told me "not bad for a rookie." I told him to kiss my butt, we work hard down in Springfield. He thought that was funny. I thought I was pretty bold telling my boss to kiss my butt. (afterthought: not a great idea, but I'm glad he thought it was funny.) Just to show you a little bit about what I do I figured I'd show you my day and the place I spend most of my life. Really I figured it out and I spend most of my waking hours here...

This is my building. No really, it's supposedly mine... see... My name is on the door!

But so is hers...

This is Terri Voss (my rockin' kitchen manager and second in line to the throne. Ken is her Assistant and helps me out with my crazy ideas. Like this one I had today that in order to puncture through a stainless steel plate to install a hose rack I should hammer a large pole into it that required both of our efforts... and was not quite the right tool. (Bob would have made fun of me for using the wrong tool for the job)

And of course, whenever I don't feel motivated, I can take one look at our glorious mascot giving me the "thumbs up" even when someone screams in my face or finds some reason to get me to buy their meal for them... I know he approves of my effort. And why not? I make him a boatload of money every day!

Pre-married's counseling

2008-08-11T19:01:00.006-05:00

So last night I came to the realization that somethings have changed over the course of five years and others are still the same. As Bree and I get closer to our 5 year anniversary it is great to be doing multiple bouts of pre-married counseling. Watching and listening to Brian and Charith (good friends of ours from church) go through this process with me makes me strive to be a better husband and remember why I chose Bree to be the only woman in my life.

I still have some growing to do though. We have decided that (even though I work at 5 am most mornings) we are going to wake up at least 15 minutes early to pray together. This is a difficult thing for me because even though I love God and Bree, even after all this time, I still find it hard to share those two relationships with each other. We'll be working on this though. I should learn to share a little better with the ones I love I think.

Church

2008-08-10T16:20:00.006-05:00

So I went to church today and played my bass for worship at Grace Chapel Church. (The website is very "Clip arty" but serves its purpose.) Pastor Jay talked about the importance of our time alone with God. It was pretty eye opening (not becuase I didn't know that it was important to spend time alone with God). One of his points had to do with making sure that our alone time didn't become "religious." Like reading a set devotional every day or feeling like junk every time you missed something or didn't get through a certain reading...I like that.

But what I really think got to me today is that I wanted to spend time with Jesus. Stick with me here. I have been reading The Shack by William P. Young. It has been revolutionary for me. It has expanded my understanding of our relationship with God. Our roles, you might say, but more like the lack there-of. I'm just swept up right now in how much love Young portrays in God and the way he does it just makes me want to spend time with God... all 3 parts of him. That's something I don't know that I've ever had. I may fear one and welcome another aspect of God, but just like understanding in other areas of life breeds familiarity, so too with God. Read the book. It will rock your world.

2008-08-09T17:59:00.004-05:00

Ok so I'll try this blog thing. First things first...This is my family.

My wife Bree, Joshua 2 (lower left), Faith 6months (middle), & Joy 4(Right)