Just some random stuff from us

Things I didn't expect to see or hear...

"Mirrored Furniture Event" from neiman marcus
A gift of 6 (yes, just six) "wedding" cookies for $45.
http://www.lucyandbart.com/ just weird
"I twittered to tell you I blogged"

Interesting tools:
CheckMyColours.com by Giovanni Scala is a tool for checking foreground and background color combinations of all DOM elements and determining if they provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits. All the tests are based on the algorithms suggested by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/ Just what it says, you can generate your own cards for an old-fashioned library catalog.

http://www.distractionbeast.com/brainstormer.swf A random generator of off-beat combinations of words to get the creative juices going.

http://www.tiltshiftmaker.com/ Tilt shift makes miniature style photos from pictures of real-life scenes that are manipulated to look like model photographs. You upload your own photos here. Free. Play, have fun.

What artists feel like in the working world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY
This especially goes out to my brother Steve and friend, Chad.

Places that inspire my creative juices or just make me smile:
http://www.despair.com/ (please check out the "Social Media Venn Diagram)

http://www.freerice.com/ where for every answer you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program to help end hunger. Catagories are vocabulary (in 5 languages) English grammer, Art, Chemistry, Math, and Geography

http://www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com/ pretty much sums it up.

http://www.notcot.org/ ideas aesthetics and amusement

http://www.designspongeonline.com/ great ideas and "upcycling".

http://www.threadless.com/ Be nude no more! Greatest t-shirt place online.

http://www.tajtunes.com/ Singing telegrams...er...phone calls from India! Songs sung live to loved ones. Only $5! Gee, cards cost that much! Leaves everyone we know speachless! "Outsourcing never sounded so good"

http://www.biblegateway.com/ I use this to listen to the bible, cuz I'm just not a reader!

Happy Independence Day, America.

Double Dipping

Pat tells me I'm 'soaring' when I do it, but I just love getting the chance to speak to groups and share God-stories. I guess she says that because I go into some sort of zone; call it my "happy place". It's just plain fun for me. (Truth be told, it's probably because I'd rather speak to a group than an individual as I'm somewhat shy.)

Anyway, got two chances to do just that recently. Last weekend I popped over to Council Bluffs to Valley View Baptist Church to take in the view and share the story of the Mister-Toad's-Wild-Ride Pat and I have been on over the last 18 months. Some of them have been on their own wild rides, so it was good to compare notes and remember together how the sovereign God we serve isn't caught off-guards by the unexpected twists and turns of the journey, even if they do threaten to throw us out of the coaster. Thanks Valley View (we're on a first-name basis now), it was a gas!

Yesterday I spoke much closer to home, at our church in Waukee. This was one of those messages that seemed to change themes as I was preparing for it, but it dawned on me late in the game that it tapped into my 'holy discontent'. In fact, that's what it's about -- those things that move us so deeply and for so long we eventually must set out to do something about it. (Credit to Bill Hybels for the phrase and the idea.) If you want to hear it, here's the link. You'll just have to imagine the part where I make the rock float in mid-air. Seriously.

Shout outs to Matt for the Valley View connection, the Nelsons for lunch, Pat, Amy, and Mike for the 'rock magic', and Lamar for just plain making my day!

Rock On?

Here is a pile of rocks. Why am I showing you rocks? Well, these are special "teaching" rocks. Our church (Westwind) is going through the book of Nehemiah and wanted a visual representation of the wall of Jerusalem. Each week the wall (which was just rubble at the beginning) will get bricks added to it. So each week, I get to make rocks and bricks. Cool, huh. Using the 'arts' to teach.

Meanwhile (as the artist in this case) I get to learn about the story of this rebuilding effort. When I learn stuff, I can't help but share stuff...so: The walls at this time would have been about 20' or more feet across with cut stones on the outside (what we normally would imagine a wall looking like) but the inside would have been filled with lime and stones. It would have been some 30' high is some places.

(here is a photo I got online of what they believe is remnant of Nehemiah's wall)

"Nehemiah, who lived during the period when Judah was a province of the Persian Empire, arrived in Jerusalem as governor in 445 BC with the permission of the Persian king, determined to rebuild and restore the desolate city after the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians a century earlier, in 586 BC.

The Persians had conquered the Babylonian empire that had destroyed Jerusalem and taken most of the inhabitants of Judah into captivity in what is now modern Iraq.

The Bible relates that despite the resistance of hostile neighbors who had occupied the area around Jerusalem in the Jews' absence, the whole wall was completed in a speedy 52-day period.” -The Jerusalem Post, Nov 28, 2007

Unbelievable! Wonderful book about leadership, group efforts, encouragement and courage! (Those are all areas Kevin and I are in need of these days.)

