I am lame.

No news there I’m sure.

But I feel like I got suckered.

I might have even just joined a 140 character cult with secret codes and formulas to learn.

Cuz I started a twitter account 2 days ago.

I still can’t believe I did it and am so tempted to just twitter only when I go to the bathroom.

Some people tell you over twitter in 140 characters or less, almost everything. I mean it’s 140 letters and spaces of randomness that seems to be a waste of time for me to track. So I’m thinking, “who has time for this?…. least of all me!” I mean do I really need to know that someone is:

• going home
• eating lunch
• mowing their lawn
• just ate a burger and burped
• smoking crack. Etc…

I’ve lived my whole life without these kind of personal updates, so I didn’t think anyone needed to know this stuff about me and I was resisting this drain on my time of reading it from anyone else. So I’m gonna dip my feet in the shallow end. If I end up in the deep end, I might have to drop this thing before I drown.

SO WHY AM I DOING THIS?

3 REASONS?

#1. FRIENDS: I was at a youth pastors gathering for the PDYM community this week and was reminded again that I have several friends I have who only use twitter, so if I want to track their world over the web, I have to have an account. I can’t do so over the blogosphere because my bloglines keeps dropping twitter feeds. Bummer.

#2. YOUTH MINISTRY: Some also swear by it for sending texts to their students as “general anouncements”. I’m wondering if that’s worth it so I’m gonna check into if this is something our students would enjoy. If so, I already know who I’m gonna tap to do it. This one student in our ministry is a twitter maniac. Like, he should be sponsored by twitter.

#3. STATUS UPDATES: I was already was increasing the updating my “status” on facebook and twitter is basically one method for a facebook status update tool. So, so far I’m reading 17 twitter feeds all that get sent to my iphone. Which is where I’m reading facebook updates too these days and the only place I actually twitter from.

I’m gonna have to figure out when and where I’m gonna do this. Maybe I’ll only twitter one line funny stuff. Maybe. I thought this was a good caution… I’m gonna try and keep in mind as I try this out.

Here’s my cautions to myself:

• use it sparingly
• read it leisurely
• hold onto it loosly

I’ve gotten a few calls on my cell from solicitors. Today, I said enough is enough.

I registered my cell, my wife, and our home on the national do not call list. I say spread the love and join my “get off my phone” train.

So if you’re selling me something, don’t call me. I aints got time for u sucka.

Well, adopting 2 kids puts a lot of family stuff back on the front burner. Which is where most of it should be anyway. What I really mean is that the family machine can be a little rusty in some areas if you have some fudge room. However 2 more lives in our home pushes the limits of space/time and forces me to deal with some things I could otherwise ignore in my own self, my own marriage, and my family. There’s just no room to hide our inadequacies in the closet or shove them under the carpet. It all must be dealt with in order to bring about health.

So far, it’s forced me back into some family life reading:

• I’ve re-read two great reads on keeping family first: Choosing to Cheat by Andy Stanley and What Matters Most by Doug Fields. Both basically challenge me to say no to all the right things so I can say yes to all the best things. Both are great, quick, and insightful reads.

• I’ve also just finished reading Patrick Lencioni’s newest book: The Three Big Questions for a frantic family. I bought it the day it hit the news stands the felt need was so high in my life. Shannon is now reading it and then I’m hoping we’ll put it into full practice. (More on that in a future post I’m sure) It’s a leadership parable that reads easy and applies some business planning tools to the most important organization on earth: the family. And if you ask me, it’s a MUST READ for all families in the United States that I’m aware of. I believe it will really help our family have a basis and clear directive for how and why we make the choices we do. I found myself saying, “dude, that’s us” about 50 times as I read this little book.

This transition has also brought to the surface 3 critical things I need to come to grips with in my life:

• ALONE TIME: I need alone time to be healthy. I often don’t get enough of this- just time for me to read, pray, think, sleep, dream, etc. I need to schedule and block out regular time to keep myself healthy. When I let the demands of family and ministry push this away, I jeopardize my ability to be a healthy part of the process and instead become part of the problem. I get cranky, dissatisfied, and start living by the demands of the day instead of my priorities. I’m learning to say no to stuff to keep this time sacred. In fact, this past week I said no to a wedding, 4 ministry tasks that I needed to get done but I had no time to do (God brought others instead!), and a post-season soccer coaching request. But I still have a ways to go.

• MARRIAGE TIME: My marriage requires and deserves time. Maybe you are super-married people and this is a duh for you, but sometimes, due to the demands of parenting, money, and ministry- our marriage can get our leftover time. There are clothes to wash and mouths to feed and lawns to mow and bills to pay- and it all takes time- and sometimes in comes out of “our” time. I’ve uniquely felt the sting of this in the past month as the pressure and demands of the adoption process increase- it’s forcing us/me to evaluate what gets my time and what does not. My marriage must get some of my best time, not extra time. This is not bonus if it happens, it is a failure when it does not.

• THE DOMINOE EFFECT: Yeah, I suck at dominoes. There, I said it. I suck at acknowledging how one decision affects another in 2 major areas: my time and my money. I’m learning to get better at this, but it’s hard to always say no to a “last minute phone call” that inadvertantly means I now have to rush to get home for dinner, when the later was way more important than the former anyway. It’s hard to take note of how swinging by and grabbing a cup of coffee affects the bottom line of a gallon of gas or even how much gas I have to play with since I drove to get java. It all dominoes into other stuff and adding two more kids into the mix is forcing me to deal with this issue in my life: I need to daily monitor the downstream affects of my small decisions on the big picture of sanity and priority.

