Category: Personal News

Last night Paula and I had next year’s Chi Alpha offi­cers over for sup­per. It was great (both the meal and the com­pa­ny)!

We laughed–a lot. That’s a good sign.

Left to right: Nate, Shaowei, Nathaniel.

Whew–I spoke three times today and par­tic­i­pat­ed in a reli­gious dis­cus­sion group! I’m a lit­tle drained. Worst of all was that my first engage­ment was two hours away, and I only had about two hours between my first and sec­ond appoint­ment (which was back here at Stan­ford)! We real­ly had to book it.

For­tu­nate­ly, we’re at the end of a busy sea­son. Last week­end I was in Spring­field help­ing to script a minis­eries (no, real­ly) that Chi Alpha is going to burn onto CDs and dis­trib­ute to col­lege stu­dents all across Amer­i­ca. I got back and went to preach in Modesto that Sun­day. Mon­day Paula and I drove up to the Lake Men­do­ci­no sec­tion­al fel­low­ship, and today I had all those speak­ing engage­ments… *whew*

That makes it almost two months that Paula and I have been run­ning around like chick­ens with our heads cut off. It was real­ly start­ing to affect my speak­ing: I’d say that none of the pre­sen­ta­tions I gave today were A‑quality. They were all B‑range. Soon I should be able to recharge and do bet­ter.

I feel kind of guilty. I should be a bet­ter mod­el for my stu­dents, but this sea­son of hec­tic activ­i­ty was pret­ty much nec­es­sary… *sigh*

Oh well, at least it’s over (I think).

I had a great birth­day, thanks every­one!

I was one whipped pup­py after what felt like a month on the road (actu­al­ly, it was­n’t too far shy of a month). Tomor­row Paula and I head to Sacra­men­to and Wednes­day I fly to Vegas for a quick speak­ing engage­ment and then I’m home!

Any­way, we had a group of friends over to cel­e­brate and we had a great time. I think one of the parts I enjoyed most was watch­ing the ladies-only round of Halo on the XBox. It was pret­ty funny–I think only one of them had ever played before.

Speak­ing of XBox, I got XBox Live for my birth­day. If any of my friends are curi­ous my GamerTag is GTD. The only Live game I own is MechAs­sault.

I think that’s about it… I’ve caught up on the over 500 email mes­sages (most­ly junk) that I had wait­ing for me, so if you haven’t heard back from me yet it’s pos­si­ble that I delet­ed your mes­sage by mis­take.

I just returned from the North­ern California/Nevada Dis­trict Coun­cil of the Assem­blies of God. My hec­tic trav­els are near­ly com­plet­ed now (I do have to fly into Vegas next week, but it slows down after that for a while).

If you’ve emailed me in the last three weeks I almost cer­tain­ly haven’t replied. Sor­ry about that, but I real­ly haven’t been able to keep up with my email del­uge. I should be get­ting caught up over the week­end and by the ear­ly part of next week I should be done.

I might take tomor­row off, though. It’s my birth­day!

We’ve returned from Springfield–it was a nice flight (even if our flight path was a lit­tle odd–east from Kansas City to St. Louis and then back west to San Jose).

A severe thun­der­storm tore through the Spring­field area and both Kansas City and St. Louis were quite over­cast when we left, so we were real­ly look­ing for­ward to return­ing to sun­ny Cal­i­for­nia.

We got here and every­thing was wet. Evi­dent­ly there had been some pret­ty heavy rains just a lit­tle while ago.

I just found that fun­ny.

Once again, I find myself sit­ting in the Mud­house (Spring­field­’s coolest cof­fee shop) typ­ing away on a lap­top (bor­rowed, this time, from Ste­fanie Chappell–future Chi Alpha mis­sion­ary to the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. area).

I’m sit­ting here with Paula, Joe Zick­afoose, Sarah Her­man, Ste­fanie Chap­pell, and Noble Bow­man, and Ste­fanie is urg­ing me to blog some­thing per­son­al. To, in her words, “let out my deep feel­ings.”

Hmmm…

I am deeply hap­py to vis­it Spring­field, and I am deeply hap­py not to live here any­more. Sat­is­fied, Stef?

By the way, if you live in Spring­field and Paula and I haven’t got­ten togeth­er with you yet, call us soon–we’re leav­ing Fri­day morn­ing!

Wow–what a whirl­wind of activ­i­ty! We’re see­ing every­one we pos­si­bly can, and we’re hav­ing a great time doing it

I’m still not access­ing my email all that fre­quent­ly, but I’m check­ing as often as I can. If you don’t hear from me, don’t assume I’m brush­ing you off.

