Louisanna Should Get Ready, Texas, too

I have monitoring the storm for the past 48 hours and at first was not convinced that it would hit Lousianna. I believe that the storm will hit somewhere between Houston, TX and New Orleans. Morgan City, La is the most likely spot. The Red Cross has made their plea for their national workers to place themselves on standby. Some of these folks will be shipping out tomorrow for a staging area I presume. My guess right now would be Little Rock, AR. If you are a DHSR member contact your local chapter and put your name on the list. There is going to be a need for shelter managers.
I am conflicted at the moment on what to do. I have some personal health goals that I have been working on for months, time out for storm duty could reek havoc with all this work. The conflict is wanting to be there to help those needing help. Pray for me and my family as we seek God's will in all of this.
Pray for those about to have their lives disrupted. Pray for God to lift the people who can help the most.

Buddy

Gustav is coming to America . . .

Get the deployment bags ready all you storm responders, the storm is coming. Right now it appears that there is no way for the Gulf Coast to be spared. It is still early and we pray that the predictors are wrong. It sure looks like something is going to happen we just do not know how bad it will be. We are keeping a watchful eye and will update more later.

Back to School Bash. . .

Our annual back to school celebration is this weekend. We will have five bounce house type attractions on the lawn of the church plus we will have hot dogs, hamburgers and drinks. Celebrating that our wonderful children are going back to school . . . I have enjoyed a little extra time with Matthew, although it will be nice for him to be in school. Pray for our kids who have started school and for those starting school this week, that they may learn the things necessary for them to become good students of the Bible.

Disney . . . Time with family

The last couple of days we have been fun. fun to the point of exhausting. . . We have gone into the park (Disneyland) early and returned late everyday. Today was the best day we have ever had at Disney. Monorail, Train, Innoventions, Fantasmic, Dream Parade and a host of rides. We have seen the Pixar parade and the Electric parade at California Adventures. Its all cool. Most importantly its cool to see a seven year old watch and dream and look at all that is going on around him.
We have been swimmimng at the Motel pool everyday. Matthew is turning into a fish. Price is a great way to book a room. We got rooms at the Anaheim Hilton for a great price. Nearly 60 percent off their best internet rate. Disney does a great job of making your visit special. I still cannot believe the number of people that flock to the park each day. One more day off and its back to work.
I thank God for providing time off from the rigors of ministry. Goofy's Kitchen for Lunch tomorrow will be the highlight of the day.

Colonoscopy . . . All Clear

I was certainly amazed at the 11 polyps that were found growing on their own in my colon. It was an amazing procedure to watch as the doctor would find em lasso em and get rid of them. The largest one of all caused some concern, and the doctor tatooed the spot were it had been. The good news is that the biopsies have all come back clear and we are presently colon cancer free. I praise God that He has once again taken care of me.

Triathlon . . . Rancho Seco

I proved that if you are determined you can do anything. I did the TBF = Tri for Fun at Ranco Seco, near Sacramento. 1/2 mile swim, 16 mile bike ride, 3 mile run(walk for me). It was a lot of fun. 58 days until the real moment of truth, the Longhorn Triathlon.
My current response focus is me. I have let myself get into poor physical condition and I am trying to climb out of the hole. The hole is deep, but my God will help me overcome. The better condition I am in the better I can serve him.
Pray for me as I seek a better way of living

Colonoscopy . . .

I can now say I have had mine. Nothing to it but to do it . . . No pain to speak of. The versaid has me locked in on 10 polyps removed when there were actually 11. I must have said the wrong number a 100 times. Krista laughed each time.

