Danielle and I are getting in the car tomorrow morning and driving to Galveston Texas where we will get on a cruise ship and leave for 7 nights. This is the longest we’ve ever left the kids alone and the first time since we’ve lived in Texas. We’re a little nervous but fortunately Danielle’s mom flew out today to stay with the kids. What I’m looking forward to is sitting, reading, sleeping, eating and hanging out with Danielle. No agenda.

I put a new list of books up on the side column that I’m going to work through on this trip. Some of them I’ve read before but many are new reads. I’ll comment on them when I get back.

Ok so I finished my writing project and posted it to my professor yesterday afternoon. Sort of anti climactic though as I realize it will probably go through a few revisions. On a positive note though that’s the first step to completing my Doctorate. I don’t have any more writing to do and now only need to develop the web site.

Hooray. Now I can enjoy my cruise.

If you notice a sharp drop in my blogging this week it is because I am in the middle (by middle I mean the start) of putting together the first 50 pages of my Dissertation which is due July 1st. I’ve also got another 10 pages due for a class I just finished up.

I’ve got a pretty sweet deadline though. Danielle and I are going on a 7 day cruise on the 24th. So, my goal is to get all this put together before then. It can be done.

Ok so I’m a good dad. I don’t often praise myself (because it’s weird) but I’m sitting in my leather chair watching my boys play Nintendo WII. Danielle is out of town for 5 days in San Diego watching all the girls from her small group graduate. I’m home with all 3 kids. Today I went and grabbed the WII out of my office (yea I have one in my office) and brought it home. It’s 7:44 and my boys are playing it for the first time. Their favorite game so far is Tennis. Kaije (who is 4) is kicking Soren’s butt (he’s 6). I’m loving watching it.

I just finished watching the premier of a new show John from Cincinnati on HBO. I don’t have HBO so I downloaded it because I’d heard some good things about it. I’ll post a bit more after a few more episodes but here’s what I liked tonight. The main character John didn’t have any original dialogue in 55 minutes. All he did was repeat what all the other characters said to him. What intrigued me was the interaction between him and the family. A screwed up family for sure. The Yosts of Imperial beach. The last strip of land before you hit Tijuana. A misfit family of surfers with a son hooked on drugs and his son being raised by the grandparents. John’s interaction with them is classic so far. The great/weird part of the first episode is the dad after meeting John levitates about 5 inches off the ground by his car when changing out of his wetsuit.

Watch the episode here

Tonight we had dinner at our house for the staff. Summer is a bit crazy and on top of the 11 full-time youth staff there are 5 interns. Several staff brought spouses so we were about maxed out capicity at our house. I usually find that these events can either be strategically planned out with games and mixers aimed at creating community or the community can happen organically which takes longer but tends to work better.

What I find ironic is how me the shy guy from high school is now leading this huge ministry with so many diverse personalities and needs. Perhaps this is God’s sense of humor coming out when he reminds me that my strength is in him.

The fun part of my day was telling one of our new interns that a space just opened up for the Jamaica trip going tomorrow and she could go if she had a passport. She was in her car immediately driving towards Missouri to meet her parents 1/2 way with her passport. I remember the days that 6 hour drives were a piece of cake.

So today was pretty cool. We had a Lake Day for our high school ministry group. Since I’m the only one with a Commercial Drivers License I got to drive the shuttle. On my shuttle were 20 students. I think about 15 of them were from Kenya. We have a big Kenyan population at our church and are really working hard to get them represented in the youth ministry. We went to a lake house about two hours from Dallas and spent the day waterskiing, tubing and wakeskating. On the way home I asked the students from Kenya if they knew my friend Patrice Murunga who is a pastor in Nairobi. Several of them actually said that they went to his church in Kenya before they moved to the United states.

About that time I heard one of my assistant youth directors say “turtle, turtle, Lars turtle.” It didn’t register to me that she meant there was a turlte in the road since where I’m from turtles don’t walk. Anyways after she said it for the third time I understood what she meant and I looked in front of me. I saw a pretty big turtle right before I drove over it with the shuttle. The van behind me said they saw it come spinning out under my wheels with flesh and shell all over the road. I was sad.

Lately I’ve been doing so much with life but I haven’t felt like I can quite capture it in written form. When I sit down to blog I realize that I don’t quite no how to translate the experience into words. Anne Lamott says that you should make an effort to write each day even if you don’t feel like you have something worth saying.

Last week I had an amazing experience with my D.Min class. We were sitting out on a deck on Orcas Island and just enjoying being with each other. It was one of those nights where we were able to just sit, take in the view and “be” without there being a huge need to fill space with words. One nice part was these were people that I had been in weekly contact with for two years and maybe we had gotten to the point where words didn’t matter so much.

I’ll write more about class later.

Pretty place but a long ways away from everything. This is where we are now.

Feels like I’m writing a travel blog. Wedding is over and it was great. Heading back to Seattle to pick up my family and drive down to see my parents. Can’t wait to see my kids. This has been a long week.