Well, yes, a pet turtle is still in the picture, but I like to think down the road a bit. So the poles are open, and I'm now accepting votes on the following:








(Personally, I'm voting for the cheetah.)

So the weekend was a good one: fresh home-grown strawberries, the lollipop song, and hunting cape buffalo... But the highlights can be found below:

...hangin' out with Aunt Gretch...

...Grammy T introduces Wyatt to Little Critter...

...on the ranch with Dad...

...playing with Grammy T...

...taking the pups to the park... Note:only the cool dogs get to wear goggles and backpacks...

...one cute kid...

...wearing Pa's camo hat...

...and Wyatt's first horse ride on Daisy.

"Hallelujah" (Bethany Dillon)

Who can hold the stars
And my weary heart?
Who can see everything?

I've fallen so hard
Sometimes I feel so far
But not beyond your reach

I could climb a mountain
Swim the ocean
Or do anything
But it's when you hold me
That I start unfolding
And all I can say is

Hallelujah, hallelujah
Whatever's in front of me
Help me to sing hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Whatever's in front of me
I'll choose to sing hallelujah

The same sun that
Rises over castles
And welcomes the day
Spills over buildings
Into the streets
Where orphans play

And only you can see the good
In broken things
You took my heart of stone
And you made it home
And set this prisoner free

(Chorus)

Currently feeling like I've been trampled by a herd of angry elephants, yet I'm sitting here at my desk designing text for a frisbee and a leather coaster for some rodeo. Something is seriously wrong with this world.

There’s probably a lot of other things I should be writing about, but this is all I’ve got for now: A while back I discovered individual servings of instant coffee that can be microwaved with a cup of water. Pretty incredible when you don’t own a coffee maker (just encourages addiction!). So a few weeks ago, I ran out of this grand luxury and haven’t had a chance to hunt down some more (WM was out last week, believe it or not) in all the mayhem of the last few weeks (sorta why I haven’t posted in awhile; mayhem is indeed a good discription of recent events). All that to say that I’ve done without the caffeine for way too long.

Fast-forward to today: stayed up later than I should’ve last night, left on time at 8 this morning, but due to some “unknown accident”, got to work at 9:15 instead of the 8:30 norm. That’s right, I spent an entire hour sitting in traffic on 75, much of which was spent debating whether the nearest cop would pull me over if I drove through the ditch to get around the mess. Long story short, I get to work way late and have an hour to complete 2 projects that aren’t even started, then on to a meeting with a client at 10:30: ‘this is not what we had in mind, can you redesign it?’, ‘I need this done yesterday’, and so the day goes. But about an hour ago, I went on an expedition to the nearest coffee maker, which I’ve been avoiding for a month cause I didn’t know how to operate such a high-tech machine. But I conquered the fear and succumbed to reading the instructions (after looking both ways to make sure no one was watching). This thing is ridiculous! You choose from 10 flavors of coffee that are in these 1-serving sized cups, put it in a slot in the machine, lid and all, set your cup underneath, push a series of complication buttons which tell the coffee god what size cup you have and how strong you want the stuff, and out comes the most incredible coffee you’ve ever had! Caramel Vanilla Cream…. Wow.

And so, for the 45 seconds it took me to travel from the kitchen area back to my cube, the stresses of late subsided…..

Commitment Phobic: one who hates making decisions; one who shys away from anything that will tie him/her down; one who desires free reign; one who runs in the opposite direction when he/she doesn't have an answer for what to do with life.

In January, I joined a mission/outreach team at PC, and we began brainstorming for ways that we could get our singles group more involved in service. So for the past several months, about 8 of us have been planning a weekend of “48 Hours of Prayer and Service”, each taking a different activity to be in charge of. We ended up calling the weekend Children of Promise, based on Gal. 4:28, since the dates occurred over April 28th. And so, here’s a bit of a recap on our activities. It was our hope that everyone would choose at least one activity to be apart of as well as sign up for an hour of prayer time. We were overwhelmed with the success of the endeavor and as always were equally as blessed as those we served.

Prayertime
• Had 48 1-hour blocks of time for people to sign up for. Each hour someone else took up the constant prayertime. We set up an online blog for people to journal in as well (www.b1pc.blogspot.com). Neatest part about this was that the night hours filled up first on our sign-up sheet. Pretty cool to think that at anytime during the weekend someone was praying for our group, our church, and people that needed to be shown the love of God this weekend.

Friday Night: Dinner/Movie
• About 15 of us split up into 3 groups and went out to restaurants to eat. We chose another table in the restaurant randomly and picked up their tab for dinner. I had a really fun group: Wes, Brock, and Victoria and enjoyed the interaction with not one waitress, but about 4! Their reactions to our request for another table’s bill were really great. Ended the night with watching End of the Spear back up at the church. Recommend this movie about missionaries in the Amazon jungle, but as Katie warned us beforehand, “there are bottoms in this movie!” There’s your warning.

Saturday Morning: Manual Labor
• Met at 8 and journeyed to the Colony area to sort through items at a resale (goodwill type) store. Others went to various homes that needed some chores and yardwork done. Amber and I left early and met Bobby at Sam’s to pick up the food for the following….

Saturday Afternoon: Homeless Ministry
• Peanut butter jelly time!!! 30+ people showed up for this activity that I headed up. We made 100 sack lunches, assembly line style, of PBJ’s, chips, and oreos. Then we split up into groups of 5-6, went to downtown areas, and passed out socks, crackers, and granola bars to people on the streets. Such great experiences from this! My group encountered several individuals, one of whom happened to have his socks stolen the previous night. Coincidence? I don’t think so! Anyway, turned out much better than I hoped. It’s hard to plan for something like this where you don’t know what it’s really going to look like or what exactly you’ll be doing. Just had to tell people to show up and go see what happened, to go where they were led. And we did just that.

Saturday Night: FriendSpeak Potluck
• BBQ/Texas themed potluck for international students who have been working on their English skills with some of our group. Enjoyed some fun games and visits from Cowboy Eric and Cowgirl Katie as they acted out stories we had written. And how good was that blackberry cobbler!

Saterday Night… later
• One of the best parts of the weekend… Bobby and I delivered the 100 sack lunches we fixed earlier to a homeless shelter downtown. (www.austinstreet.org) Very, very cool place. All the shelters I’ve been to have limited space and dorm style rooms. This place was a huge warehouse, divided into men/women by a cinderblock wall. We walked in and there were literally hundreds of cots laid out side by side, all full. This is the only free shelter in Dallas and has plenty of room for all the homeless people currently in the area. Supported by the Mavs, this place puts on some really neat events that we’re hoping to get involved with soon.

Sunday Morning: Sweetheart’s Banquet
• Hosted a special banquet for some older single women in the church. Didn’t get to participate in this one, but enjoyed a few hours of rest instead!

Sunday Night: Recap and Wrap-up
• Reported on the weekend to the congregation through members of a panel from our mission planning team. Wrapped up the weekend with a devo, pizza, and planning time for future involvement in these ministries.

So how many things can you pack into one weekend? We certainly stretched the limits on this one. All were quite exhausted, but the good kind of tired where after a good night’s sleep, you’re ready to wake up and do it all over again.