Hilltop in Iowa

Hilltop Rescue and Relief has opened up for business in the wake of the floods in the midwest. They have set up a work camp in Burlington,Iowa. Jess Kenyon is taking a group from Stockton there in a couple of weeks. If you are interested in this great work let me know

BG

Family Promise, Report thru Thursday . . . California Fires

The FP week continues and everything is going well. The Higginbotham/Cobleigh small group were the feeding team. The spaghetti was good tonight. Spaghetti is my most favorite meal. I usually eat a ton of it and tonight was no exception. All of the families continue to progress at their own pace. One of the persons in the program and I had a protracted conversation concerning God. He has been a Christian for 5 years, and is definately a lover of God. He has a well thought out understanding of God. He has some obstacles concerning his present lifestyle and some decisions he needs to make to realign his relationship with God. We have offered our hand to help in these matters, pray that he will do the right thing. What a unique opportunity God has given us to spend time with people who have needs that we can fill while sending a message to them concerning Christ. Making them feel welcome enough to find Christ is the goal. Pray for us as we serve them.
California is burning as we write this tonight. Josh Parrish is in Chico on the front lines. Josh is chomping at the bit to do soemthing for the community that has been hit been by these fires. Disaster Relief Effort from Nashville is responding with a truckload of goods as we speak. I am trying to assess the situation and formualte a plan of action. There are lots of fires in alot of locations.Pray for God to guide us to help some. Pray for God's guidance for Josh and Tiffany as they respond in their area to these fires.

Family Promise continued . . .

We had another good night with the FP crowd. A new family arrived last night and are assimilating into the program. The families are a joy to be around. They all seem deligent about the task of "getting" out of the program. They all have a few hurdles to overcome, but they are all working on their respective issues. The Barkus small group made dinner last night. Sheila's nineteen pound roast was a big hit. The challenge is to not gain weight during the FP week. Their is an abundance of good food every night.
We have one of our new families at Davis Park hosting, it should be a real experience for them.

pray for us as the week continues,

Buddy

Family Promise. . . . Helping those who want help.

We are on day three of this current cycle of Family Promise. We have a good group of folks who are struggling with the hands that they have been dealt. A young couple trying to overcome several issues, but working hard to get it right this time. A single mom trying to raise a young daughter and a grandmother overwhelmed with the responsibility of raising two grandchildren.
I am still amazed at this program and the opportunity afforded churches to help people who want to perservere through tough times and emerge victorious. This program brings people to your doorstep and drops them off. One of the moms asked for a bible for her daughter who starts meeting with a teen group tonight. One mom cried when she found we host an Al-Anon meeting in our building.
Last night Rick's small group hosted the evening meal. It was awesome food, various smoked meats, salads and great deserts. Jim and Doty brought their grand children to "sleep in church." It is cool to have a multi-generational touch to servanthood.
More updates coming up . . .

Alcatraz . . .

About six months ago Mike Crowley my fellow minister at Davis Park talked me into swiming across San Francisco Bay with him. Neither of us had ever swam open water before, and I was in ridiculously bad shape physically. The swim starts with a six block walk to a ferry that takes you out to the island. At the island your feet never touch dry land, you exit the door of the ferry straight into the water.

The moment of truth is the time when its your turn to jump. The water is 57 degrees and everyone before you has screamed as they enter the water. At the start line are 700 other people with black suits and yellow caps. All of which are being wound up by a guy with a bull horn and ever decreasing body temperature.

Finally the boats horn blasts and its time to sink or swim. The obstacles are many, feet, elbows, waves, fog(couldn't see the GG bridge). From the water the shorline looked miles away, although it was only 1.5 miles. So, thats what you do, you swim, you drink salt water involuntarily and occasionally you tread water to see if you are any closer to the shore line. Eventually you close in on the opening of the aquatic park, you dream of the nice calm water of the park and how close that is to the finish line. Then your in the park and you have about 25 percent of the race to finish.

At the finish line you come out of the turbulent water to find solid ground that is not mimicing the undulations of the water. Your first steps are awkard and the triage person asks you if your OK. Rule 1 is to lie to this person or she puts you into the care of a teenage emt, who is all about pestering you until you tell him to bug off. It was great to see friends and family at the finish line and it was great to be at the finish line before Mike. The good news is that we both survived the race without any major damgage to our bodies.

Thanks for all your prayers in this quest.

