Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Missions Trip...LUC Boys Ranch

So believe it or not, I am actually going to tell you a little bit about our Missions Trip coming up this summer. Like I said, we are going to the LUC Boys ranch in Lampe, Missouri. Some members of our congregation go every summer; it looks like we will be having 5 teens join us on this trip this year! The reason this place means a lot to our church is because when the ranch started, members of our congregation moved there to help them run the ranch. We also have had at least one teen from Colby go through the program.
Just a little note about what they do…they take teens in who are rough, and who don’t have much other choice sometimes than jail. They help them work through many situations in their lives. The program is based on Christian values…what better way to turn your life around then having God in your life? The boys receive counseling to work through life’s problems, they are also educated as school, and they are taught different trades and skills that they can use in life.
So what will we be doing? About anything they want us to do…maybe working on buildings, remodeling or even masonry work…they have plenty for us to do and keep us busy. Plus, I believe we will get to interact with some of the guys.
From what I have been told we are taking a pretty big group of people this year on our trip. It should be a good bonding experience between some of the adults and the teens. It also will hopefully give us an awesome step into doing a bigger missions trip together next year. Somewhere, hopefully not in the U.S.
You can help…every year the church purchases something that the ranch needs. Last year we bought them an industrial ice machine. This year, our church is trying to buy a used tractor for the ranch…it will cost about $5000…if you want to give to this project, Becky and I would be willing to pass the money along to the church. You can check out the ranches website at www.lucboys.org
This is going to be an awesome surprise when we pull up to the ranch and have a tractor to give them!!! Just one more reminder, the trip is June 4th – 10th , the cost is only $150 per person, plus food on the way there and back.
Be sure to let me know what you think of this oppurtunity…

This Summer

This summer…well it is almost here. The kids last day of school is May 18th and things start to get busy right away. For one, the teens that don’t have a job will be calling about every day to do something. If you know any thing about Colby Kansas, it doesn’t take you more than two days before you’re repeating the fun same things over again…So what to do, if we had a church van it would be a lot easier to pack up and take the teens somewhere for a day, but as it is now, we have to find vehicles and drivers.
That’s enough whining for today…here a list of some things we are doing and possibilities of doing this summer. We are going on a Missions Trip to the boys ranch in Missouri. We will be staying up all night at Youth Camp in July, I’m sure the Junior High girls will beg Becky and I to climb the climbing wall again, I refused last year, but Becky did it. I would rather play in the water on the blob or go down the slide! We will have a Youth Camping trip where we take the boat and go tubing! We will have plenty of days where we will pull out the Slip and Slide and play in the back yard, (wow it would be so much easier if we had a pool). We already had a bbq in the park, I’m sure we’ll have more of those. Lastly, I can assure you that I will have my fill of card games before the summer is over.
We might go to the water park in Hays; it’s only 11/2 hours away. Or we might go to Denver to Six Flags, it’s no Cedar Point but it might do for a day. I want to go to a Rockies game, (by the way Barry Bonds was in town and hit his first homer of the year on my Birthday.) We could always travel on down to Dodge City; it’s only 2 ½ hours away and see a shoot out at Boot Hill! I am sure there are more things that I could list, but that is enough for now…

Friday, April 21, 2006

So What Do You Want??

So it's almost here again...Yep, it's coming this Saturday...So with it comes the question what do you want? I don't know that I can answer that honestly...But I can give it a guess, maybe I'll make a list and narrow it down from there.
Let me see...maybe a video game? Well that seems simple, let's go something bigger. What did I ask for two years ago...well, I asked for a party at a local pizza establishment with my closest friends at the time. My thoughts on that still today, the collest thing any 23 year old can get is seeing one of his best friends scream and run when approached by a life sizes rat, and being able to be 10 years old again, atleast for an hour.
Ok...maybe thats' a little silly. So I guess i will say...Ah, I know, I would like to be able to play a game of tackle football once again with all of my brothers...I can see it now, two plays in and we are all running out of gas and ready for half time, then we get mad at each other and end up quitting because that's how we did it when we were younger. Sorry, James, I still love you.
Well maybe that's not it either, maybe it's going to a football game that is so cold you go huddle in the bathroom because you can't feel your toes...well not everyone goes into the bathroom, there is one die hard fan who screams his head off, and that's not the only reason he looks like a dork, it might be the blanket wrapped around his head...He was definitely a dork.
I've got it...the perfect gift, just one more hug...
But since that will never really do, I will look for happiness in other areas on Saturday...P.S. Enjoy the John Wayne Movie!!!

