deepbrew

Here they are guys.  Got them to do the famous Asian Salute.  These kids are great!

School starts Tomorrow.  At 9:00 I will be smiling happily and nervously at a crew of 20 7-12ers.  Am I ready?  Not overly.   But I can’t wait for the thing to start so I get a feel for this thing.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been more keyed up about something in my life.  Seriously.

I feel bad that I haven’t posted more about IGo.  I want to sometime post more pics, tell you more about it, put a few more plugs in for the place for the benefit of all you future students out there.  I will do that, once I get a few free moments.   Not sure when this is going to happen.

In other news….  Eric is still gone…  Only 1 yr, 11 3/4 months till he comes back.  Yes, life is a tragic vale of tears.  But… at least I get this whole huge room to myself.  Not that I really like that or anything.

In other news… my laptop is now luxuriating in 2 GBs of memory.  Ahh….  Yup, it’s real snappy like.  Can’t wait to see what it does once I stick Vista on it.  On the subject of memory, let me put a plug in for crucial.com, the only place to buy memory.  I ordered yesterday, opted for the 7-10 day free shipping, and the stuff arrived today, all the way from Idaho.  Not sure how they were able to pull that off, but hey, I was very happy.  Crucial’s stuff is top notch, too.

On another subject… Passion Camp was a wonderful wonderful weekend.  We were incredibly blessed by God.   The guys loved it, and we were all impacted with some seriously life-changing stuff.  I will never be the same, for sure.  God is incredible!

Another piece of news I was really happy to hear was that the 19 Korean hostages in Afghanistan are set to be released!  This is very positive!  We had prayed a lot for these folks last month.

Well, I will hopefully post a picture of my 20 brilliant future world changers on here soon.   Peace out.

Just got a break for a few minutes from all the stuff that’s happening at Passion Camp to come post a few pics so you all know what’s happening and could pray for us.  We’re having a great time, hearing some incredible teaching and talking seriously about real guy issues, etc.  Merle Burkholder just finished a session on relationships that was incredibly powerful; the stories he told I will never forget.  We’ve got around 60 guys attending.  Pray that God would have freedom to work.  Pray against our enemy.  Pray for physical strength.  We’re not getting too much sleep!

My time in Asia has been one of the most incredible four months of my life ever. I learned so much about our God and his work in the world. I got to know so many amazing people. I traveled to fascinating places, and enjoyed all sorts of experiences.

This four month semester at the IGO consisted of 3 ministry trips and 3 three week terms of study. On the ministry trips I went to Dhaka, Bangladesh, the Karen Villages of Thailand, and Xi’an, China. During the study terms I studied things like Theology of Missions, Discovering our God, Life of Christ, TESOL, History of Missions, Principles of Teaching, Genesis, Cultural Anthropology, Christian Family, Galatians, Hebrews, and Kingdom Theology, to name all 12 classes. Plus there was a mentoring group with it’s own subject matter and assignments. Additionally, during the study terms, we went out two nights a week on local ministry tasks. No, we did not get bored.

It doesn’t look like I’m going to get bored at home either. My “little” brother Eric is leaving in 1 week for a 2 year term in Poland with AIM teaching English, and I want to be with him as much as possible before he leaves. Passion camp is this weekend, Thursday night through Sunday. Looks like it’s shaping up to be a great weekend, and if know of any more guys that might be interested, we can still sign them up. My sis and her kids are here now, which is awesome, and my bro and his family is coming down for the day tomorrow. Our youth camping trip is today and tomorrow. School is starting in 2 ½ weeks, and I am supposed to be teaching 17 of them, grades 7-12. Breath in…. breath out… Say a prayer for me, if you would. It’s good to be back.