A New Baby!

My good friends Jessica and Justin just had their first baby on Monday! I can not tell you how excited I am for them. Brooklyn Elise (love the name!!!) is beautiful with a full head of hair. I got to be her first house guest! Yay me! You can click on Justin or Jessica's blogs on the right for more pics and info.

Barry Bonds and his 756th Home Run Ball

I don't know what your thoughts are on the whole Barry Bonds "controversy" but I am a bit tired of it. It seems so many people are really good at making a decision before the "jury is out." It seems like people have no problem claiming someone guilty, before proven guilty and yet they don't like it when it happens to them.

That being said...this Mark Ecko guy who started Ecko Unlt and then spent almost 3/4 of $1,000,000 to buy Barry Bonds' 756th home run ball. He then took the ball and set up a web site for people to "vote" o what to do with it. The options were to a) give the ball to the Hall of Fame, b) give the ball to the Hall of Fame with an asterisk on it, and c) send it into outer space. I sent him a message on his myspace and let him know that I will not be buying anything from his Ecko Unlimited company.

According to Ecko, the winner is b. Bonds called him an idiot. Hmmmm. I personally think it is ridiculous. It also irritates me that the Hall of Fame is OK with it. They are basically saying that they agree with the "guilty before proven guilty" statement. I read an article online. This is a quote.

"Leyland later agreed with a columnist, who said he thought the Hall of Fame was disrespecting Bonds for accepting the ball with the asterisk on it."

Despite what you may think and most of you may disagree with me, I just think it is sad. Get over it. He is still hitting like crazy and is under more scrutiny then ever before. He is a great hitter and a great ball player.

OK, enough of my rant.

Last Day BFA; Snowboards & Scooters in the Swiss Alps

Friday was our final day for BFA SEW. It was a fun morning. I wrapped up on 2 Peter 1:8-11 – and talked about "what to do now?"
We hung out in Sam's office for the afternoon with a break to play some basketball.
Set up and prepare for evening worship time where we had 7 different stations they could go during worship (journal, pray, paint, sculpt, etc.). The evening worship time was an optional time for the high schoolers and almost everyone of the high schoolers came. It was really, really good. I had some AWEsome conversations with students afterwards. Conversations that challenged me as well. Then we stayed up late and chatted at Sam's house.

Saturday was a BLAST. We slept in and then headed to Interlaken, Switzerland. There we stopped by the lake and then headed into town and watched a ton of para gliders.
We really wanted to do that, but it was $125. So we went and rented scooters after some not so good Thai food.

We had them for 4 hours so we headed up the Swiss Alps as fast as we could. Unbelievable!!! We laughed a lot. I even mounted a helmet cam. I will post that later. We stopped at some caves and toke a "lift" up most of the way and then stairs into a place where the glaciers had carved a "path" through the mountain and we watched the water cascade all the way down. It was soooo cold inside the caves.

Off to other spots for dessert over the most amazing view ever!

Sunday 0 we went to church and saw a bunch of the students and staff and then off to the Corby's. They live in a village that is where the Romans built bath houses around 100AD. Some still stand and it is a place many Europeans come to rejuvenate. We had lunch up on a rock up their mountain and had an incredible view where we could see all the way into France.
Then back into town to walk to the castle and the little arts festival that was going on. We even saw a piece of a fashion show they had there. Some lady was wearing a newspaper hat that I found rather funny.


We stayed till after dinner and then came back to the Stemple's and looked at pics of the week and laughed a lot again.

Booked a place in Paris and ready to see the Friesen's and all of Paris in one day!

BFA Highlights Video and some other fun

Spiritual Emphasis Week is over at BFA. I will share a bit more later, but it's really late. Going to bed. I did want to post a video, so enjoy.

Day 4 @ BFA

We are almost to the end of the week. We have one more day of spiritual emphasis week. Today was cool. We had chapel and it was another encouraging one. I walked through Psalm 139 looking at how much God knows us and loves us. I encouraged students to receive that love and live in that love and live that love.

At the end I asked students to stand up if they were willing to take a new stand in their faith in Jesus and quit playng the game. I think we can all be guilty of playing the game where we don't let people see the real us. Many students stood up and said they were going to live their lives fully for Jesus!
Soooo cool!

We hung out a bit with students and then headed out with some seniors to a Doner Kebab place. I tried Doner pizza today too. Yummy.

Then it was off to a castle ruins. It was pretty cool. We climbed and played and laughed a lot. It was an amazing view from up top.

