Pray for Clayton

My buddy Clayton is taking a few months to hike the Appalachian Trail. He started in Georgia on Thursday, March 27th and will finish up in Maine after about five months on the trail. Clayton is at a transition point in his life and wanted to spend some serious time with God as he sought direction for his future. His adventure over the next five months will take him through 14 states during three different seasons and will cover over 2,200 miles! Please pray for his safety and for him to have an incredible time seeking the Lord. You can follow his journey through his facebook page, where he’s posting his trail journal and pictures. Just send a request to be his friend and he’ll add you, his name is Clayton Whitson from Wichita, KS. (you can find him through my facebook if we’re already friends!).

Rock Chalk Championship

This post is a little delayed, but it’s been a very busy week.

The championship game was everything that a good championship game should be. Probably the best I’ve watched in years, of course winning helps too!

Things I loved about the game:

- Roy Williams wearing a KU sticker (classy Roy)
- Mario’s last second shot to tie the game (seriously, how amazing was that??)
- Great coaching by Bill Self (not waiting till the last minute to start fouling…thank you!)
- Having my whole family in our KU shirts!
- Having Danny Manning back on the team 20 years after he lead the Hawks to their last national championship
- Watching the joy on Sasha Kaun’s face after the game (you’ve come a long way big guy!)
- Celebrating the win with my dad. After watching KU games together for the last 15 or so years, it was amazing to see them win it all!
- Explaining to Aiden why this game was such a big deal, and hearing him say “Dad, I want to go to KU and play basketball.”

What a great night!!!

The day is here…

I’ve held off posting about my Jayhawks this week, and I’m still not going to say much.

I’m ready for the best game of the year.

Rawk Chalk Jayhawk.

The Deer Whisperer Part Three…and Ruthie the Toothie

Ok…this is getting kind of ridiculous.

Tonight it was time to put the kids to bed again, so Maddy ran back to her window to see if anything was there. “Daddy, come quick” she yelled, “there’s something out there!” I ran back to her room and looked out to see the ugly pale face of an opossum looking staring back at us. A minute later we noticed some movement off to the right of the opossum, and the large skunk (from last night) walked back into the area to get some food. We watched them for awhile, then went to the bathroom to do bath time. Following bath time we looked back outside to see a large rabbit eating, but the skunk and opossum were gone. The whole family went to our bedroom to play for a bit (while listening to our favorite new CD by Josh Weaver!) and then to pray together before bed. After prayers we took them back to their room to put them in their beds. One last look out the window revealed that the rabbit was gone, and the deer were back. And everything comes full circle again. I seriously wouldn’t be surprised to see a coyote or mountain lion out there tomorrow…it’s the strangest little thing we’ve seen in a long time.

While all that was going on, Jill pulled one of Maddy’s loose teeth (which brings the number of teeth still in her mouth down to about 3…she seriously looks like she just went 6 rounds with Mike Tyson). Maddy took the tooth in her hand and boldly proclaimed “This is my tooth…and I will call her Ruthie!”

“Why Ruthie?” asked Jill.

“Because my tooth had some blood on it, and blood is red. So I will call her Ruthie the Toothie.”

Not sure where the logic is in there, but I guess it works out in the mind of a six year old. So…here’s to Ruthie the Toothie and her wonderful animal friends that reside in our back yard.

The Deer Whisperer, Part Two

A quick update…

Last night as I put the kids to bed I decided to take a quick peek outside to see if there were any deer. No deer outside, but I noticed something moving under the tree a few feet from the window. As it came into the light, I saw it was a pretty large skunk. I quickly shut the window (but left the curtains and blinds open) and told the kids and Jill to check it out. He was a really big skunk, just hanging out right there outside the kids’ window. While we were watching the skunk, I noticed something moving a little to the left of the skunk. Next thing I know, a big raccoon walks up and starts eating the food left out by the bird lady (our neighbor). I’ve lived in Andover for most of my life and never seen a raccoon like this before. It was really wild (pun intended).

