2 things got re-sized in my world.  Both of them unwillingly.

#1. MY COX BILL:

The first was my cable bill.  I added an High Def. DVR box to our house.  Long story short, I was told by 3 different cox cable reps that it was going to cost me an extra $1 more per month for the new box.  I decided it was worth it and went in to get my new box.  Just as I was ready to check out, I looked down on the counter and saw an ad that said they were selling my phone/cable/internet package for $20 less per month than what I was paying.  I asked if this was a promo rate and they said, “No.  This has been our main package since January.”  So, I said, “the truth is, not only would making the change NOT cost me $1 a month, but it should actually save me $20.”  Yeah, I was not happy.  So I sent the manager and e-mail since she was not in.  Today they credited me for 2 months of overpayment.  She said it was all she could do cuz she can’t go farther back than 60 days.  Something is better than nothing I guess, but I still don’t think “Cox is my friend in the digital age.”  A friend who overcharged me $20 a month for a year.  Who needs friends like that?  Ughhh.

#2. MY ICE CREAM CONTAINER.

I love peppermint stick ice cream.  Read LOVE IT.   I don’t know who decided that you can only get it in December or that you should not stock it as if it were a staple like Milk- but I disagree.  I also don’t know who decided that they could no longer give it to me 1/2 gallon at a time and charge me the same price for 1.5 quarts instead.  Watch.  Mark my words.  Pretty soon you’ll be buying gasoline by the quart instead of the gallon at the same price in the hopes that you won’t notice. 

I’m now gonna go eat a bowl and while enjoying my cox HD service, knowing I paid a lot more than I should of without even receiving it for a very long time. 

Made my first online pizza order through Domino’s tonight.

It actually worked.

Funniest thing in the world though, you can custom design a pizza with all kinds of stuff and if you want to have it 1/2 one way and 1/2 another, it lets you pick if you want it on the left or the right side of the pizza. So funny.

Like does the delivery guy hand it to me so that it’s on the correct side of the circle per my request? I ordered one 1/2 hawaiian and half cheese and it even puts the stuff on the pizza in picture form as you build it. Oh.. and their new oven baked sandwiches are super grubbin.

I wonder how many pizza’s they have to sell on the web to get their money back, I must admit, the website is awesome, easy to navigate, and worked like a charm.

Today we talked about “God through us…”

I was able to celebrate some ways God was working through our high school students based on some sweet examples of this in the last week. To spark some ideas, last Sunday we decided to pass out some twenty dollar bills. (5 per service) to randomly chosen high school students and invited them to use it to change the world around them. We asked them to do it anytime between last Sunday and today.

As a result, during our services for high school I was able to celebrate with those students as they shared their stories of how God used them to change the world this last week with that $20 and then some. Here are some of those stories.

• ARIEL: I gave $20 to the salvation army bell ringer I see regularly at my favorite walmart store.

• DAVID: I bought breakfast burritos and took them to some homeless men Saturday morning. I had promised to bring them to on Friday night during the “hope for the homeless” ministry at Journey.

• DELLA: With my $20, and $5 of my own, I am giving it to world vision.

• SUMMER: I sent it in to World Vision to help prevent Malaria for a family with nets, and educating them about malaria/prevention.

• MARK: I bought powdered milk for a family in Myanmar.

• RYAN: Outside the El Cajon post office there is this poor women that opens the door for people. She rides her bike there every day and lives in a motel. So I came up with a idea that I pay for her room for 4 days with some help from my dad. He pitched in for it to.
  She was very grateful for this.

• MALIA: With the $20 you gave, I went to Costco and bought some roses and candy canes. Then today, Erica and I went to an old folks home in El Cajon, called Victoria’s Special Care, where we just spent the day handing out roses and candy canes to the people living there. They loved receiving them and it was fun just seeing joy on their faces, especially when they heard that they were for FREE! They definitely enjoyed our company and it was cool just to sit and talk with them for awhile. P.S. I got to give a lady her first rose!
• ADAM: I have a friend who is going through a pretty tough time. Well the tough time has basically been his whole life. He’s fairly poor so he has to live in a motel, his parents aren’t together and his father is more like a brother so he used to do bad stuff like smoking pot, for a little bit he got into neonazi-ism, and his mom moved to santa cruz. so hes pretty bummed about that. But he got this sweet piece of equipment for his guitar but he needed a MIDI cable to use it, but he couldn’t afford it, or put money aside because its really tight. So i decided to get one for him. And when i gave it to him he was really happy and super appreciative. it was the most heartfelt moment weve had im pretty sure. I had some left over and I put it with David’s money to buy burritos for the homeless.

