Vacation is Up

Tomorrow we leave to go back to P-Town and start living our real lives again. Our 10-day vacation to Illinois to visit our families has been fantastic and a little surreal. I can't believe all the time is up already. Goes way too fast! We didn't fill our time with a whole lot of stuff other than just spending time with family and living their normal lives with them. This is something we have not been able to do enough in the last few years and it makes me realize how much you miss when you move away to follow a dream. I keep trying to remind myself that it is part of the sacrifice of a follower of Christ but it is still tough when you know nieces and nephews are growing up without knowing you. And you get to see your parents for about 4 days a year!

But we must go back to the life that God has for us now in Portland, one which we love and get back to work. I've got an intensive preaching class the entire month of May that meets three days a week. I've got to read four books in the next few weeks, write a 20 page paper, preach once in class, and critique some sermons. I'm really excited for this because it's been about 7 years since I've had a preaching class. This will be a nice refresher and hopefully will help me sharpen up a bit before I preach at Evergreen on June 10th. I could use some help! It's hard when you don't preach often to continue to grow as a communicator! I miss it!









This week I got to see my childhood hero Ryne Sandberg. I went to a Peoria Chiefs game (minor league baseball) and he is managing the team. Many people stood in line and got autographs and I considered it but I'm just not really an autograph guy, it's just another thing I will feel like I need to hang onto for my entire life but never know what to do with. Plus when I meet someone like that I never know what to say. What can you say? "Hi Ryan, you were great, blah blah blah." And then I just stand there and feel dumb. Cool to see him though. One of the greatest Chicago Cubs in history!
I've heard that my father and I look alike, what do you think?









We also saw Spiderman 3 on my mom's birthday. We all enjoyed it. Pretty much the same storyline as the other two episodes, but I really enjoyed the bad guys! It was my mom's 50th this year so we went out to eat at a restaurant called Johnny's Italian Grill. Great food and a huge wine list. Happy Birthday Mom!









I got to play a lot with our nieces Savannah and Gabrielle and that was a blast! We also found out that we were teaching Sunday school on Saturday night at 10pm so that was fun! Kelli, Jaime, and I took about 15 minutes a piece and shared what God was doing in different parts of the world. I think about 2 of the 12 adults were actually listening so that wasn't bad odds.

We also go to visit our alma mater, Lincoln Christian College and walk around campus for a little while. I haven't been around campus for several years but it brought back a ton of memories being around. So many good stories, seems like a whole life ago now and it's only been 5 years! I remember breaking into the chapel at about 2 in the morning, taking the ladder, climing up three levels on the building to get on the roof and taking buckets of sidewalk chalk and covering the roof of the chapel with a message for the students as they walked to chapel in the next morning. We worked on it until about 5 in the morning and it looked great. Unfortunately when we woke up for chapel at 9, it had rained. Anyway, just one of several stories that we were able to retell.

One of my favorite parts of any vacation is reading John Steinbeck which has become required reading for vacation stints. I read four of his shorter novels (seriously like 100 pages a piece, don't be impressed).

Tortilla Flat: Quirky little story about several poor "paisanos" who become friends (in a strange and selfish sort of way) and live in an inherited house together doing whatever it takes to get wine to drink. Funny story. No one can write better characters than Steinbeck. They're fantastic.

The Red Pony: Based on Steinbeck's upbringing as a boy, four separate stories of incidents, mostly involving ponies and growing up on the farm and covering the issues of tragic loss as a child.

The Moon is Down: Intriguing WWII story about a town that gets invaded. It's a complicated story because no one is really the villain, the invading officer is just following orders and the townspeople are naturally rebelling. This was my second favorite out of the four.

Cannery Row: This is by far the best "Steinbeck" writing out of all of these. I'm not quite finished yet, but while the rest are good stories, Cannery Row is art! After reading so much Steinbeck I really want to go to Monterey and Salinas and see the land that he is writing about.

11 Steinbeck novels down, 10 to go! Woohoo!