Sorry for the little jingle at the end of the first one, I don’t think I am going to be using that software.

 

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 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I finally sold my Honda 599 to an awesome guy named Kevin who just got back from Iraq.  I am sad to see it go but know that it will be in a better place(not my garage collecting dust).  Next step, sell my car.

Those are all twenty dollar bills.

So we started to contact churches all over the country, and so far the response has been good.  A lot of people seem interested in this trip, and we are excited about what God is going to do with it.  We have been updating our tour schedule page as churches agree to take part.  You can check it out to see what churches are on board so far.  Also I put all the cities in red where we still need a place to stay.  Please take a look and see if you know anyone in those areas that would be willing to put us up for a night.

Thanks.

I have some good news, I just talked to John, our new friend who lives in Ninilichik, AK, and he has a place for us to stay.  For most of the trip we will only be in one state for a day or two, but we plan on staying in Alaska for 3 to 4 weeks, So this is big news.  Cheryl Cleveland, our Operations Manager at Parkcrest, told me about her husband’s uncle a couple months back, and we finally got to connect tonight.

On another note, I just found out I have relatives in North Carolina that I never met, and we got to connect through email today.  They told me they have a place for me to stay, and so needless to say, I am really excited about meeting them.

If you have a chance, take a look at our tour schedule page and see if there are any places where you know of people that would be willing to put us up for a night.  We are relying a lot on you, our friends and readers, to help us find people from all over who want to help with the trip.

OK, so if you have read any of my blogs, you will know it is pretty often that I catch kids doing something stupid right outside my office window. Lets reminiscence shall we on what I have observed here at the Lakewood campus.

• I have caught kids sneaking under our half-pipe to do, who knows what.
• I have watched kids hammer away at our lock until they broke it just so they could skate. At this time there was a sign with my name and number on it, just in case anyone wanted to skate. I guess braking it was just easier.
• I have watched kids run away with things previously stolen out of my office.

And today was no different. Today I watched a kid tag my ramp in broad day light, and then him and his homies proceeded to smoke some weed right there in plain view of the police. Funny thing is that as soon as I saw them walk up, I was going to go out and see if they wanted to skate the ramp, cause they had boards in hand. But as soon as I saw him tag, I was just mad. We get tagged here all the time, and it is annoying. Jim has painted that shed and ramp several times to cover up these guys stupid things they write all over the place. So once again I called the police, and just sat and waited for them to come and bust these guys. The police didn’t come until they were walking away, but I kept watching them even when they were halfway to Mayfair. I pointed them out to the police, and they rolled them right away. They all got tickets for possession, and the tagger got arrested.

I think there might be something wrong with me, cause I just enjoy this way to much, and I have zero mercy on punk kids who vandalize a church. What can I say, Rachel was right, I love justice and hate mercy. Maybe someday I will stop relishing in punk kids getting in trouble, but for now, I really do enjoy it.

Its the title of a book I picked up by Rolf Potts, and he defines it as leaving the ordered world to travel on the cheap for an extended period of time. It is pretty interesting so far, and I think I will enjoy the wisdom the author shares about traveling. I wanted to share witha quote from the book, which I think is especially relevant to our current sermon series at church.  He says this:

“The more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we’re too poor to buy our freedom”

This is something I have been thinking a lot about in the last couple months, and since Paul’s comment about his friends slogan which was “Live simple, Live free.”  I think as a culture, we enslave ourselves to our stuff.  We buy things that we think we need, and then we have to pay money to maintain those things, and so we just end up enslaving ourselves more and more.  We do this with no mater what we buy, houses, cars, motorcycles, iphones.  The ironic thing is that the more we own, the more we enslave ourselves.  I have been working hard to own less things, so that I can be more generous, and so that I can be more free.  It is hard, even this computer I am typing on can be a hindrance.  We think we can’t afford to buy our freedom, but financial freedom comes when we just stop buying more than we actually need.

What if we just bought what we needed, maybe even just what we needed to be comforable?  I picture everyone living in airstream aluminum trailers, with crappy cars, and no yard, but maybe that is just cause I grew up in Victorville.  But imagine what people could collectively do with all that money.  On the selfish side of things, people could travel the whole world, whereve they wanted.  And on the philanthropy side, we could make it so that everyone in the world has access to clean water.

I don’t think having things is bad, I just think it is sad that we are so enslaved to our stuff, and so caught up in the idea that money is all there is, that we believe we will never be able to buy our own freedom.

*Note: Kozmo did eventually fix his bike.