Friends Are the Ones Around When it Rains

Friends Are the Ones Around When it Rains In high school we got sick of the M. Smith song, “Friends are friends forever.” Real life teaches you it isn’t true. Those you thought were friends for years can forget you and even turn on you if you don’t live up to their expectations. And it hurts. I used to use the teaching tool: A true friend C.A.R.E.S. when teaching kids: C = challenges you to be a better person A = accepts you just the way you are, they don’t reject you when you mess up R = respects you, they don’t do things to hurt or damage you, they don’t ‘get even’ E = encourages you – they are there when you need them most S = sticks with you, no matter what A genuine friend who was in town this week said something that I wanted to post here: “A friend is someone who runs in when everyone else is running out.” I just wanted to say thank you to those who have been a genuine friend to me in the past several months… there have been many, and often not the ones I would have expected. God…

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Little Miss Hummer

I’ve never been in a Hummer, and I’ve only known one family that owned one, but I’ve always thought they were cool looking, though the gas mileage doesn’t attract me, one reason I downsized from a Chevy trailblazer to the PK Cruiser. And if you live in the burbs, do you really need all that power? Yes! And here is proof. Today I met my wife’s parents and one of our Kid U speakers at the mall for lunch and parking was hard to find, though I saw a close spot that I thought “no one can fit there with all the snow.” Wrong-0… a Hummer can! So here is this Hummer owner having way too much fun, finally getting to “off road” at Woodfield Mall… onto a little snow to park where no other car could park. Now, I know this wouldn’t be so amazing, or hardly “blogable” until I saw the owner headed toward her car…. Let me introduce you to Millie, the proud owner of this monster park-on-top-of-the-snow Hummer! I was so shocked, I rolled down my window and asked her if I could take a picture of her with her car, and she agreed. She seemed…

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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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Super Bowl Cake is a Winner, Even if the Bears Aren’t!

I know that all of ChicagoLand is depressed and that Jeff Bradley is going to give me a hard since my Bears let me down after all of our instant messaging “trash talk”… I don’t think I dare turn on iChat for a few days… we were really going at it the last few days, and now he gets to gloat and say “I told you so” instead of me. But if the Bears didn’t shine, my wife did! So rather than try to give any football commentary (and make a fool of myself) instead this blog’s purpose is simply to show off the AWESOME and AMAZING SUPER BOWL CAKE that my wife made for our Bears Party. And please, do leave her some comments… I know she’ll be checking! But is this an awesome cake or what?!?!?!? It should have been illegal to cut into it! Feast your eyes on this: (since only we got to actually feast on IT) PS: My sister will also instant message me a complaint if I don’t mention that SHE made the gummy team logos in the end zones. Pretty cool, eh?

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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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