FYI: The rocks are made out of spray insulation and Styrofoam. I make a tremendous mess when I do it and am having a wonderful time! I might make an "Instructable" about it one day, if I do, we'll post it here.

Thank yous to: Helen, Doug & Delores, (wow) and brother Steve, for their encouragement and love. Matt and Lynn for their time and laughs and our small group for sharing their lives.

If you could, please pray for my friend (like a sister) Sally, she lost her sister to cancer Monday. Her sister had a lovely girl of 11 and Sally will now be her "mom".

Time for a Couple of Facelifts

Yes, Pat's as pretty as ever and Kevin, well, you know. But it's been bugging me for some time now that as our lives and ministry have evolved, our "web presence" hasn't. So much so that the e-face we have been presenting hasn't accurately reflected reality for a while now. Not even close.

But no longer! Check out our redone website Artof(the)Following. It's by no means just a prettied up rendition of the same old same old, but a fresh description of what we're about and what we do. Take a romp through it and let us know what you think. Feedback is our friend!

And now for this blog to get it's own little makeover, well at least the picture across the top. Pat found one of us yesterday that she wants to put there that's -- let's call it what it is -- nothing short of surreal. The scary part is, when she showed it to me I thought, "Yeah, that pretty much sums us up." Yikes.
Shout outs this week to Big Jim for spraying stuff, to mom for the very special ride, and to the folks who gave towards the purchase of a light kit. More on that in a future post soon, but couldn't wait any longer to let you know our appreciation.

A Thirst for "Thirst"

Kevin was asked by two different organizations to produce his play, "Thirst" this summer. One is our friend Danon Parks, of Kansas City (who coincidentally produced it as his graduate project at Kansas University with some controversy) who is doing it at his church. The other is the Culture House in Kansas City. They are a christian art group with a huge emphasis on quality and teaching dance and theater. They want to produce it with their high school students.

I had to promise not to laud him too much in order to write this blog, but I just gotta say, I am so proud of him. I know he is gifted and it does my heart good to see others recognize that in him. This will mean "Thirst " will have been produced around a dozen times (Kevin nonchalantly said this morning).

How cool, this was an early effort of ours to use the arts to reach people with the gospel in a non-taditional, intelligent and excellent way. Go, God! It was great to get some affirmation!

Because That's What We Do

Last week we sent out an email to the folks on the mailing list letting them know of some things we've done recently. (You can see the list at the bottom of this post.) The best, and surprising, part of the whole thing were the responses we quickly got back.

T. wrote us to say he wants to hook us up with a couple considering missions as a vocation, because he knows we help people with questions about that. A., writing from another hemisphere, asked us to pray for a believer in their midst who is young in the faith. We spent several days there with him a while back and stayed in touch, so he knows that's the kind of thing we care about. And then P. reminded us that what we do makes a difference with CrossWorld, our "boss".

Wow, how cool to get messages touching on the various pieces across the board of what we do -- to hear, "You make a difference here." Who ever gets tired of that?

So, shout outs to T., A., and P., and the rest of you as well. Okay, so I could have done without T. making fun of my gray hair, but he's a good friend, so what're you gonna do?

===========================
Here's the list. Recently we've:

- Produced the video "Through Closed Doors", which CrossWorld is using in their efforts to field 200 new missionaries to hard-to-enter countries by 2012

- Mentored a young woman considering full-time missions at CrossWorld’s “Next Steps” weekend.

- Traveled to Kansas City to meet with teammates headed to France, as well as recent French émigrés to the U.S. (Lots of potential there.)

- Met with a young person to show her the possibilities open to her in missions

- Recorded for distribution the voices of those God has changed, as well as voices representing those through whom God wants to bring change.

We Don't All Fly the Plane

Entrusted. The very concept implies that those receiving the trust did not choose it themselves, but that God has selected them. I really do hate to write 'against' something, but today my "holy discontent" is the notion that certain roles in serving God are more needed than others, or are more important. Really? Hmmmm, check out 1 Corinthians 12 for a great body-part analogy.

Talked with an airline pilot the other day. I'm pretty sure he didn't build the planes he flies, or figure out how to shape a wing to get many tons of metal and people in the air in the first place. I'm guessing he doesn't book seats, or load luggage, or fuel the jet, or control air traffic. But, me flying from point A to point B wouldn't happen without all that, and much more. In each role is a person who has been entrusted with a task, and all their tasks are different.

The flip side is, we've all been entrusted with, well, quite a lot, but not identically. So, what relationships, dreams, passions, talents, education, and (yes) money has the master entrusted to me, and to you? And what are we doing with them?

Shout out to all who came over for the voice recordings. Your brief stint in the closet will help others know they, too, have been entrusted with something for God's purposes.