Dis­trict coun­cil starts tomor­row…

Paula and I are sit­ting in the Mud­house in Spring­field, MO typ­ing away on our lap­tops. We flew in a lit­tle ear­ly for the South­ern Mis­souri Dis­trict Coun­cil and we’re con­nect­ing with old friends and col­leagues.

So far it’s been great–we’ve got­ten togeth­er with Levi Augur (an alum­nus from our min­istry back at SMS), his par­ents (who gra­cious­ly allowed us to stay at their house), Joss Wal­ter (the first pas­tor to ever book us for a ser­vice), and Rich Avi­la (anoth­er pas­toral-type per­son we know). We’re stay­ing with Joe and Jayne Zick­afoose, who are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing to go estab­lish uni­ver­si­ty min­istry in Scot­land. It’s great!

While we were in the air our stu­dents back at Stan­ford orga­nized and led the week­ly wor­ship ser­vice by them­selves. I can’t wait to hear how it went–Paula and I are very excit­ed at the lev­el of pas­sion and own­er­ship they’re dis­play­ing!

My wife just informed me it’s time to go grab lunch, so I’m sign­ing off. I may edit this lat­er to add more details and cor­rect any spelling/grammatical errors.

Last week­end I promised my dad that I’d put some per­son­al news on the site, and I’ve been not doing that ever since. Sor­ry!

Last week­end was pret­ty neat: Paula and I got to share in two church­es: Cameron Park Chris­t­ian Cen­ter and Lake­view Assem­bly. They were both quite cool in dif­fer­ent ways. It was­n’t even that much driving–they’re with­in two hours or so of one anoth­er!

The work week was pret­ty busy: the stu­dents returned from spring break, and I real­ly felt that I need­ed to talk about the war head-on. What good is faith if it does­n’t inform your every­day view of the world?

At the same time, I don’t think it’s my job to tell peo­ple what to think; rather, I’m to help them learn to think in a Bib­li­cal way. So I opt­ed to talk about the sub­ject of war­fare in gen­er­al, what we should think about it, and what we should do in a time of war. All that to say, I had a lot of prep work to do!

I put my notes on the group web­site so they could fol­low up on some ref­er­ences I made.

As usu­al, we went to the Stan­ford Cof­fee­house after­ward and stayed up for far too long talk­ing.

Wednes­day I made a TON of phone calls. My ear still hurts (not real­ly).

Thurs­day Paula and I decid­ed to have some stu­dents over for a home-cooked meal and we stayed up entire­ly too late talk­ing (notice the pat­tern).

Fri­day I was sick (no doubt due to the afore­men­tioned pat­tern).

Which brings me to today. I got sun­burn on my ears. I hope they don’t peel too vis­i­bly while I’m preach­ing tomorrow–I bet that would be dis­tract­ing.

This was a pret­ty amaz­ing day–I bought a djem­be for our min­istry, I was for­mal­ly invit­ed to guest lec­ture in a grad class about “The Role of Reli­gion In the Ide­al Soci­ety”, I had a neat answer to prayer, and I met a remark­able per­son.

First, the neat answer to prayer: I’ve been vis­it­ing a guy named Tom at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter. He has a tra­chea tube which pre­vents him from speak­ing, and so I had to work out a chart that allowed him to spell out words to me using ges­tures. Today he asked me to pray that he would be able to speak soon–as we fin­ished pray­ing a doc­tor walked in a placed a spe­cial attach­ment on the end of his tra­chea tube that allowed him to do some vocal­iza­tion! He still can’t talk flu­ent­ly, but he’s on the recov­ery trail.

Sec­ond, today Paula and I went to pick up a stu­den­t’s father at San Jose Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. He’s going to be in town to see his daugh­ter and do some research. Any­way, I real­ized this morn­ing that I did­n’t real­ly know what Dr. Abegg looked like, so I googled for Mar­tin Abegg and short­ly real­ized that he’s the rea­son the Dead Sea Scrolls were pub­lished after decades of secre­cy! For more info, read the fas­ci­nat­ing com­men­tary by Penn Jil­lette (yes, the magi­cian of Penn & Teller fame) or the arti­cle The Dead Sea Scrolls: Mak­ing The Good Book Even Bet­ter?

Any­way, he’s a great guy and we had a won­der­ful time get­ting to know him bet­ter.

And I just thought this was going to be a day like any oth­er…

More on that guest lec­ture­ship in a grad class soon–The West Wing beck­ons…