3 Months in Review?

Man. I don't even know where to start. I'd actually completely forgotten about this over the past few weeks...or months apparently. There has been a lot going on though...let's see.

The first was the trip to Mexico in late June. The trip ended up going quite a bit better than I had thought it might. I rather enjoyed going, and look forward to going back again. Mandi and I met a professor at the college of Monterrey, who just so happened to be a physics professor. He wanted to give us a tour of the college, and we ended up seeing where he worked, both at the college and at the local high school. His boss also ended up offering me a job should I want to go down there at some point. How crazy is that? It seemed more like just a nice comment, but while we were walking out, the professor said that she was serious. I guess things are just a little more laid back down there. It was a great trip though, and it was good working with the church and the kids especially during the VBS. I ended up driving while down there (that's quite a trip), as well as leading singing for the VBS (in Spanish no less). Mandi and I also got some good time working with the members from the church and the kids that went along. All in all, an excellent experience, and one that we hope to go back on next year...although there are a couple changes that we both hope would be made.

Dustin has completed his internship working with me this summer as of Friday. He's now in to the fun phase of hunting for a job. Hopefully he'll be able to find something that he's looking for and excited about soon, but in the meantime he'll continue to stay here and look around.

I made a trip to SC to visit a Mr. Paul Murphy and hang out for a day or two while Mandi went to see Tara. It was nice to go back, seeing as how it had been quite a while, and I even got to witness how a Murphy vacation gets underway. It's really quite impressive when you sit back and think about it. I'm assuming that it ended up going well.

The summer was spent playing soccer, and getting injured in the process. Unfortunately, that is ruling me out of the frisbee tournament coming up this weekend since I haven't been able to really run or anything for a bit. It's healed up now, and I've slowly gotten back in to running and stuff for soccer, but it's too early to get back to it. Plus, I haven't touched a frisbee for about the whole summer, so I'll be going as the official subber for the team. I guess I'll fall under the idea of a coach. That sits fine with me, and it will definately be good to see some old friends that I haven't seen for a while.

We're once again coming up on the new soccer season with the Champions League getting underway starting tomorrow, and European leagues having been in action for a couple weeks. I'm looking forward to it, as usual. World Cup qualifying is in full swing, with the U.S. team having posted 3 victories in their first 3 games of the semi-final round of CONCACAF qualifying. They are definately struggling when it comes to having any quality forwards...but for the time being it's not as pressing an issue since the competition is still fairly early. However, once the finals roll around later on next year, they'll need to start producing the goods. Hopefully they'll be able to pick it up, and get the offensive end going better.

The new TV season is about to pick back up. Say hello to House. Mandi and I just got through watching most all of season 4 on DVD over the course of the past week or so to get her caught back up, so I'm excited to get things back under way. Last season ended under some pretty strenuous circumstances, so it will be interesting to see how things get resolved with the new season.

One of my most nerve-wracking moments of the summer came a couple weeks ago when I ended up speaking at church on Wednesday for our class. As things are currently, we have all the adults (i.e. college and above) in a single class that has a speaker that rotates around between different members of the congregation each week. I spoke on the need to have a song in our hearts for God. I basically took some of the church's most well-known songs (Amazing Grace, Just As I Am, and Take My Hand, Precious Lord) and by telling the story behind why they were written, showed how people need to have a song for God through how they live. The video is what I played at the end just to try it all together. The video is taken from David Crowder Band's Live DVD, with the Scriptures added in by me, plus I just wanted to try and see how the video thing worked. It's just a taste of what I attempted to do. Overall it seemed to go alright, so hopefully it was able to make something of an impression. The song's title, "I'm Just Trying To Make You Sing" basically sums up the message that I was wanting to get across. Enjoy.