Update to the Wish List 2005

Bethany just got me the Bissell Flip-it tonight so that we can really clean the floors for our choir party tomorrow night at our house! That thing is awesome.

One more thing...

This Sunday is the final big Xmas presentation I am doing at the church. On the 27th, it was the big community sing-a-long, last Sunday it was the Kids Xmas musical, and this Sunday it is the Choir Cantata I am directing.

The Kid's musical was very fun. The kids were hilarious and they remembered most of their lines. It is amazing how much kids can remember when they want to. They all knew each other's lines, too and when to say them. The lead kid in the play was a kid named Nicholas who was pretty amazing at singing and acting. The funny part was that out of the 18 kids in it, only 3 were from our church! Pretty good outreach in an artsy town like Bellingham. There is a sequel to the play (this year it was called The First Leon) and next year it is called The Next Noel. The kids are ready to go for that already!

Oh - and I have to finish up two papers for seminary by next Friday...

My parents are coming up for a visit today and will stay until Wednesday. It is bitter sweet because my brother has a huge viola solo in their church's big Xmas show, and my sister is running another marathon on Sunday. Remember, you are a Kenyan! I am thinking about you guys and I know that you will do well!

Well, B and I just had her parents in town for a week for the Thanksgiving holidays. We had a really nice time to relax and hang out. There weren't any huge trips planned, which was nice because we could just enjoy each other's company. We had our friends Jason and Alli and a guy named John over for Turkey day. I cooked the turkey this year and it didn't turn out half bad! It was really good and there are lots of leftovers, which I'm happy about. I also made a pecan pie that didn't turn out too well. I think I had too many pecans in it and not enough of the goopy good stuff. It was just a good day to hang out with family and friends, watch some football, play some video game football and eat.

Today we had our first advent service at church. B and I sang a duet called "A Strange Way to Save the World." 4 Him did it originally. It sounded nice and the whole service worked well altogether. One of our church members wrote a great poem for each sunday in advent based on the Scripture text for that day. They are pretty deep and thought provoking.

This afternoon our church sponsored a big community Christmas sing-a-long at the Mount Baker Theater. 1200 people came and another 130 people sang in the choir and played in the orchestra. I got to do a little of everything. I played in the orchestra, I played in a rockin' guitar trio with two of my friends who lead worship at another church in town, I sang in a men's gospel quartet, and I played bass trombone in a brass quintet. I also directed the children's choir from our church on a couple of the songs we are doing from our musical this next sunday. The guitar trio was probably my favorite because playing with those two guys is a treat and they can play!

I had to coordinate all these groups and get the orchestra their music and the choir their words, so it was a big undertaking by everyone involved. I am just glad it is over! I enjoyed just hanging out and watching some football tonight. I think my fantasy football smoked my opponent this week.

Crazy Cat

Jester has found a way to the top of our closet! He is actually sitting on top of the closet door here (1 inch thick...) in this picture, then he steps on the clothes hanging up in the closet and pushes himself up to the shelf. He likes the sweaters up there and enjoys being sneaky...

Since it's been a little while... Last week at our church's Harvest Festival, almost 100 kids came through the play the games and win candy. That is huge for our church. God is doing something with our church, and we are just riding the wave. It was one of those things that you are glad to have done after you did it, but were kind of annoyed that you had to do it in the first place. It turned out alright, though.

About Kyle Lake at UBC in Waco - what a tragedy. My heart goes out to the scores and scores of people who are affected by his death. I read Ben Dudley's blog every now and then and to think that Kyle was DCB's pastor, too - in our human-ness, it is a horrible thing. Yet, it God's "God-ness" it is a beautiful, ironic mystery.

In other news, we have started a Kids Xmas Musical with some of the kids from the Summer Academy (VBS-ish) event we had this summer. Let me get you straight on this - our church has only about 15 kids if they all came at once. At the Summer Academy, we had 60 kids and for the Kids Xmas Musical, we have 19 kids. It is crazy! Hopefully, some of these families will feel the draw to be a more permanent part of FBC.

I am at Regent right now getting ready for class, but I wanted to update you on stuff!

Corn Maze Madness

Today I went with our college group to a corn maze field shaped like a salmon. We had to find posts scattered throughout the maze with different shaped hole punches. It was pretty fun and our team beat everyone else. There were some shortcuts taken... The hilarious part was that the field was so muddy that your feet slipped everytime you stepped and everyone was falling and getting their clothes muddy and wet. We went to a pumpkin patch afterwards and picked pumpkins that we are going to carve tonight.

Tomorrow our church has our harvest festival and a guest preacher. It should be pretty fun.

We got tix for our Christmas trip to TX this week! Dec. 25-31 - quick, but fun. I think am most looking forward to seeing my neice, Jordan during that week. It has been a year since I have seen her! B's parents come for Thanksgiving and my parents are coming for our Choir Cantata in December - yes!

