I’ve been working to reduce the stress in my life and not take on anymore work. The only problem with this, it gives me time to fill. What have I decided to do with this free time, start a podcast. Many of you probably are aware of the podcast by now, if not check it out (http://www.faithshaping.org/). I am really enjoying doing the podcast. I’m almost feeling inclined to expand my podcasting. I’ve considered moving my regular text blog to perhaps even an audioblog, or at least take some opportunities to include audioblog posts. I’m not sure if I’ll persue anything further or not.

I’ve really been feeling the weight of the brokenness in the world lately. You probably saw this in my blog post a couple days ago. At times I feel like I should be doing more to reach people for Christ, and maybe I should be. I feel like I’m trapped in a Christian bubble. I start thinking perhaps I ought to move soome place else, and work in the “secular” world. Don’t get me wrong, it can be so amazing at times to be able to freely talk about spiritual matters during breaks and at other times at my work. The problem is there can be too much talk and not enough action. I want to be used by God to reach this ever-growing broken world. I don’t know where God is leading me, and I’m not going to be up a moving tomorrow, but I feel like a change needs to be made in my life.

I know I need to be updating the “world-at-large” as to my little trip to the Twin Cities this past weekend. It’s kind of becoming public that there is some special in my life. NOW, this is not to be made more than what it really is at this point. Our situation is an interesting one. We are dealing with a distance problem. I’m not sure how that will be worked out, only God knows that. We’re also both looking keep our eyes fix on God’s leading in our own lives. And if it is His plan that our journey’s should be moved together as one, then that will become apparent in His time. We both had a wonderful weekend, and were glad to have had the oppportunity to spend some actual time together. I’ve actually already planned on making a trip to visit her in April. We’re both just looking to develop our friendship and see where God leads it. BTW, if you checkout my podcast you’ll get to hear a little of Vanessa as she so graciously took part in my last episode. If you want to know more you’ll have to just post those as comments on here. She reads my blog, if you haven’t guessed it by now, and she’ll maybe respond to you directly. One other thing, there are some photos posted from the weekend in the photos section of the blog, peruse at your pleasure.

Since the weekend I’ve really been struggling to catch up on sleep. I got very little this past weekend and I’ve been trying to catch up on other things now that I’m back too. I’m still operating with sleep defficiency. I don’t know if this was partly why yesterday ended up being such a crummy day. I really didn’t get as much done at work that I wanted too, although that seems to be a never ending story. And then as I began working on preparing for praise team practice I ran into a whole bunch of problems finding sheet music for the songs that were picked out, then to top things off my printer decided it was going to stop working. Later that night I come to discover that apparently one of the ports on my Linksys router seems to be dead, one more thing that now needs fixing. Practice time went ok, but could have been way better if I had felt/been more prepared. The positive side of last night was the time I got to hang out with Tommy O. at Perkins afterwards. He’s a great kid, and it’s always fun to hear what’s going on in his life.

So what has God been teaching me lately. Well, for starters that only He’s in control. This is something it seems I continue to have to learn over and over again. My life is not my own, it is His. It can be so easy, if for even just brief moments, to take our lives back in our own hands. Everyday I have to make a concience decision to give it all to Him. If I try to manage my own life it only becomes a mess. Along with this, I can definitely see why the semi-circle (Life Shape) is so important for our lives. I have been suffering from a lack of rest, and abiding in Christ. I think I’ll stop there as I feel good content for the podcast coming on.

Well, there’s just a small glimpse of where things are at for me these days. I so miss the daily blog posts. I always enjoyed having the time to process my days. That was really a part of apply the learning circle, another thing that requires constant work. I think as Christians it can be so easy to think that we can actually make accomplishments where our spiritual walk is concerned. There really are only brief accomplishments, but even the things we learn or experience seem like they have to come around again. How easy it is for us to forget. They say that we only use 10% of our brain. It would seem that the 10% is merely a funnel into the 90% we don’t use. That’s were everything get’s lost and clouded. I’ll stop now, not only cause this post has gone on forever, but also my lunch time is coming to an end. Valete!

I’m pretty sure I haven’t mentioned it, cause it’s been a few days since my last post, but on Thursday I had the opportunity to place a Skype call to Africa. I used a piece of software called Soundflower that creates a software audio device. I was able to then route the outgoing sound of Skype into my sound recording app. I was able to get it setup so that I could monitor everything, but still only actually record the other side of the conversation. I was originally planning on using Gizmo to place this call, only to find that Gizmo blocks calls to the country I was calling in Africa. BTW, this call was place for a project I’m doing. I won’t talk about it on hear much more as I don’t want information getting out there. You can ask me directly about this if you want more details.

Between last weeks podcast, and this weekend, God has been revealing some things to me. I’d encourage anyone to go over and listen to my podcast.

Well, this coming weekend I’ll be spending in the Twin Cities with Vanessa. I haven’t talked about her much as I’ve been trying to keep the speculations to a minumum. Neither of us really knows where this will lead. Our focus is putting Christ first in our lives, then building a friendship, and only God knows where things will go from there. I’ll have pictures to post from the weekend. And an incentive for people to listen to the podcast, I guess, is that I’m planning to have her on next weekends podcast as my guest. For the inquiring minds, this will be an opportunity for you to get to know her a little. I’m not sure when others will be able to meet either of us, as in her getting to know my people and visa-versa. There is a distance aspect that really makes things a bit more interesting.

Anyways, the Faith Shaping podcast made things a bit later tonight. So once again I’m up way later than I should be. So I’ll be leaving things here for tonight. Valette!

I’m finding it nice to pretty much have all my projects for people done. I’ve got another that will be starting, a missionary promo, but I don’t expect that to tak too much time. My big project, that I’m having a lot of fun with, is the whole podcast thing. I’ve gotten some encouraging and help feedback from people. I really can’t wait to be joining the podcasting community. I don’t really know how large my listenership will really even be. I guess I’m really hoping that it starts to expand beyond just the people I know. It’ll mostly start there, but I really want this to me another ministry tool. Time and again I get a sense of calling to bring Christ into the online world. I really believe that the online world is so much farker than we even realize. The worst of it all is that our young people and living online more and more. I just hope I can be used by God to bring a little glimmer of light to that world.

Well, tonight was a youth group night once again. It was a rather strange night. Everyone seemed to be a bit rowdy and not all there. The music went so-so, I always have such high expectations for the music. I just let it go and hope that God can still use it. I wouldn’t ever claim to be a great, or even good, praise team leader. I’m just making myself available to God.

Well, in a little over a week, I head to the Twin Cities to spend a weekend with Vanessa. I haven’t talked about her much, if at all really. Neither of us really knows where things may head, if anywhere really. The distance has been a concern for me, as most of you might have guessed. At this point and time my primary focus is on God’s leading, for my entire life not just with Vanessa. Her and I have talked about this, and I think she is thinking in those terms too now. I think was is most hard is that both of us would like to get to know each other much better and see if there is a shot here for something more, but it’s a little hard to actually spend time hanging out. I know that God has a plan for all of this, and so long as we continue to be focusing on Him, He’ll reveal things as we go. Like I’ve hear it said many times, His timing is not always our timing.

Well, I’m calling it a night. I kind of felt a bit behind in the blogging. One slight issue I have is that I’ve actually got like 3 blogs to keep up with now. There is this one, a second one that Vanessa and I are using to kind of share thoughts with each other, and then there’s the podcast/blog. This may not allow for me to post eveyday to all of them, however, I’m hoping to get into a bit more regular blog posts. There may even be a little bit of cross-posting that’ll happen too I suppose. Till later!