Day 21 – Thankful for My Customers

This is part of a series called 24 Days of Thankfulness. These posts are in RANDOM order, NOT priority order. Each is something I am thankful for leading up to Thanksgiving. DAY #21: My Customers Back in 1994 when very few people knew what the “Internet” was, I got an idea for a website: The KidologyWeb: I was already calling myself “The Kidologist” in my workshops as I sought to equip and encourage children’s workers to approach children’s ministry from the perspective of a child: By 1996 the first “Kidology Handbook” was published: VERY FEW people remember when Kidology.org (before I had that domain!) looked like this: OR when you clicked into it and saw crude pages like this: Only hundreds were lucky enough to BE on the Internet surfin’ kidmin back then! (And only a few bought the “Life Time Memberships” I offered back then when I needed to raise some money to buy some much needed Microsoft FrontPage software, and yes, they are still members!) More remember the next version of the site: Kidology 2.0 (which I called it long for “2.0” was hip) It had the infamous “frames” that if you navigated just right, would give you…

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A Weekend with God

As I already blogged, Friday I went on an all day hike with a friend in the mountains near Idaho Springs to see three beautiful lakes in preparation for the Men’s Advance for my church. (Note, “Advance” – real men don’t retreat) That was sorta my “pre-retreat,” er, Advance – for what God had in store for me this past weekend. It was a good time. It was a weekend spent with God. The aspens were simply amazing and it was like God painted the entire place a masterpiece for us. Everywhere I went, it was like God was there with me. Last year, when I went, it was wet and raining and depressing and I didn’t know anyone (it was literally my first week at the church) – and no one talked to me hardly, and while I went with a friend (thanks buddy) it just wasn’t the same. This year the weather was beautiful. I found an empty outdoor auditorium. Pretty symbolic of my life right now. I miss being a pastor. While I know Kidology.org impacts and helps a lot of people, I spend the bulk of my time in front of a computer. Not as fulfilling…

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The Training Cycle

When I was a young boy my dad had a framed sign in his office that he had made himself. It read: I do. You watch. I do. You help. You do. I help. You do. I watch. It summarizes the process of discipleship or training it a nutshell. This summer I volunteered at my church to teach the preschool Bible stories for our churches sports camp because my son was attending. (I knew that fit my skills better than volunteering to coach sports!) I used props and objects to illustrate the Bible stories. For my own self-training purposes I video taped the sessions with my flip camera. (I like to watch and learn to improve.) One of the leaders had to teach the same Bible stories a few weeks later for the second week of sports camp when I was off to teach at a camp and couldn’t volunteer. I boxed up all my props and spent a little time coaching her on how to do it and gave her copies of the flip videos to watch and study. She did great! This week she is on a mission trip to Nairobi and I just got this picture posted…

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A Convertible Half Wet!

What do you do when you are out with your convertible, enjoying a beautiful day with the top down, and it starts to rain, and THEN you discover that the the automatic top is broken? I’ve been on the road (well, technically, in the air!) for weeks – speaking at Camp Hartland and Camp Timber-lee, and all the while my convertible has been in the garage with the top down while I’ve been filming in my car DiscipleTown videos for the next series. (How to Navigate the Old Testament, due out Aug. 20th) So when I pulled out today, I had no idea the top was broken, its been down for a month! I discovered when I was out on a conference call with DiscipleLand after lunch with the family at the mall. I was then meeting at Speed Stacks HQ getting the low-down on some new products (BTW, I am the VERY FIRST non-employee to get a prototype on something I’ll blog about later!) when it started to rain! What to do? Go home and cut out of an important meeting? Park under a tree? Then the innovative team at Speed Stacks discovered that the back double doors of…

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It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s a Model Airplane!

Saturday the family headed to the Pikes Peak Radio Control Club’s “Warbird’s Over Pike’s Peak’s Air Show”, and it was incredible! (Don’t miss HIGHLIGHT VIDEO at end of this post!) NOTE: Click on any image to see larger in a new window. For Luke, it was a real treat! He brought a box of toy airplanes and enjoying playing with his planes while watching grown men play with their toys. As the saying goes… The difference between the men and the boys, is just the price of their toys! It was hard to believe these things were not real! Especially when the jets went straight up into the air spinning until they were a speck in the sky! They even SOUNDED like real jets… well, actually, there WERE real jets… just smaller and without a real person inside! They literally flew up to the clouds! I had to use a telephoto lens to keep up with them! Luke enjoyed chillin’ out on Daddy’s hammock, which I got for Father’s Day way back when he was just a baby… (remember?) Everyone had their cameras out trying to capture these birds in the coolest pics possible – the pics in this post…

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