Ski

We just wrapped up our Second Annual Father/Son Male-Bonding Event Where We Just Happen To Go Skiing. :-) Jacen and I went to Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia again this year. Jacen spent the first day in Ski School while I skied the harder runs. I particularly reacquainted myself with a Terrain Part, jumping as far as 6 feet. The second day we spent skiing together. We had a number of firsts this year: 1) First time we tried night skiing - the lift tickets we got covered night skiing, so we went out after dinner and made several runs. It was not as difficult as I expected. 2) Jacen did a blue run several times - his skiing is vastly improved from last year. He can fly down the mountain and (to my surprise) rarely crashed. In fact, going fast is his weakness; he doesn't carve enough to control his speed. 3) We skied in the fog - Wednesday afternoon a cloud descended on the mountain and by lunch visibility was about 20 feet at the top. This made for rather dangerous skiing. At the top of the mountain, it was very hard to find some of the runs. If you've been to Snowshoe, you know they have a number of sharp drops down into trees. On the slopes, it was hard to see other skiers and read the snow. We quit a couple hours early to return home. All in all it was a wonderful time together. I thank God again for giving me a son.

Snowshoe Mountain

Moving Day, Part 2

The first week of January was moving week! Dad and Eric spent Tuesday and Wednesday helping us move to our new home in Wake Forest, NC. With Dad's expert loading, the 24' U-Haul was big enough to haul everything we needed. It's about 3 hours from Hampton down to Wake Forest, so it wasn't too far to drive. The new townhouse is around 1000 sq ft, and it quickly filled up with our boxes. We've gotten most of them emptied and stuff put away by now, but we still need more shelves and storage spaces.

Moving Day, Part 1

Last week was moving day. We had to move all the we had been storing in Dad's house and garage into a 24 foot U-Haul truck to haul down to Wake Forest. With Dad's expert packing and Eric's strong back, we had no problem getting everything loaded. Dad's Avalon gave an audible sigh of relief when it was finally able to park in his garage after being out in the cold for the last 2 months. Thank you, Dad, for letting us crash in your house!

Jacen's Birthday

Jacen's 6th birthday fell on moving day, so before we left Dad's house we celebrated with family. He got exactly what he wanted -- Matchbox cars and Legos. Grandpa also gave him a white dress shirt, because Jacen he wants to wear a tie to church like Daddy does.

Snow

The day after Christmas a storm dumped 12 inches of snow on Poquoson. Although it was perfect for snow angels and snow ball fights, it cancelled our plans for traveling to Aunt Nan's house to see family for Christmas.

Christmas

We had a nice Christmas with family this year. Christmas Eve was spent with our side; Christmas day with Eric's side. Ann and I bought each other some games (see the Ticket to Ride review below; others to follow). I also got a number of books (3 on evangelism, Adinirum Judson's biography, and 1 on leadership by MacArthur) and the final Lord of the Rings DVD. It was nice to spend time with family, especially since our opportunities to do this will be limited soon.

Live Nativity

Every year my father's church runs a live nativity scene just before Christmas. We took the kids over last week and played a small part. Can you find all four of us in this picture?

Bethel Baptist Church (Hampton, VA)

The Kristo

Here's a neat use of Flash technology to tell people who Jesus is. Take a look:

The Kristo

Ticket To Ride

We picked up a new board game called "Ticket To Ride." It's a train game where you lay down trains to complete tracks from one US city to another. It's a pretty easy game, involves a lot of luck, and moves quickly. Everyone who has played it has liked it. It's a good game for families and friends both.

Ticket To Ride review

Worship

At our church when a child turns five years old they join their parents in the worship service. So as Jacen's now five, he's in there with us every Sunday morning. We're trying to teach him to sing the praise and worship songs with us, but that's been going slow. But the last couple weeks, his reading really improved, even to the point where he can read the words on the overhead as we sing them. Now he can read and sing with us.

So on Sunday Jacen's singing along, and like any five-year-old boy he's singing heartily. He's not on key, he sings too fast, and he has no rhythm. But as the three of us were singing together, it occurred to me that this is what worship is -- it's a family coming together to praise God. As bad as it must have sounded to the people in front of us, I bet God was pleased.

Liberty Baptist Church

Boxes

Now it really feels like we are moving. The majority of our possessions are either given away or packed up in boxes. It's still a bit surreal; one of these days it's going to hit me that we're leaving this house in less than two weeks. I realized earlier that I've lived in this house for 6 years, which is longer than any other house I've ever lived in (my father was in the Air Force, so we moved every 3 years or so). Still, we're looking forward to moving in with Dad for a couple months and then moving on to seminary. The best is yet to come!

Accountability

In my class on evangelism, Dr. Reid gave some advice on finding accountability partners. He said we need to find three types of people to be accountable with:

1) A Paul - someone who is more spiritual and mature than we are, so we have someone to answer to

2) A Barnabus - someone who is an encourager, so we have someone who will believe in us

3) A Timothy - someone who who looks up to us, so we have someone to pour our life into

I like this! Guys especially, let me encourage you to find an accountability group.

Koinonia

Thought #1: Last year our Pastor, Danny Forshee, preached a message wherein he said Baptists are known more for what we're against than what we're for. We're against homosexuality, against premarital sex, against abortion, and so on. Now he's not saying it's wrong to be against those things, for the Bible says that each is sin against a holy God. But he saying that we should be for things, particularly for loving people. Sometimes we should love on people just because we can.

Thought #2: In Philippians 1:3-5, Paul said:

I thank my God...for your fellowship in the gospel...

Fellowship is the Greek word "koinonia," and it means working together to do something; in this case, the church at Philippi was working together with Paul to share the Good News.

Put them together: So our class created a Koinonia Team, whose job it is to love on people and share the Gospel at the same time. Last night we went to a local neighborhood and gave out 50 bags of bean soup mix. They contained instructions for making the soup and a Gospel tract. How different would it be if the people who are our church were known for how we simply loved people?

John 3:16  "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

No Going Back

Today we signed a contract on our house. If everything goes as planned, we'll be moving out at the end of October. For the first time it feels like we are matching our words of commitment to God with our deeds. For the record: God is good; all the time. We got more than we asked for, and God gave us His peace. How real Philippians 4:6-7 have been to us this past 2 weeks:

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Classes

The DVDs for my first classes -- Basic Evangelism and Baptist History -- arrived yesterday. I guess that means life now goes from just really busy to incredibly busy. Despite the demands on my time, I'm really looking forward to these classes, particularly the Evangelism class. I know I don't do a very good job sharing my faith with others, and I want to do better. I listened to the first Evangelism lecture last night, and Dr. Reid had a great quote -- our passion for witnessing comes out of our love for Christ. The logical conclusion to this assertion is that few disciples of Christ (myself included) love Him much. God give me a love for you, a love that will tell others about You!