So, I’m fairly certain that tonight I’ll look outside and see a bear or mountain lion, or maybe some roaming Kansas bison or a group of wild horses. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

The Deer Whisperer

Two nights ago Maddy walked into the living room after we had already put her to bed and stared at us with a crazy look on her face. “There are deer outside my window” she said with an odd smile/smirk on her face. It was the kind of face that she normally makes when saying something like “there’s a monkey that lives under my bed” or “Daddy, my toots smell like butterflies”, so I was fairly certain there were no deer outside her window as I walked her back to her bedroom. Once in her room and I looked out her window to find not one but four deer standing around outside. No doubt they were there to feast on the food left by our neighbor, the bird-lady (another story for another time), but still it was a surprise to see them…and I was amazed that Maddy looked outside at just the right moment to know they were there.

So last night Maddy get up in the middle of the night again, this time at 1:00 AM to use the bathroom. She’s didn’t want to go back to her bed, so I let her sleep on the couch for about 30 minutes before Jill put her back in her own room. As Jill enters Maddy’s bedroom, Maddy is in that zombie stage somewhere between asleep and awake. She stirs a bit and points at the window (where the blinds are closed and the curtains are pulled shut) and says “There’s already a deer outside my window”.

Jill looks, and sure enough there is a single deer standing outside the window. “Oh yeah…you’re right” she replies to Maddy, still trying to figure out how on earth she knew there was a deer out there.

“I looked out and saw it, and I saw a wolf howling,” says Maddy. “You know why wolves howl? To warn other animals of danger. They get up on the top of a mountain and go like this…”

At this point the zombie Maddy lets out a loud howl.

Then the zombie/deer whisperer Maddy continues…”I learned how to talk to dogs. At school they said that you blow a whistle to talk to dogs.”

Then she told Jill that she loved her and instantly fell asleep.

Preshow at The Story

I’ve quickly learned that you have to count on at least one thing going wrong at every event. It’s basically a given. This morning our production set-up was supposed to start at 9am. It would have been fine, except our trailer full of tech gear had a wheel go out on it about 2 hours from the venue. We managed to find other things to do while our courageous friend Chris pulled everything out of the trailer and loaded it into a U-haul trailer (and then left the other trailer at a repair place in the nice little KS town of Emporia). So, we started the day behind schedule, but everything ended up working out just fine. We have most of our camera stuff set up, and our sand artist, Joe Castillo, has his stuff all set up too. While all that was going up, we also set up some of the design stuff. I’m really pumped about our stage design this year. I had the basic concept in my head, and our friends at The Design Centre helped me pull it all together. It took some work (and some fun painting time!), but I think that it looks great. Tomorrow morning the rest of our team arrives, so everything else should come together quickly.

The team at COR is really amazing. The head of their youth department, Jason Gant, is a great guy who has been a real blessing to work with, and the rest of the staff has been awesome. Their middle school director, Taylor Ogden-Thomas is tops, and their youth events director Deborah Comstock has been super sweet and very accommodating. On the production side, they have an incredible technical director named Dave Pullin, and an awesome tech crew. Jason Watson does a lot of production for them, and has helped Jill learn Motion on her Macbook. He also produced a video for us that is awesome! Another cool thing about the tech team here is that we have the same sound and lighting guys that we had last year. Rob and Chris are awesome, and I’m really stoked that Jill gets to work with them (and the whole team) for her first time doing the technical directing.

After we set up tonight, we went out for an awesome bbq dinner (Jack Stacks anyone?). It was me, Jill, Bella, Joe and Cindy Castillo, Chris Kaufman, Josh Tryon, and Betsy and Sally Rymer. Chris is part of our stuck team, and Josh is here from Minnesota running Media Shout for the event. He’s also an ace at all things tech, so he’s helping set up the live video stuff too. It’s been a blast having him here, he’s a great guy with a lot to add to any program. Betsy Rymer is the mother of Sally, a 15 year old abolitionist who lives here in KC. I first met Sally in the fall of 2005 while leading worship at a retreat for her youth group. She struck me as a really incredible kid with a heart and passion for God, and a really sweet spirit. She also attended our first event in 2006. I’ll share more about Sally in a later post, but you can check out her ministry here.

We’re back in the hotel now, and I’m getting really excited about our event this weekend. And, as a side note, I’m feeling 100% better. Jill is still pretty sick though, so please keep praying for her.