Sean and Jordan had never experienced stinging nettles, so I convinced Jordan to put his arm in it to see what it feels like. Pretty funny. I will post that video and pics of today later. I am tired so this is not getting a ton of work put into tonight.

We then headed to palmgarten (a girls dorm) for dinner and some games. We had a blast hanging out with them. We were "gifted" with a tradition they have. After prayers and amen several girls came screaming and running all over and kissed Jordan, Sean, Sam and I on the cheeks with Nutella lips. Nutella is an AMAZING choclate hazelnut spread!!! It tastes so good, but was strange to have on my face. haha.

Then it was back to the Stemples and we played some card games and Sean and Jordan headed to bed wayyyyy before me, as usual.

Nite friends!

Creeking? The Video

Here is the vid of the initiation!

Day 3 of Chapels at BFA

Last night I stayed up pretty late editing the “creeking” video. We got up to come back to chapel today. We had a fun/good worship set and then I got to do a message on Romans 6. I told a story of living in Bagalonia, a place where you must do what the evil dictator tells you to do, but you kind of want to anyhow. Every time you do something that the dictator wants you to do you put a rock into your backpack. Soon it becomes really heavy and you can’t stand up anymore.

You can find the whole story of Bagalonia at www.erikwithak.com

The bottom line is that the rocks represent our sin and Bagalonia is the life you life without Jesus in your life. When you repent/confess your sins and begin a relationship with Jesus you enter this new country. It’s a new life.

Take a look at Romans 6; Romans 12:1-2; Galatians 5

We then hung out most of the day at the school. Sam gave us a tour of the school and then we got ourselves ready for Chrysalis (the middle school small group ministry lead by the seniors). Oh, I went with Sam to the store to buy candy. I spent WAYYY too much!

We had Döner Kebab for dinner. Mmmmmm...here is what wikipedia says about these kebabs."Döner Kebab (as döner kebap in Turkish and often simply kebap, donair, döner, doner or donner), which literally means "turning roast" is the name given to a Turkish dish made with lamb (or mutton), beef or chicken. It is the origin of other similar Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dishes such as shawarma and gyros. A version developed to suit German tastes by Turkish immigrants in Berlin has become one of the world's most popular fast food dishes."


Then we played some basketball before we started Chrysalis.

Chrysalis was a blast. We lead a bunch of “new”, high energy fun songs and then they did some games. I then did a 5 minute talk on loving God and loving others. I had them think about a time they felt loved and a time they felt unloved. Then I had them get in partners and take a piece of gum and shape it into something that represented one of those two times and then into their small groups to come up with ideas on how they can use their past to show love to others this week.

A girl came up to me to tell me that 3-4 students she knows began a new relationship with Jesus Christ for the first time today!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, God is good...all the time!

Photo Booth Fun - My Heart Will Go On (Titanic)

We had a little fun with photo booth yesterday when we had a free moment. We showed it at chapel today.

Chapel was cool. I spoke from on top of a ladder. 2 Peter 1:5-7. Looking at the things that we need to do on our part, knowing God has given us all we need for life and godliness.

We then went into Freiberg to do some sightseeing and shopping. We climbed the spire in a beautiful church (279 steps) and then had some fleischkasa...mmmm.

Then we headed back, by train, to go to some more dorms for dinner.

Sam and I went to Sonne with the guys and Sean and Jordan ate with the girls tonight. We all ended up at the guys dorm after all the guys stormed the girls dorm to "creek" Jordan. A "welcome to BFA" tradition for guests. Sam and I were videoing, when all of a sudden I went into the creek too. It was pretty cold and it was raining pretty hard too. Everyone got wet. It was a blast.

Enjoy the video. You could be one of the first ones to see the next "big viral video." haha.

1st Day of SEW

Spiritual Emphasis Week started today at Black Forest Academy. Sean lead worship and Jordan and I and a student played with him. It was a blast.

I showed the croc video and then talked on 2 Peter 1:3-4. We looked at how God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. We also talked about the time of life that Peter's readers were in and how there was a lot of garbage going on in the church, etc.

Students seemed to respond very well.

We hung out at lunch with students and then went back to the house and rest. We made a video..I will try to put it on later. It's funny.

Then we split and the boys went to a guys dorm and Sam and I went to a girls dorm for dinner. We played some games and hung out and then headed back to the house. Played some games and chatted.