Social Weekend

This weekend Bethany and I had a good time deepening some good friendships that we have made up here. Friday night we spent the night with our Matt and Jamie who got married this summer. They live in Mill Creek (near Seattle) and B had to take her science kit back to the Fred Hutch Research Center this weekend, so we just stayed with them Friday night. We had great steaks and a good time just chatting and catching up. We woke up slowly on Saturday, had breakfast, and then said our goodbyes and headed to Seattle and back to Bham.

That night we ate dinner with our friends Jason & Ali for the second time that week! It is nice when friends don't keep score about how many times you have eaten at their place vs. your place. We spent the evening making dinner and talking about all sorts of stuff. After that we dropped in on some friends from church (the Porters) who were having a get together at their new house. Good times, good times...

Sunday was a good day - good worship service, good message, good music... We had a baptism, a solo in Japanese, and 20 kids hip hop dancing. It was different for our church, but we put a lot of old hymns in the service to pad the blow! I got to be a bit creative and play a John Mayer intro into "Revive Us Again." That was fun.

Sunday night, Kim and Joe came over to watch "Alias" and "CSI" we recorded on Thursday. They are fun. Our VCR is getting a bit archaic, though, so we need to get TiVo... ("need")

Today I am at Regent and just not extremely motivated. I know I will be after this class, however, because the professor is just that good.

Rear-ended Again!

This time I was driving the church van from a pastors meeting we had in Anacortes. It was one of those two four lanes country highways that have traffic signals every so often. The cars in front of me were slowing down, I braked well in advanced, the lady driving the Minivan Taxi service did not brake well in advance. I actually saw it coming in my side mirror, but didn't have time to say anything to the other four pastors in the van. Can you imagine losing five pastors in one car wreck? (some more than others, I'm sure...) That would pose some issues with the churches, I think!

BUT - we're not dead, so everything is fine. No one even got hurt. Her van is toast, though!

Two times in one week!

Simple Plan's "Crazy"

I heard this song on MTVs TRL debut of Simple Plan's new single, Crazy. It was intense. Here are the words, and look at them through Jesus-colored glasses...

Tell me what's wrong with society
When everywhere I look, I see
Young girls dying to be on TV
They won't stop till they've reached their dreams
Diet pills, surgery
Photoshopped pictures in magazines
Telling them how they should be
It doesn't make sense to me

Is everybody going crazy? Is anybody gonna save me?
Can anybody tell me what's going on? Tell me what's going on?
If you open your eyes You'll see that something is wrong

I guess things are not how they used to be
There's no more normal families
Parents act like enemies
Making kids feel like it's World War III
No one cares, no one's there
I guess we're all just too damn busy
And money's our first priority
It doesn't make sense to me

Is everybody going crazy? Is anybody gonna save me?
Can anybody tell me what's going on? Tell me what's going on?
If you open your eyes You'll see that something is wrong

Is everybody going crazy? Is everybody going crazy?

Tell me what's wrong with society
When everywhere I look I see
Rich guys driving big SUVs
While kids are starving in the streets
No one cares No one likes to share
I guess life's unfair

Is everybody going crazy? Is anybody gonna save me?
Can anybody tell me what's going on? Tell me what's going on?
If you open your eyes You'll see that something, something is wrong
Is everybody going crazy? Can anybody tell me what's going on?
Tell me what's going on?
If you open your eyes You'll see that something is wrong
---

This song is prophetic - speaking truth into a place that doesn't want to hear it. My favorite, heart-hitting line is the one about Rich guys driving SUVs...

Rear-ended!

Well, at about 12:30am last night, my Jeep got rear-ended in front of our house. There wasn't too much damage on my car - just the bumper got messed up. I don't know if there are alignment problems yet or anything. Her car is a different story, however. The front hood was smashed up and the front head light covers were crushed, though the lights themselves were still working. She seemed to be drunk because she was saying weird things and acting strange. The police came and took a report and I have spent today working on insurance stuff. It turns out that her insurance number was not correct because when I called her insurance, they didn't have any record of it.

So, I am going through my insurance and letting them do the leg work of working with her insurance. I still have to pay the deductible, but it should get reimbursed.

The Jeep is still driveable (I checked the spelling of that and found out it could go both ways), but it just needs some cosmetic work.

Don Miller thoughts...

I am here in the Regent Library studying up on college Home Group tonight. We are talking about Faith tonight, using Don Miller's book Blue Like Jazz to spark some discussion and following it up with Scripture. I highly recommend that book to everyone.

Don Miller came to Bellingham this past week to do a book reading on the campus of the college here. It was definitely not what most people were expecting. Usually when you get a Christian speaker to speak at college, he or she talks about their version of how to do Christianity better than what you are doing now. Miller gets up and says, "I was just talking to the sound girl before I came up and told her "Christians are goofy, huh?" Man, we Christians are goofy as hell." He said, "Don't worry. I'm not going to talk about Jesus tonight." That was an eyebrow raiser - and someone asked about it later at the Q&A time. He said that he felt too often we try to bring "the church" into the university and he wanted to approach the university as a university, to speak its language. Usually when an author gets asked to speak at someplace, he or she does a book reading. So that is what Don Miller did - a book reading.

