Had a great evening taking Ady and the girls to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The Bombers bombed and got blanked by Seattle, but I guess they have to show their humanity once in a while. Nevertheless, it was a fun night together as a family. My girls can say they saw the Yankees in both the old stadium and the new one. What a privilege! Click here to see all the pics.
I woke up with an interesting thought this morning. It’s my day off, and as I lay in bed trying to fully wake up, I began to enjoy the fact that I didn’t have anything specific scheduled to do. My first thought was, what am I going to do today? I then came up with my plan … I’m going to get ready, then I’m going to make some coffee and spend some time reading my Bible. Then I realized … how often do I set the agenda for my day which includes spending time with God? How often do I plan on spending time with God but then things happen to interrupt my plan and it never happens? What would it be like if actually spending time with God became the instinctive starting point rather than something I planned on doing? Sometimes God becomes part of the plan rather than the plan being dictated by Him. Obviously habits are formed initially through planning, but is not the purpose of discipline to become undisciplined. In other words, I discipline myself in something so that eventually I don’t need discipline to do it – it just becomes second-nature; part of who I am. When I come up with a plan to spend time with God, am I not in essence beginning my day with “My will be done”? Selah.
Last night we picked up trash around a local park and gave 125 people FREE slices of pizza thanks to our great friends @ Buona Sera. This is the second year we have done “Serve & Swim” during the month of August. We take the students downtown, do a service project/random act of kindness for about an hour, then head to one of our student’s house for a pool party. It’s a surprise blessing to people in the community and a lot of fun for our students. It’s proven to be a big hit each year.
Yesterday David Jonathan Davila headed off to Spain where he will be living and teaching English for a year. Before he departed he came over to my house and we had breakfast together. I made French toast. Only afterward did I find that funny … I( made him French toast in honor of him going to Spain. LOL! He has been such a blessing and a great leader at Planet Impact for the last few years, and while I’m sad he won’t be around this year, I am super proud of him for taking on this great adventure. He’s blogging at: Davila en Espana. Follow him to keep up on his experience!
Click on the following links for pics of each of the events:
Just finished reading the very excellent book Making Sense of Church: Eavesdropping on Emerging Conversations about God, Community, and Culture by Spencer Burke. He beautifully lays out the differences between the modern church and the postmodern, emerging church and offers new images for ministry in the postmodern context. Reading the contrasts between modernism and postmodernism was quite emotional for me. I am a postmodernist living and working in a very modern context, and trying to patiently live in that tension is quite an undertaking. I am sure many others are experiencing the same dilemma. May the Lord grant us grace and wisdom in our decisions and relationships.
Last week we drove upstate to visit our students at Camp Shiloh. We spent an afternoon them and visiting with the folks at camp. In the evening we drove to the Rochster area where we visited Adriana’s best friend Erika, went to Niagara Falls and rode the Maid of the Mist for the first time, I got to see one of my best friends from high school, and we got to visit my grandparents. We were not expecting to see Grandma & Grandpa Larkin, but after texting them a picture of us at the falls, we found out they were only an hour-and-a-half away at my aunt and uncle’s home near Ithaca, NY, so we made arrangements to swing out and have lunch with them on our way home. They live about 9-hours from us, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to connect. We haven’t seen my Grandma in 3 years! We had a nice time together.
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