Good day!
Beautiful countryside!
Lots of corn!
Rain has now started...hope it stops when we wake up.

A Crazy Few Days...but in Germany

It is a fairly lengthy story, so I will give you some bullet points as to what has happened since Thursday evening.

* Packing for my trip to Germany Thursday eve (speaking at Black Forest Academy for Spiritual Emphasis Week) I suddenly see that my Passport is a few months expired!!!

* I get one hour of sleep and Jeanne-Ann and I run up to Seattle at 3AM. (one of about 5 places in the country you can get a passport the same day). Usually they get it out by th end of the day.

* They expedite it, but not quick enough to make it back to my 11:35AM departure from PDX.

* Delta tells me I can reissue the ticket for another flight minus $230 fee, plus difference in another ticket. Cost would be about $2,300 to go. :(

* I realize that I have mileage and I get Continental to set it all up.

* I spend 2 hours Friday evening trying to get my ticket replaced (we were going to use them for a later flight). Everything went great till the last 30 minutes of my call and the last 2 people I got sent to. They told me the ticket was a dead ticket and worthless and there was nothing they could do!!!

* I yelled a little and said it was unacceptable. Calmed myself and said, "Sorry, I know this isn't your fault." They blamed Travelocity, who would blame Delta, etc., etc.

* Jeanne-Ann calls Delta back and takes care of it and gets some future tickets booked. All is good.

* Jordan makes it out there and Sean's flight gets canceled to Atlanta because of weather and has to go out the next day. Then he sits on a plane in Atlanta the next day and has to get out because of malfunctions and arrives in Basel (Switzerland) at 5:30PM instead of 10:30AM on the same flight that I was on!!!

* My flight from LAX was in an emergency row with no seats in front and one guy in the window seat and me in the aisle. We were excited for the space. Then some crazy, ADD, 65 year old French lady gets all excited and says, "Sorry for you" and sits in the middle seat. She literally gets up and walks around over 50 times on the flight to Paris!! To say the least, it was a test of my patience and grace. I don't think I passed with flying colors.

* We are all here and ready for bed.

A few pics from the plane in LA, Paris and Basel. (thats the Black Forest you see there)

A Total Waste of Time!!!

I am about to blog about something I never thought I would. The MTV Video Music Awards. I was curious to see what Britney Spears would do and catch any other crazy stuff of the music pop culture world.

There is a TON of slamming of Britney out there. A lot about her weight. Wouldn't be an issue if she didn't dance in her underwear. I think the worst part was the fact that she lip-synced and did really poorly. I felt bad for her as she didn't seem like she even knew what she was doing up there. I will not slam her for her choices in life. I feel bad that she has made so many poor choices and I truly hope that she will begin to make some better choices.

Now, as to the rest of the VMAs...it was HORRIBLE. I have no problem slamming a TV station. It was such a jumbled mess going on back and forth between different "parties" and the main stage. It seemed like MTV didn't have a clue as to what was going on. The whole show was a mess.

Whining Kanye West and his big mouth. Ugghhh...

It was such a total waste of time. At least I had it DVRd so I forwarded through most of it.

Perhaps the worst part was Sarah Silverman flapping her yapper. What a disgusting use of time. Not only was what she had to say terrible and boring, but it was also the worst 2 minutes of the entire night. She didn't even seem like she had a clue as to what was going on. A little practice of what you are going to say would be nice.

This is not the typical type of thing I would blog about and it is not my typical attitude about people. I just was so disgusted with the whole poorly executed show.

There was one moment of brightness...Justin Timberlake took his moments of winning the moon man award to tell MTV to play more music videos!!!

OK, I'm done.

Our Cali Trip

Last week we took a little trip down to Eureka, CA. We met up with our good friends the Daffrons. This is our 2nd year in a row to go camping with them. Last year we went just outside of Modesto which is located 62 miles south of the SUN! So we took a slightly cooler trip this year.
We camped out in tents and went to the beach each day. Ryan and I surfed and the girls and the kids played in the sand. We hung out, wandered and enjoyed some relaxing times together. So good. Below are some pics from that trip.
Enjoy.
We saw an Elk Crossing 2 Miles sign and what do you know? We saw some elk!!! So cool.
Ahhh...the sunsets!
Hey, what can I say? I'm Oregonian. We are all tree huggers...right? How cool are the Redwoods?!?!

ps. sorry it has been a while since I have been on here. We are in full "fall swing" and lots to do. But I love blogging and am committed to keeping you updated.