Last week I figured out I could post pictures on my facebook profile through iphoto with a cool little application addative I watched a friend use.

So today I googled “facebook iphoto” and up came a link to this lovely doodad I installed. Then with one click, I instantly was able to put an entire album of 46 pictures up, add captions if I wanted to, and tag friends in them who are also on facebook all in a matter of like 5 minutes.

How stinkin cool is that!

Well, as many of you who read this blog already know, we went to Uganda this summer as a family to work with an orphanage and the people in the some surrounding villages. You also know that we took 11 students and 4 adults from my youth ministry with us. You also know that we stayed for a few weeks after that team left and had some family vacation.

You may also know that we visited our World Vision sponsor child while there. We got to meet Geoffrey face to face, hang out with him for an hour or so, and bring he and his family some much needed supplies.

However, what you may not know is that while in Jinja one morning, the following conversation took place.

Shannon on her way out of the shower one morning: “Brian, God gave me two names.”

Me: “Um, ok.”

Wife: “Becky and Billy.”

Me: “Ok.”

Then I went to breakfast.

I then arrive at breakfast to the following conversation like 5 minutes later.

My students are now talking to Mandy- the director of the orphanage we’re working in. They ask, “Hey Mandy, which of the kids in the orphanage are adoptable right now?”

Mandy: “Well we have so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so. And that’s all right now.”

Mandy pauses.

Mandy continues: “But, I have a few others I think I’m going to try and see if we can get permission to have someone adopt them. There is one set of true twins who are the last of the children in the orphanage since the day I took it over some 5 years ago. I have not seen their father in 4 years and have never met their mom. Their names are Becky and Billy.”

My heart stops.

Wife looks at me across the room both looking a little freaked and a little excited.

…………

Now, fast forward 6 weeks.

………..

After much prayer, counsel, struggle, stress, fear facing, encouragement, research, and gut checking, we as a couple and a family with our boys have agreed to follow God’s leading into adoption.

So, it’s official, we are now in the full swings of the process of adopting 2 more kids. They are a boy/girl set of twins who are 6 months younger than jake (or 5 and 1/2). Her name is Becky. His name is Billy.

That’s right, the “B.B.” initial count is about to triple in the berry family.

So now, perhaps you have some questions. What follows are a series of “FAQ’s” people have asked or wondered about:

Q: ARE YOU CRAZY?
A: No… ok, well maybe. Um… fine. Yes. It’s nuts.

Q: ARE YOU SURE GOD GAVE SHANNON THOSE NAMES?
A: Believe me, I drilled my wife on if she’d had some previous conversation with Mandy and what not. God is whispering kid names to my wife in the shower. I’m not sure if that’s ok, but God seems to not be too concerned about it.

Q: DID YOU JUST GET SOME CRAZY EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT WORKING AT THE ORPHANAGE AND NOW YOU ARE FOLLOWING THROUGH ON THIS?
A: Nope. No emotional attachment in this story. No great memory that we had that tugged our heart strings for weeks. Just simply God’s call, though the heart strings are coming as time goes on and as we pray more about this.

Q: IS THIS OUT OF THE BLUE?
A: Yes and No. Yes, cuz we didn’t plan this or even seek it out. No, because we have talked about the possibility of adopting a daughter ever since we decided to be done having kids the old fashioned way after Jake. Yes, because we never thougtht it would be 2 more kids. No, because God is opening too many doors to be coincidence.

Q: DID YOU MEET BECKY AND BILLY?
A: Yep, we did. But never as the, “hey, these people are going to adopt you people.” Just casually like we did with all the other kids.

Q: ARE YOU AWARE THEY WILL BE CALLED THE “BLACK BERRIES”
A: Yep. Kinda cute now. I’m sure they’ll need to know Karate to keep it from being a regular part of their Middle School years.

Q: DO YOU HAVE A PICTURE?
A: Yep, here it is. We did take a “family” picture with lots of sibling sets so as not to tip them off as to our process or mindset in case things changed as we returned home. We had shared the story with Mandy and she suggested this step as it was going to be needed as a piece of the adoption process if we continued along this path.

Q: WHAT DOES THIS COST?
A: Um a bunch. Like thousands. Less than 50G, more than 10G. God has so far already shown us he’s going to provide for this need. We have had about 1/3 of our money come in already through some very Holy Spirit led ways and this blog post is the “first official notice” of this life transition.

Q: WHEN WILL THIS HAPPEN?
A: We’re shooting to leave January 7, 2009. We’ll be in Uganda for for up to 5 weeks, returning to the states in early February.

Q: HOW CAN I HELP?
A: 3 ways:

1. If you’re in the area, we’re gonna need more baby sitters 🙂
2. Um, we could always use lots of prayer, now more than ever.
3. Also, if you’d like to join us with the financial part of this, we’d welcome any support you feel led to offer. Shoot me an e-mail and I’ll send you an address where you can send a tax deductible check if you are in that boat.

Lots more blog posts to come I’m sure. Hold on, we’re going for a ride.