Future Plans

What's New:

1.  I'm applying for a position as a Chaplain with the North American Mission Board and the US Army.  

• once things start slowing down from school, Christian Challenge, and everything else I'm going to start the application packet with NAMB and hopefully hear back from them around August.  
• If I'm accepted as a Chaplain Candidate I'll be commissioned then as soon as I finish Seminary will be promoted to Captain.  
• in the mean time I'll be doing my best to finish up seminary
• Good news if I do get accepted...I won't have to deploy till I finish seminary

2.  Staying on at Christian Challenge

• I'm blessed to say that God has given me the opportunity to stay on another year(Lord willing) at Christian Challenge returning as an associate director.  
• I will be working this summer to get training material ready for the fall semester with the prospective students I get to work with
• I'm really excited for the next school year.  We have a great group of students coming on board with us and I can't wait to see what God will  be doing in the lives of the people we come into contact with.

3.  Seminary

• I'm so happy to say that I've made it through a school year and am still eager to continue to finish the degree.  I've learned so much through the courses I've taken and they have enriched both my personal life and the lives of the students I have the privilege to work with.  
• Looking forward to taking Old Testament 1 in the Fall 

4.  First Southern Baptist Church

• Excited about the new Career group we've started at FSBC.  Its nearly tripled in the past 6 weeks so I don't think we're going to have a problem getting people interested in going.  It's been refreshing to hang out and talk with people in that intermediary phase of life of college and work.  

5.  Epic Church

• Excited to see what God does in the church as they are committed to really seeking out God's will for the church family during the summer and hit it hard in the Fall.  

6. Tae Kwon Do

• So as long as I have the time to practice and don't get fatter than I already am, I'll be testing for my 5th Degree Black Belt in August.  
• Though I don't think I'm going to be ready so lets just shoot for December.  

Lil life update

This past weekend i had drill for the the Army, honestly it was really hard going to this week because I didn't go last month.  It's always hard going because i really don't like the organization of the Army for a lot of reasons! However working with people is different ands not so bad.  This particular drill was fairly memorable as it replicated a lot of the humdrum of deployment.  All we did this weekend was our job along with the little issues that normally accompany missions.  I really have a love hate relationship w/ the Army.  I dislike the organization because of the way it functions sometimes but like working with the people.  This past weekend I was asked a couple times if i would commission as a Chaplain soon.  Honestly, I don't know.  I have 4 more years on my contract and I'll have been in 12 yrs.  So part of me is wondering whether not i should stay for retirement.  The other part of me is thinking 1) I can't take this anymore 2) Am I choosing to do the Army because of the financial security it offers so i don't have to worry about God providing for my needs?

Some of what plays into this is my decision to hopefully stay on another year at Christian Challenge.  This decision also involves me needing to raise support.  The past year I've been losing money working at Challenge.  It doesn't pay much and between Christian Challenge, Seminary, Army, and other obligations I don't have the time to get a normal job.  There have been other opportunities for employment but each would take me away from the ministry God has given me. 

So to prepare for this new phase of life and growth in my relationship with the Lord, I'm going to start support raising.  This is really hard for me to relinquish to God and isn't something I've ever depended on the Lord for, which is financial provision.  I've been given opportunities to see God provide this way but never saw any of those opportunities out.  I would always try and step in eliminating my need to rest confidently in the sovereignty of God's provision.  Not only did i miss out on the opportunity, I also ended up always seeing the shortcomings that result when I rely on my strength rather than the abundance of the Lord whom I serve.  So please keep me in prayer to navigate this whole process and not succumb to the lack of distrust I have for God by accepting jobs being offered to me but do not conform to the call God has placed on my life.   

I need your help!

So I've been meaning to start this log where I definitively answer basic questions about life conepts. To get down in writing what and why I believe. I have often found myself in conversation with people that bring up questions in regard to Christianity and what it has to say about issues like relationships, money, the formation of life. Whatever the question is I always feel inadequate in my response. After I speak I always wish I had said more or that I said things in a different order. When I speak I don't sound assured in what I say I'm not confident.

Here I am with the Word of God, the power of Creation and the answers for everything but I speak timidly and unsure.

So I'm going to compile and script what I say to each of these questions. People deserve better answers than jumbled up responses. When I speak it should be articulate, in depth, and concise.

This is where I could use some help. I'm going to start a list of questions and slowly I will begin to script out my responses. If there are any additions or comments you have to make my responses better that would be awesome! I really would appreciate the help. Additionally, if you can think of questions that you hear a lot let me know and I can add it to the list!

Sleep

Finished another mission. This one was pretty short but it felt really long. Things get to be monotonous and tiring. We were pulling some crazy hours this mission too which might have been the reason why it felt long. On the last leg back I was so sleepy! I’d gotten 3hrs sleep before a long push. I was so tired I was swerving all over the road. I was surprised the gun trucks behind me didn’t say anything over the radio cause there’s no way they could have missed my erratic driving and there weren’t any potholes around for me to be swerving that much! The biggest problem with my sleeping is that to other people I sometimes create the illusion that I’m awake because I spontaneously wake up and either do or say something that is 75% right on track with something I’m supposed to do. For example I was sleeping in line to start this obstacle course thing for training. I figured it was dark and the line was pretty long so I decided to try and catch some sleep standing in line. What sucked was that during the course of my sleep someone decided that it was retarded for us to be out there training at that time since we had just gotten to this post earlier the day before and hadn’t had the chance to sleep since we’d gotten there or adjust to the drastic change in climate. So when the other people that were awake found out about this they yelled out to me. Somewhere in my mind I thought they’re yelling at me cause its my turn to go through the course. So I shot up and ran through the course and when I got back everyone else was laughing they knew I was asleep and I guess the way I woke up and just started running seemed funny to them. The other problem is that when I take these little naps I start dreaming but most of the time my dreams continue where my consciousness left off so I don’t catch the change from awake to asleep. For example, one time we were stopped because someone thought they found an IED (turned out they did) but here I was sitting in the dark and I guess I fell asleep. But man if you could be in my dream I was being very productive. I talked to some people on Convoy net and called up a 9 line UXO, I scanned the area around the trucks we were escorting making sure no one was trying to sneak up on them and gank em, I even noticed that the chain holding our landing ramp on our trailer was broken…that’s when I woke up because at that moment I called out to my co-driver and asked him to check his mirror to before we got out to see whether or not he could see the landing ramps down. When he retorted, “what are you talking about,” I realized that it was no longer dark outside and when I leaned out the door and climbed up on to the catwalk it was obvious that there was nothing wrong with the landing ramps. And whatever I dream about seems to be related to what I’m currently doing or supposed to do. So basically people around me think I’m ok and I think I’m ok, but really I’m asleep. My co driver was passed out and everything I was trying to stay awake had failed. I tried listening to music, sermons, lectures then listening to other people’s music. I had been pounding the Monsters and Red Bull’s and Rip its and tried eating and chewing caffeinated gum. None of the stuff was working so I took out my Airsoft gun and started shooting myself. That worked for the first 5 minutes then I would doze off again and when I woke up and realized I had been asleep I would have to shoot myself again. So that’s obviously not effective I guess I’ll have to just stick to good old fashioned sleep to prevent myself from falling asleep when I need to be awake. But other than all of those minor things, this is the first mission where I haven’t experienced catastrophic equipment failures or anything else. It was nice not to have the added stress of having to fix broken things or recover wrecked things and switch em out. Thank you God! And thank you whoever has been praying for the wreckage to stop!
On another note I’ve finally started filming for the training videos for our replacements and for a Company video. Hopefully there will be enough time and enough discipline to finish editing it in time.