Thanksgiving Debrief

We have had the craziest two days! We had one Thanksgiving dinner with my mom, Ben, and my grandparents at their place at 1pm. We had a good time, but were sad my uncle could not make it as he had the flu. Before I go on, I want to stop here because I have a tangent to go off on. Thanksgiving is not a Jesus Christ holiday like Christmas is. I think in a lot of ways Thanksgiving is just important in some valuable principles. It helps prepare our hearts to be thankful before the holiday season even begins. I know a lot of people think Thanksgiving is just an excuse to watch football during the week or make a big meal or a "Turkey Day", but I want to make sure I am grateful before I eat it. There are so many people especially in the U.S. especially this year who do not have much. I do not want to take it for granted what I have and I pray for them to hold on and thank God for simpler things so He can get them through.

After our first Thanksgiving, we had a second at Amanda's mom's at 6pm. It was a good amount of time for my food to digest from the first. The food was also very good and I really think I gained about 5 pounds in one day (the scale said I did, I was not exaggerating). After dinner, we went through our ads and planned our black Friday agenda.

Friday morning we awoke at 3:55 am. Yes, 3 and 4 am are sleeping hours and we awake during them. We headed to JC Penney and then Wal-Mart at 5am. This was our first mistake because it was absolutely insane for electronics. I dropped off the girls, Amanda, her mom, and her sister, Liz and proceeded to find a parking spot. About twenty minutes later gave up and waited for them. I found out Liz yelled at a lady for pushing my wife about ten feet with the front of a shopping cart. We vowed never to go to Wal-Mart again when it opened. We also heard about a man who was trampled to death in New York. Next we went to Office Depot where a lady yanked a wireless printer, Amanda's mom's present, out of my wife's hand. We ended up finding some more so it was not such a big deal, it was just the principle of the thing. We were out till about 1230 pm as Amanda's mom had a lot of shopping to do. We got all of our shopping done for our family done in one day with sweet deals!

A lot of guys out there are like what the heck are you doing? Shopping for that long? Well, yes, Amanda has a good time and I do too as long as we keep moving. I make the whole operation run smooth, the chauffeur if you will ;)

The end of the day was us getting a Christmas tree, setting it up at Amanda's dad's house where we stay when we are in Tampa, and decorating it. The end of the end of the day was Rodney, asleep, face down on the ottoman. :)

Where have we been for 2 weeks?

Greetings! I said we have to do this more and then did not post for over 2 weeks. Pretty ironic I think. We have been busy always trying to stay flexible. We are the traveling roadshow. Traveling between Tampa and Orlando trying to always meet with people. We are thinking as we meet with people either the holidays will be fruitful because people get more generous around the holidays or people will be extremely busy and have many holiday gifts to buy.

One of my favorite things that we have done in the last two weeks is that we attended Flavor Fest 2008 on the night of November 7th at Crossover Community Church in Tampa Florida. I have been growing up going to Christian rap shows there for years. It was really fun for me, but it was also the first time that Amanda had ever attended. She was a good sport and stood with me for about three hours as we walked around from stage to stage and hanging out with a guy I worked with at Pershing last year, Brian or Alpha Simplicity.

We got to talk to Jutty on the 14th. It was a much anticipated call that had a lot of business in the hour we talked. We did get to hear about the focus on the 25 Italians that have shown interest in the ministry instead of meeting new ones. I think this is extremely important if we want to have Italians taking ownership of the ministry within the next year or two. We are excited to keep in touch with them every 1-2 weeks to keep a fresh vision. I think it is easy for us to get lost in what the vision is for Italy with not being there. It is also easy to blame the people over there for not contacting us as much as I would have them do so. We have to remember that they are running the ministry and now with Vonage phones we can call, too!

This past weekend we got to visit Glenwood Presbyterian in DeLand on November 23rd. We spoke at few Sunday school classes. It was good because some stuff in Saint Augustine and Jacksonville did not work out. It was good to share our vision with some people either of us had not known in our pasts.

We are excited about Thanksgiving tomorrow!!!

We Need to Do This More

We are in Tampa for the weekend and then coming back to Orlando for Tuesday and Wednesday because of Amanda's work and then back to Tampa on Thursday for a dessert that some people from Amanda's old church are throwing for her. Then, we have no clue I guess if there are people in Tampa that still want to meet with us and then we will stay here or if there are people in Orlando we will go back for that next week, it is kind of up in the air. We are going to be in Saint Augustine the weekend of the 22nd because Clay Nettles mom, Diane is throwing a dinner for us. We might go to Jacksonville the week prior or after the 22nd because there are some people there we want to meet with there. So we are basically nomads with no home and no consistent plans.

God keeps placing encouraging appointments right where we need them. It really has revealed to us more of His character. It does not mean that we still have gotten frustrated in the last few weeks, but our trip to Tampa has been a lot more encouraging that the first time we went. We are thankful for everyone's prayers!!


We are staying as busy as we can during the day, but sometimes it is tough as stuff slows down some days. We have learned to play about an hour of board games a few days during the week. Among our favorites is Mancala. It is game that you really have to think at and Amanda and I are pretty even at it. As much as I want to do support related stuff all the time because I do not want to regret that I could have done more, i need to have time with the Lord, play games, and exercise to be healthy. Just ask Amanda I can get pretty intense about support raising. As silly as it sounds, Mancala can help balance me out sometimes.