We are finally living in Dallas. After a long week of packign up and selling our home, saying goodbye to friends and a long airplane flight we are officially in our new house. Of course our stuff isn’t here yet but that’s another issue.

I think this whole Texas thing is going to take some time to get used to. Right now I’m on a youth staff retreat in East Texas. We’re staying at Coon Creek Camp which is an 8,000 acre private hunting/fishing place. I’m not quite sure how big 8,000 acres is but no one here seems to think it’s all that much. We spent a good part of the day doing initiatives and working through some staff dynamics. I’m looking forward to jumping in a bit deeper into all of this.

I’m also looking forward to going back to San Diego in two days and starting the moving process with my family. I can’t believe we are moving out of our home on Thursday. Sure miss my family.

This is what I saw when I walked from my car to Starbucks this morning.

Any time you start work in a new place, new town, new state, new house it can be a little bit crazy. The last couple of days have been a whirlwind of crazines for me. But, at the same time it’s been confirmation that God has me where he wants me.

Yesterday I got an opportunity to tour some ministry sites in West Dallas. That area of Dallas is one of the poorest most crime-filled areas of this city. What I was struck by though is the excitement and passion that all the workers there had. It seems like some great things have been happening and God is really doing some amazing work. I’m looking forward to going back and getting to interact more.

This has probably been the longest time that I haven’t posted on the blog. Last week Thursday I was packing the car to get ready to head to Dallas for 10 days. Took 3 days to get here and there is no internet access on the way. Finally made it on Saturday and have been busy with church and setting up my new house with the meager things I brougth with me. Danielle and the kids are still back home and I’ll be flying there in a week to pack everything up and move everyone out here. I needed to get here a little early so that I could help plan and run a youth ministry staff retreat.

The people here in Dallas are amazing. Very warm and friendly. The Southern Hospitality is in full effect. Before I got here someone was in our house and stocked it with food. Last night someone else brought us dinner.

I’ll post more later today. Hoping to go buy a new laptop. Typing on my 6 year old powerbook g3 is getting tiring.

Ok let me first start out by saying this isn’t as bad as it looks. Two of my interns stole my dog and took him home for a couple of nights. They are crazy college students so this is what we ended up with. On a sad note Magnus was adopted by a wonderful couple yesterday. We just didn’t think that it was going to be the best situation for him in Texas.

When I see things that shouldn’t be together connected I often enter into a state of wonder. Today as I was driving my boys to school I saw a Chrysler 300 which to me is a beautiful car. But, then I noticed it’s license plate frame was from Pick-Up-Sticks, a fast-foodesque chinese restaurant. I don’t know why anyone would take such a great vehicle and slap on such a cheesy license plate frame.

Get’s me thinking about what we attempt to do in Youth Ministry sometimes. We have this amazing Jesus that we are trying to tell people about and then we slap on this program that completely masks the beauty, power and lordship of who he is.

My prayer today is that we would allow Jesus to be who he is without feeling like we need to jazz him up to be relevant or cool to students.

Recently we have been talking about finding a new home for our dog Magnus. We love him but he’s just a little too much work. He’s constantly trying to figure out his role in a house with 3 kids. He tries to be the alpha male and that just doesn’t work.

We found someone who is interested in the dog and yesterday I saw an add on craiglist that described Magnus exactly as the dog someone wanted. What I didn’t realize was that the picture of the dog they wanted was in fact my dog. Preston and Steven are two of my former interns and good friends. They wanted to see how long it would take me to see a fake add they put on Craigslist. It took me 30 minutes.

I actualy replied to their add and then I realized that it was a picture of Magnus. They got me.

Today I had good luck on Craigslist I managed to trade a 6 year old Apple laptop for a great backup cell phone for Danielle. I also got rid of my Thule Ski box (not driving to the slopes in Texas)

Later we went to the pool. Beautiful day so we swam for a while. Found out the 30 group from my church had rented out space there so we watched the superbowl with an amazing ocean view behind us.

I think I’m writing a lot about what I’m doing lately because we are in the middle of a huge job/life transition and it’s my way of coping with leaving the beach

My boy is 4. It’s a good day. He’s a man now