At the same time, you could sense the Christian undertones throughout what he was reading. he also later clarified that he felt Christianity is the most beautiful, mysterious thing you could be a part of that makes the most sense of what it means to be human. It gives the best picture of how to do humanity.

I liked it because it was subversive, artistic God-talk.

One interesting note as I was talking with Don backstage - his former youth minister was David Gentiles. He had been in Houston with Don and then moved up to Plano to be at Hunter's Glen Baptist Church where one of my high school friends went. David was then person who put the writing bug in Don's ear.

Doulos Reunion Weekend

Foosball tournament!
Originally uploaded by jeffflint.

This past weekend, I made a quick trip to Branson, Missouri for a reunion of the discipleship program I did after Baylor. It's called Doulos (Greek for bondservant) and you really are one of those while you are there!

Anyway, I made some friends for life with the other big brothers and this past weekend, the organization had a Reunion party for everyone who has gone through. People from the very first year were there, so it was neat to hear the stories and to catch up on what is going on with everyone.

Plus, my group of guys had a foosball tournament. We had a foosball table in the guys house and it was always a great way to relieve some stress. We played it so much that we could be on an Olympic Foosball team or something. (Well, me and Shane who won!)

Time for an Update

I started my new fall schedule this week. It is taking a little getting used to so far. On Mondays, I head to Regent for my Christian Education and Equipping class. Bethany and I have worked out the car situation where I can drop her off at school, go to my class, and pick her up from school at the end of the day.

Tuesdays I meet with my pastor at 8am and then we have mostly meetings that day. Wednesday I got to work at 8am and then leave for school at 11am every other Wednesday for another Regent class. It is Supervised Ministry class, so mainly report-type information - easy. Thursday I work all day and run our choir practice that night. Fridays is a work day, too. So, Saturday is our day to hang out and enjoy sleeping in.

I am a little nervous with how busy this fall may be. I tend to procrastinate a little and I hate that! I have got to stay on top of things...

I need to update this thing more...

Jordan B-day 1

Jordan B-day 1
Originally uploaded by jeffflint.

My little niece turned 1 last Thursday and had a party today. You can click on the picture to see more of the party (only 6 pics so far...)

Vacation Days

July 31, 2005 009
Originally uploaded by jeffflint.

Back in April, Mom and Dad came up and we did the Seattle toursity things and the Victoria Butchart Garden thing. Check out the photos here. Or you can click on the picture...

Family Camp

IMG_0327
Originally uploaded by jeffflint.

Last weekend, we had our church family camp at Mt. Baker Baptist Camp. Check out the photos on flickr.

The Results

I can''t believe it's been a week and I have left you all hanging on how we did in the championship softball game. We won. We are the Division 3B Bellingham softball champions! (There are 4 divisions, each with an A & B...) Yes! I have been trying to look in the paper for the publishing of the results, but I guess it's not that important to other people.

The game was incredible, though! We were down 9-2 at one point and we slowly brought it back and kept hitting and scoring and finally it was the bottom of the seventh inning, we were home team and up to bat and the bases were loaded and we were tied. Two outs, I get up to bat with the bases loaded and... I fly out to right field trying to poke it the other way. So I choked. Anyway, we go to extra innings and the rules state that the teams start with a man on second with nobody out. They want to speed up the game by then, I guess. So - the other team scores that one run, but can't get anymore, so we are down by one run; we need two to win. I start out on second and our lead off hitter was up. He can jack it when he wants to - and he is super fast. Well, he it a shot out to right center field all the way to the fence. I didn't know if it would be caught, so I had to wait up and tag up to get to third. The outfielder did not get to it in time and missed the ball. I rounded third and scored, tying the game. Usually in softball that shot would have been a triple for our lead off hitter, but remember he is super fast. He rounded third and was approaching the plate just as the ball got to the pitcher covering home plate. The pitcher bobbled the ball, the runner slid into home, and we won the game.

It was the best win all season!

Championship Softball Game

On Monday night, our church softball team played in our league tournament. It was set up where we played a game at 6:15 and if you won that you played again later and if you won that you played again later still. And if you won that game, then you play tonight for the championship. Well, we won all three games Monday night and are in the championship tonight. Four hours of softball Monday night! Bethany was ready to go home...

Our team plays in the city league as a kind of outreach for the church. Hopefully, people see our attitudes and language in a positive light and can see something different in us. I am the pitcher for the team, so I am kind of nervous... Wish us luck!

Random Things...

Well, my replacement phone came in after a big ordeal with Cingular. Apparently they don't have replacement phones for my Nokia 6230 that I used to have. Instead, they sent me a Motorola V551. It is bigger and bulkier than the 6230, which may fit my hand better, but I was pretty disappointed in the fact that Cingular couldn't send me what I wanted. Blast!

My brother started his new job this week - he handles finances for a really rich guy. My sister started school this week with the kids coming back - I wish I could watch her in action sometime. I bet she is really good. Bethany has two more weeks before kids come back to school here. She is enjoying it!

We are going flying with some church friends of ours who have a plane, so we are just going to fly to lunch tomorrow somewhere.

Back from the Peninsula

I will post more later about the trip, but in the meantime, check out some of the photos that we took!