MONKEY SEE, MONKEY LOSE A TOOTH TOO

Our family is loosing teeth like crazy.

• Monkey #1 lost another one late last week. He has four gone.
  
• Monkey #2 lost another last night and is missing almost the whole upper front deck.
  
• Monkey #3 decided not to be left out and entered the land of the toothless lost his first tonight after shower time. His first question was, "Dad, will you take my picture?"

The tooth fairy is going broke visiting our house.

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PUBLISHED... SORTA

I wrote an article for Simply Youth Ministry last week. I didn't know it had posted to their site, but I just got an e-mail from an old friend who read it online. Funny.

Anyway- if you want to read it, click here.

I'll be writing 3 of them. My next one is due Friday. Just like 800 word "help from the field" advice and practical teaching stuff. Drop in on Simply to check it out in the future or to look up other quick articles to read from men and women in the trenches of youth ministry with me.

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TOOTHLESS FACE

Tyler lost another tooth tonight. Evidently he's going to have to start eating all his food through a blender or just gum his food to death. Only one left on the prized top front row.

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UGANDA SKYPE

Crazy world we live in. Uganda is 11 hours ahead of us and so tonight I talked to my brother in law in Uganda via a video conference through Skype while he was experiencing the beginning of tomorrow. Great to get caught up and to see his face. Absolutely crazy that we can do that 10,000 miles away. Sometimes I really praise God I live in the internet age. Most of those days I wonder how I ever got along without it.

Also, we're planning our trip to Uganda this summer. We're currently putting together our team 15 and in late July we'll be headed to Uganda to serve in this orphanage and the surrounding communities. Should be awesome and I can't wait to see my family. I'll be there for almost a month this summer, staying after the "missions portion" to hang with my family and meet with the child we sponsor through World Vision. I think that will be AWESOME!!!

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PRESSURE

Today I was stewing on some of the pressures I feel pretty regularly as a pastor- in purely a random list I started typing....

• be funny
• be young at heart
• be athletic and physically fit
  
• be a great communicator
• be organized
• be on facebook
• be on myspace
• be a pop-culture wiz
• be aware of all things youtube
  
• be a travel agent
• be a graphic artist
• be a web designer
• be a great writer
• be photographic memory man with student's faces and names
  
• be a janitor
• be ultimately responsible for the ministry
• be caring
• be loving
• be available to those in need
• be trustworthy
• be a visionary
• be a corrector
• be devoted to prayer
• be memorizing scripture
• be reading my Bible
  
• be fasting
• be a videographer
• be a seminary student
• be a learner
• be a booking agent
• be great with money
• be creative
• be informed about politics
• be aware of the big news in the world
• be a blog updater
• be a listener
• be healthy
• be ready to eat pizza and junk food so I can hang out with students
  
• be on campus
• be relational and know the lives of my leaders
• be a small group leader
• be connected with my students
• be involved in our network
• be willing to say yes
  
• be willing to say no
• be a friend
• be a mentor
• be raising up lots of other mentors
• be a dad to the dadless
• be wise
  
• be a pastor
• be a forgiver
• be thinking about the future
• be reading lots and lots of current books
• be writing blog posts about what I'm reading
• be at every youth conference in the country
• be up on what the "emerging church" says
• be up on what Luther and Ignatius and Spurgeon and Calvin and....
• be up on what such and such a church is doing
  
• be watching survivor, american idol, and the office
• be aware of the latest and greatest on mtv
• be a surfer
• be mad skilled at all things xbox and such
• be a movie goer
  
• be texting my students
• be e-mailing
• be sending snail mail encouragement notes
• be thinking of others
  
• be a listener of podcast teaching
  
• be a member of a pastor team
• be a counselor for pastoral drop in needs in the office
  
• be caring for creation
• be playing some band on my ipod no one else has ever heard of but makes me cool
• be a family man
• be a manager
• be a leader
• be a pleaser of God
• be a pleaser of people
  
• be.......

Um... yeah. Obviously some of this is healthy and some not so much. Some comes naturally. Some I suck at quite naturally too. On a good day this list makes me give up and lean on Jesus and just be me and rest in God alone. On a bad day, it beats me up, makes me feel like a loser, and makes me want to quit under the weight of feeling like an utter failure.

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FACEBOOK CRAZINESS

Um... after my first day of facebook existence it has become clear to me, I'm obviously very late to the facebook party. Half the world is on facebook. I think everyone in my world but me.

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