Making Missions Minded Friends

I’ve had a heart for missions since I was a young boy and my mom told our children’s church the story of Amy Carmichael. Since then I’ve been to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippians, Hungry, Austria, Germany, France, England, Whales, Spain, and elsewhere doing some kind of mission work, usually children’s ministry related, and I am the son of a former Missions Pastor at Moody Church who is now a director of something or other (I can’t keep track of his titles) at OCI in Colorado Springs… BUT even with all these rubs with missionary work, I have to admit my ignorance that there has been a Children’s Missions Movement steadily advancing the cause of encouraging and supporting the effort to introduce children to missions and help churches with missions education for the past twenty years. This losely structured group of missions minded people have met periodically over the years with a fluid collection of individuals coming together to evaluate where we are in introducing missions to kids and educating churches in how to promote world missions within the local church, as well as to evaluate what resources are available, and what is still needed. I will be writing a Kidology…

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Slow Down. There is beauty that is often missed.

I was in Orlando last week for the Children’s Pastor’s Conference and will be posting more about that on Kidology.org, but I wanted to post some pictures from the Coranado Springs Resort where I stayed. But I have to tell you something about myself… I don’t take the usual pictures! I like to see what others walk right past. All of the pictures below (and it was hard to narrow down the ones I wanted to post) were taken right off the path at the resort. Behind a bush, down by the water, over a bridge, beside a building, etc. At my new slower pace of life I am taking more time to slow down and open my eyes to the beauty around me, and it was actually fun to be stopping and taking close up pictures of nature in a very ‘man-made’ place with people scurring past me in a hurry to get to the amusement park or other activities. Several times people stopped and asked, “What are you taking a pictures of?” surprised to see me kneeling or hunched over where there didn’t really appear to be anything worth the effort… but I think these pictures prove that…

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2006 – A Year of Dramatic Change

2006. Wow.   There is no way to summarize last year. 2006 contained more change than any year I’ve ever experienced. 2006 was a year that was filled with the happiest and yet the hardest times in my entire life. When we look back we tend to want to focus on the worst… and yet, even in the midst of extremely difficult times, it is good to remember that God never fails to bring joy in the midst of suffering… if we take the time to look.I started this blog, kidologist.com, in April of 2005 when I went on sabbatical in order to chronicle my adventures during those fantastic six weeks, but I’m so glad the habit stuck. Any time I am down and wondering where is (or where was) God, I can simply click through the archives of my blog and am flooded with memories of great times and great memories, super friends and special kids, especially when I miss most of what was once my daily life. Indeed, 2006 brought a lot of changes, and at times, more than I could handle, and I failed miserably in keeping on top of everything, and yet in that brokeness God…

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Grown Men Acting Like Kids

Today I visited my friend Pastor Andy’s church in Aurora, Colorado. About two years ago, Andy was a kids pastor at a church just 12 miles from my previous church and we were just gettin’ to become good friends when he up and moved to the gorgeous state of Colorado. So as I am visiting my dad and his wife for Christmas, I thought I’d trek on over and visit Pastor Andy at his new church today. I plan to write more about my visit with Pastor Andy soon, but I just HAD to post a short ONE MINUTE video of the highlight of the morning… Pastor Andy has a 70 foot GIANT inflatable jungle race in his Kids Church room that is a blast. After watching the kids enjoy it for awhile, I couldn’t take it any longer… I had to CHALLENGE PASTOR ANDY TO A RACE! The winner would gain eternal fame on my blog…. WHO WON? Watch the video and find out for yourself! Andy-vs-Karl.mov (5.7MB) FINE PRINT: Andy also cheated, but his wife who was filming, had already headed to the finish line to catch us coming over the top of the final slide and missed…

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kidologically famous? of course!

It’s always fun to surf the web and find references to your website on other websites… well, as I was blog surfin’ my favorite sites in bloglines tonight, the word “kidologically” caught my eye in this blog post. I was flattered that Paul Bradford was flattered that we linked a post of his on Kidology.org (click image for larger screen shot) Then I smiled when I saw, “Of course I’ll never be at the kidologist.com level… :)”…. so this post is just to show that kidologist.com is just as flattered to be linked on feed-my-lambs.blogspot.com! Keep up the great work there in Pennsylvania, Paul! And keep on bloggin’ – and thanks for making MY day. :)

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