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

1/4 of a century?

It's been a long time coming...I haven't written anything on the blog for a while so I thought I would get on here tonight and tell everyone a little bit of what's going on in Colby. We have been busy the past couple of weeks...From Sunday April 9th to Sunday April 16th there were a total of 6 services that we had at church. Not including all of the practices we had for our Maunday Thursday Drama that we did, oh yeah, I actually did it twice. I was, I guess, the demon hate...talk about a good Easter week.
As far as the Youth Group goes, things are really awesome. Last week for Youth Group we had a serious lesson about the last few days of Christ's life on earth. I used the Bible and then read God's point of view from the book, Witness the Passion. When we were done with Youth Group none of the teens said anything...silence for this group tells you that you actually got through to them!!! Since we were very serious last week, tomorrow night we are going to have a fun night...we are starting to do something completely devoted to fun once a month. Anyways, we are having pajama and cereal night. It is going to be a twist on a normal Saturday morning full of cartoons, breakfast, were gonna read some books, and have some fun!!!
Saturday...well Saturday all I can say is I am sleeping in. Actually I probably won't. We have prom and prom alternative here in Colby this weekend and I think I will be hellping the boys get all ready for their night. Don't worry Grandma, we will give all of the girls sweaters!!!
So I think that's it for now..I will be writing in a couple of days to tell everyone about or missions trip, we are going to Lives Under Construction in Lampe, Missouri. If you want to check out their website before I write more about it you can goe to, www.lucboys.org
I think that's it for now...

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Spiritual Retreat #2

Monday Morning…the boys decided that we needed to wake up at the crack of dawn, at 6 A.M. they were up and being loud. I walked downstairs and went into their room and said two words, Shut Up! Then I went back to bed until 7:30.
When we got up again it was time for breakfast, we had a list for who helped with the meals and they went to work making frenchtoast and sausage!!! After eating and cleaning up breakfast, I gave the teens 30 minutes to finish working on their questions for the morning.
We started with songs of worship and then we got down to business…I started off my lesson with telling them about their Youth Pastor. I told them all about myself and my call into the ministry. I think I spoke for about 45 minutes and asked them a few questions. After I was done talking, I gave them some free time to think about who they truly are, with their family, friends, teachers, and with me and their youth group. I asked them to think about who they want to become and who God is calling them to be.
After our lesson, we were supposed to go into town and get lunch and then proceed to go ice-skating. It had snowed most of the night and we didn’t know how the roads would be, if we could get into town or not. So Mike and I went down the mountain, we made it down but the road was still bad so we weren’t going to try it. That showed us another problem…we had planned to have two meals in town, now we didn’t have enough food/meals to eat. Becky and I thought about that before so we brought extra bread incase we had to make sandwiches. The only problem to that is the fact that I left the two packages of cheese in the back of our car in Colby. Fortunately there is a restaurant at the bottom of the hill, unfortunately they aren’t open on Mondays. We ended up making 7 grilled cheese sandwiches and found 2 boxes of Macaroni and Cheese that we made for lunch, everybody was satisfied.
I thought staying in the cabin would bore the teens, but actually it was probably the best thing for them. They all found things to do like read a book, take a nap, play board games, and some of us went outside and played in the snow by having a snowball fight. It was an awesome afternoon of just hanging out and having fun…