an update - finally.

first, let me apologize for being away from the blog for a ridiculously long period of time. i spoke every day last week, and was away from my computer most of the time. i generally just checked email and tried to keep my head above water last week. here's some of the fun...

monday through wednesday i was speaking at wessendorf middle school. it was pretty fun, but a lot of speaking. we did a parent program on monday night, and then 12 programs for 6th graders over the next two days. this was a pretty nice school in rosenberg, a little suburb of sugar land. (that's right, a suberb of a suberb). the groups were SMALL (50 or less), and the kids were really well behaved. fun stuff.

fast forward to thursday and friday - olle middle school. over in alief. rough part of town. now, at this school, they were again supposed to be small assemblies. but instead, they decided to do 200+ students all in the gym. nothing like standing in the middle of the gym, half the lights out so the projector will show up, and a set of bleachers packed out with 7-8 graders. it was interesting. the nice thing about a larger, rowdier group is that it's fun to get reactions from them. there are certain parts of the program i was doing that are pretty funny - but with a group like that i could say "camels store water in their body" and they would explode laughing. it's even more fun when you set them up perfectly and then hit them with your punchline. great stuff.

what is not great is this - schools being unprepared. i was supposed to start at 8.30 for my first program of the day. i show up at 8 - half an hour early. my contact person shows up at about 8.25, tells me to hang out for a few minutes, and then walks away. they start setting up the equipment around 8.45 - including a screen that was still sealed in the box and no one knew how to put together. finally, they were ready about 9.10 - which means i had to cut the first program quite a bit short. oh well. it was a lot of fun.

needless to say, i was pretty tired by the time friday night rolled around. i had spoken 20 times over the last four days, and my voice was feeling the effects of that. we went out to dinner with my family at olive garden to celebrate christy's birthday - yay for yummy breadsticks. then, saturday i went with eric to play basketball at this open gym. i LOVE basketball. it's the best - but i haven't played for a LONG time. i am so out of shape. after playing for a few hours, i was sucking wind, my lungs were burning, i felt like i was going to puke, and my face was bright red. what a fun feeling. and then, sunday my body felt like mush. but that's a good feeling - it only gets better from here. saturday morning basketball = new weekly routine. should be fun over the next few weeks.

sunday was a blast - great time of worship, got to talk with some people at kaleo about stuff going on with them... it's always nice to sit down, open the bible, and talk about things that people are working through. took my weekly sunday afternoon nap, and then went to the grayshons to watch the superbowl. not a huge football fan, but i like the comercials. and eating other people's food! then found my cell phone, realized tiffany had called and invited shannon and i over to watch a movie... crap. feel bad about not getting the message until too late. tiffany - we're going to come watch a movie soon - just pick a day!

this week is another busy one, but that's the norm these days. i'll try to keep up on my blogging and not be a slacker. i'll also try to be a little more theological in nature and thought provoking - rather than the teenage girl diary type post i just made above. leave a comment and let me know you're out there!