• SHANE: I decided to donate the money to a gift on world vision .com. After looking at what options i had to give something that would create an impact in someone’s life, I concluded that the three i wanted to give were some ducks, seeds for vegetables and water purification tablets. I also found out that to give all three of those, i would need a lot more than twenty dollars. I called up some family friends who agreed to match my own donation and all total I turned it into 120 dollars to world vision for four ducks, water purification tablets, and seeds to help those in need to get ahead and life healthy around the world.

Great to watch God work through our students. I’m praying the spirit of this continues for months and years to come or at least throughout christmas break 🙂

I recently read this quote: “random acts of kindness are cool. intentional ones are cooler.” I think I agree.

Blog has been silent for a while. Lots of reasons. Perhaps I’ll make the time this weekend to post some of the picture proof, but shannon’s sisters are spending the weekend with us, so we’ll see.

But I can tell you this, I’ve been playing reindeer games- just some crazy stuff we dreamed up in a student ministry weekend planning meeting with some kinda spiked hot chocolate evidently.

Here’s the video proof on this post on our high school blog.

And the clues we gave via twitter here.

This weekend we announce the winners. Was totally fun. Took them 3 days and a full contact hunt for the deer after my final update on Wednesday night.

Last Sunday marked exactly 30 days until we go to Uganda to get 2 more children. My family will grow by almost 50% more kids over night and we’ll spend the rest of our lives with 2 children who have never really met us.

This made my heart stop a little on Sunday. I’m guessing it probably freaks two little ones out a little too. If you pray, here’s how you can for us:

• WORK STUFF: details in youth ministry. I have lots to get done and get covered before I leave for a month. pray it all gets done. pray for a great team to fill in the gaps.

• OUR 3 BOYS: our boys are ready and excited, but it’s gonna be hard to be without them for a month while we are 9000 miles away. Please pray that they are healthy, protected, and encouraged in our absence. Pray for strength for the grandparents as they trade off playing the role of mom and dad to 3 crazy kids.

• OUR HOME: I still have several projects I’m trying to finish up before we leave. Some stuff in Becky’s room, a solution Tyler’s lack of drawer space, a dinner table scenario that will hold 7 people, a few details outside, etc. These are just a few of the many things we need to figure out in the next 28 days. AHHHH.

• OUR COURT DATES: we need several smooth court dates in Uganda. Pray that they all come through and that we receive good favor with the judges.

• MEETING DAD: we will meet the maternal father of our kids while there. Pray for compassion, grace, wisdom, and a sincerely and unmistakably Divine presence in that meeting. Pray that we are encouraging and that God helps us as this will be a BIG piece of our kids legacy and a memory I want to be really really good. Truth is, this meeting both scares and confuses me.

• FINANCES: praise God we’ve raised most of our funds. Pray that God will continue to show us what we need to pay for and the wisdom to know what are the right decisions.

• HEALTH: pray that everyone in this process remains healthy- both our kids here and us as we are in Uganda and Becky and Billy.

• SCHOOLING: pray that God opens the right doors for the perfect fit for our new kids as they get assimilated into the school system in America.

• BONDING: a BIG issue in adoption is the issue of bonding or “attachment”. You either get it quickly or you fight for it for years. Pray that our bonding with our new Ugandan kids is immediate and intimate and natural and ridiculously blessed. Pray that they feel like we are the parents they’ve always wanted and that it feels to them as if we have never not been there. Pray the same for them and our boys as we form a new concept of family in the coming months and years here in San Diego too.

• GRACE: pray for grace. We will surely screw something up in this process. Pray for grace by God and people in the process.

ok.. I could keep typing, but I’ll just leave it with that. If you pray, we’d be honored if you’d do some for our family in this transition.