Summer Arrives

Ok, so truthfully, I am not the best blogger in the world. My sincerest apologies. But hey, everybody should get a second chance right? After all God gives us second chances. For that matter, as long as we are sorry, he’ll just keep on forgiving us! Nobody’s perfect. So, I’ll make you a deal. If you forgive me for not posting in so long, I’ll try to post more often and make them good. How does once a week sound? As they say in texting, k great.

Well, this summer hasn’t been too busy lately. I’ve gotten a lot of time at home which is nice but I am definitely much to lazy for my liking (and my parents’ for that matter).

I had a great time at our annual Relay for Life this year. My first year as NOT a minor, but not a chaperone. Someday no restrictions shall hinder me! Anyways, we all had a great time, walking a lot. I spent a lot of tim looking at all the names of people we were honoring and remembering and it made quite the impact on me. Each one of those people has a family. They are all mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, grandparents, and so much more. I thought about my own family, friends, loved ones and how much I would miss out if they were the ones with names on the bags (some of them were). It makes one appreciate God’s great gift of life that much more.

During the Christmas break, Tom and I discovered the wonderful world of Skype Extras which contains the glorious game of checkers. So naturally since we can no longer play tic-tac-toe, hangman, and mastermind in person for another fourteen months, we took up our occasional Skype checkers games again. He consistently skunks me but, thats ok. Someday, I’ll get him!

During one of our coast to coast checkers games, Tom enlightened me on his current favorite song, which I had just heard on the radio (All of Creation – MercyMe). A winner for sure. Since then, I’ve taken a liking to listening to more music and I developed a few favs of my own, including current standards like Matt Maher’s Alive Again and Hold Us Together. I’ve also rediscovered Josh Wilson (Savior Please, The Saints, 3 Minute Song) and plenty of old Matt Maher songs, before he hit the widespread Christian music scene. Especially “Shine Like the Son”, that song is rockin! TobyMac also has a pretty rockin tune in “Get Back Up.” It’s been nice with all this music keeping me in check, reminding me about life at Steubie and what really matters (God, in case you were wondering). All this rockin music has inspired me with an idea for a youth group night. I’ll keep you posted on how that unfolds.

The job scene is not looking so great. Granted, I haven’t been the most devoted job seeker in the market but I would have hoped that by now I’d even have gotten a ‘We’re not interested in you’ phone call. So far M-Square Farms has been my most promising employer (that’d be my Mom’s ranch). While I’m not the biggest fan of manual labor, work is work, especially if you get paid for it and its, how do they say it, “character building.”

I paid a visit to Southern California last weekend (June 4-7). Our good friends the Dentons, who used to live up near us in beautiful Lake County, but because of Dave’s work decided to move closer to family down where the thermometer tops out at 115 fahrenheit far too often (hyperbole added). Anyways, They often visit us, the youngest two of four boys have my parents as Godparents. I’m really good friends with their oldest, Conor, and back in May, just before I left the Stebenville bubble, asked me to be his confirmation sponsor. I was quite honored and surprised but very happy to oblige. So I got to go down and visit the family, stay with them for a few days for the confirmation. You know, visit with my second family. Lots of fun. Such a great family!

This weekend brings the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary! Woot woot! And for the Parish of St Mary Immaculate, that means the reinstating of the annual Parish Picnic! As much fun as that sounds (no really I’m excited) my sister Roni and I have other plans. We are going to go spend the day in Santa Rosa (the nearest “metropolitan” city) for a training for Youth Ministry leadership with Mike Patan and Santa Rosa’s one and only Stan Cordero. It’s going to be really nice seeing all those peeps!

I’ve gotten to talk to Greg, Tom, Christina, Julie, Tom and Julie (at the same time), and Santi, voice to voice. All great conversations! And then of course there are the occasional frequent text-message-when-something-reminds-me-of-you conversations, those are always interesting. I’d like to be able to Skype more but I guess I just get to the computer at the wrong times. This time-zone thing is killer. It’s been decided that Skype has difficulty play games over multiple time-zones…it has to do with time travel, or something like that.

Anyways, so far Summer has been great! I’m relaxing, hoping things will pick up here so I can stop watching MASH reruns (ove and over). I pray that this blog post finds anyone who reads it well, and that your summer is going great! Keep in touch, and with that, I leave you with some words from the Sidewalk Prophets.

Be strong in the Lord and,
Never give up hope,
You’re going to do great things,
I already know,
God’s got His hand on you so,
Don’t live life in fear,
Forgive and forget,
But don’t forget why you’re here,
Take your time and pray,
Thank God for each day,
His love will find a way,
These are the words I would say