We meet at church in 4 hours. Look out Uganda… here we come. Blogging might be kinda scarce for the next 4 weeks, but I’ll update you on our good times as best I can.

Pray for us.

Ok… so I lost my cup at a church event. It was not just any cup, it was a 20 oz venti cup from starbucks and it’s discontinued and they don’t make this size anymore. I got it from my mom for Christmas.

I was sad. I tried to buy one on e-bay but no luck. No one even had one listed.

I then was at OGN and as I walked up to a starbucks and as I did, I know this sounds stupid, but I felt like God said, “your cup is in there. buy it.” So I walked in to Starbucks and instead of seeing my cup, I saw our teaching pastor, Ed Noble. I thought, “Oh, my cup’s not in here. Ed is.” Anyway, I talked to Ed for a few and then bought some coffee and then as I was about to walk out the door, I remembered the cup thing.

So I searched the shelves and nothing.

But then, on the very back in the bottom shelf, was my venti red cup.

I bought it with great joy and thanked Jesus for helping me get my cup back. I guess God cares about the little stuff that really doesn’t matter to anyone else sometimes.

Anyway…. enter day 4 of camp and it’s gone again.

I search for 45 minutes and figure out that since I told the above story to a group of students, it must have been jacked.

So, I told them that if they stole my cup, they at least owed me a ransom note.

I got a ransom note. It simply read: Matthew 6:19-21.

This is what that says: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

So I sent a note back. It simply read: Exodus 20:15.

This is what that says: “You shall not steal”.

This then resulted in them sending me Exodus 20:15 back. So I figured out they wanted to play a stealing game.

So, by now I had figured out who stole it. So while they were sleeping. I stole their cell phones.

I left them a note that read: “Roses are red, Violets are blue, Give me back my cup, and you might get your cell phones too.”

The next day my cup arrived filled with a hazelnut americano.

Here is my cup in all it’s glory. I’m taking it to Uganda now. It will soon be a world traveling cup. Hopefully it will make it back safe and sound with me. I love my cup. I also love jacking with students.

For the last 4 summers of my life, I’ve been going to a camp our high school program attends/runs at Point Loma Nazarene here in San Diego. It’s called OGN or Operation Good News and it was started by our teaching pastor- Ed Noble- who still comes. The students go to class in the morning. We discuss how to talk about faith and how to process different theologies. Then we go out every day and engage the community in spiritual subject conversations. Then we come back and do some worship and a teaching. We do that every day for a week.

For the last 2 years, the leadership of the camp however has been placed on my shoulders. This year…. the weight was kinda heavy as I had lots of administrative duties that before were someone elses. But all in all, 180 people, 8 churches, and lots of work later… it was a sweet week.

But it was not relaxing! When I got done with camp. I slept for 16 hours almost straight. I woke up for dinner once.

Here’s some memories in pictures and brief stories that remind me why I do this.

#1. The friendships and life change are so worth it. 10 of our students indicated a desire to do some capacity of ministry full time at this week. I’m so stoked at how God is moving in our students lives. Nothing excites me more than students being inspired to do this in the local church. So cool.

#2. Um… the 4th of July in SD is crazy. But this year, it was crazy fogged in!!!! Check this pic out…. you can’t even see the end of the peer.

#3. Every year I have some great conversations with people I never would have met had I not got up the nerve to talk to a stranger. This year, even one gal and her sister came to our church following a “random conversation” with a woman in our ministry. So cool. Here’s a pic of two of our team just talking with a guy at Pacific Beach.

#4. However, you also see some really crazy things. Most of which I cannot post pictures of. This one however was funny to me. It’s a guy who rides his bike with 2 rats on his bike and person. His name is Chris. Chris the rat man I say.

#5. Lots of students loving on Jesus with music.

#6. The crazy memories of making 200 books. Julia became spiral girl at one point. Tegan got so good at this thing that she actually could make a book every 3 minutes. With 200 books to do, that’s a lot of spiral binding.

#7. Sunsets. They are always sweet at point loma. Here’s 2 I snapped.

I’m at camp all week with our students. Every day a slew of 15 passenger vans go out of camp. This time of year, they seem to be everywhere. You surely are following a youth pastor if…

1. the van is large and white
2. the van holds 15 passengers but appears to have 30.
3. the van has music blaring and is bouncing from side to side in what you can only assume is in conjunction with some rhythm from the music.
4. the van just hit a speed bump so fast that the entire rear row just hit their head on the ceiling.
5. the van keeps taking corners at the last minute.
6. the van is filled with teens, many wearing the same color shirt
7. the van is from Enterprise
8. the inside of the van is covered in fast food trash.
9. the van is always honking at other vans
10. screaming. you think you hear screaming.

welcome to my world people…. welcome to my world.

Today was our final fund raiser for Uganda. Our team had a silent auction outside where people bought $2300 worth of donated goods and services. That was pretty cool. We’re almost done now.

My kids however have been bugging me for months to do a lemonade sale at journey to raise money. I think they are sick of helping me recycle cans. Anyway- so as not to bombard our congregation with this trip and fundraising, I told them we could not do it until auction sunday. Every weekend they asked me, “Is this the weekend Dad?” Finally, this weekend I said yes.

So yesterday I helped them buy the supplies for lemonade and build a table out of 2×2’s and cardboard. Then all by themselves they painted it yesterday and made the lemonade and sold it today. It made the “silent” auction not so silent listening to TJ repeat, “Lemonade for Uganda” really loud about a thousand times, but it all paid off.

They felt like they got to do something and they made $441 for their efforts towards Uganda.

Pretty sweet. “3 cheers for the browthewrs” as Jake would say.