Buddy

Kyle, SD Story

While on the mission trip God amazed us with a small view of how great he is in providing for Christian's needs. A group from Plymouth, Indiana was in Kyle while we were. In fact the group from Plymouth had 34 members on their team. 17 adults and 17 teens. The ratio seemed right 1 on 1 coverage of teens always seems appropriate. The Plymouth had contracted with the local schools for all their meals. We had brought the majority of our food(and more) with us from Modesto. On Wednesday while eating our evening meal we were discussing what to do with the leftovers. We had quite a bit of food leftover from the previous days of the trip. We decided that we would graze on leftovers the following day. God however had something else in mind. For reasons we do not know the cafeteria staff did not show up to cook for the Plymotuh team that night. Our team was running on fumes. We were tired, we knew we only had one day left to work. Their leader came in to our abode and asked if we had any spare food. I ask Sheila and the team if we could feed them. It was an amazing burst of energy. Our leftovers were just enough for their meal that night. Also that day their devotional material and study was on the providence of God, how God takes of His people and provides for them when they are not expecting it. What great timing - they needed food and we needed to see God's hand at work. What am amazing God we serve!

Kyle Mission Trip 2008 Report

Kyle Mission Trip 2008

The Kyle Mission effort started with a seed planted by Chuck Baker during the fall of 2007. This effort’s primary goal was to establish a “beachhead” for future work among the Oglala Lakota Sioux Indians of Kyle, SD. The method used to achieve the goal was to be a combination of service projects, seminars and community gatherings.
Our initial contact at the Reservation was made with Steve Hernandez with Pejuta Haka College Center. PHCC is the Kyle facility for Oglala Lakota College and serves as point of communication for the local community. Steve is involved in building this community in a variety of different ways and was very instrumental in the success of our trip. Steve helped us make contact with the Headstart Program and with the Emergency Youth Services personnel.
The projects that we chose to tackle during the mission trip were as follows; a renovation project for the Youth Services Shelter; a deck project for the Early Headstart Program; a collection of tennis balls for the Headstart program and a series of family oriented seminars and gatherings. The projects chosen challenged us by virtue of the short amount of time we were to spend working on them. The variety of tasks and the limited number of personnel that we had on the trip made for long days and short nights while we were working in Kyle.
In addition to the tasks mentioned above we were responsible for our meals and hydration during the trip. Members of the team devoted time and energy to cooking, cleaning and general maintenance of our living area. We also planned to feed a large crowd of people during one of the nights as well as showing a family/Christ oriented film. We also made meals available for anyone from the local community during each of our regularly scheduled meals. No one was turned away hungry from our camp.

Early Headstart Deck
The deck project turned out more daunting than we expected. The scope of the project was larger than we anticipated. We thought we were going to do cosmetic and appearance enhancements to the deck and ended up doing a demo and rebuild project. The project took longer than we anticipated but the outcome was that we have a left a serviceable, accessible ramp that will last for years to come.


Youth Shelter Renovation
The Emergency Youth Facility needed and still needs today a lot of work. The facility experienced water damage this past winter when the pipes broke during a freeze. The break was not noticed for several days and water sat on the floors for quite some time. We were able to take out the carpet in the facility, take up the tiled flooring material and take out all the damaged sheet rock in the ceilings and the walls. Additional, all the cabinets were removed from the kitchen area because of their poor condition. This shelter served as our command center and campsite during the trip. Several children from the Pineridge shelter came down and painted a few of the room in the facility . This project was very successful but leaving the place unpainted and bare to the studs in many places reminded us of the work in many other places that needs to be completed.

Seminars and Community Gatherings

The seminars were designed to provide information in two of the most critical areas of poverty stricken communities throughout the United States. Meth Awareness and Gang Information are relevant for communities all over North American and especially in low income areas with high incidence of addiction. Chuck Baker embraced these topics well and was welcomed by the locals and local law enforcement for the quality presentations that were given. These community events showed increasing attendance each night and increased friendliness by the local population to the team members each night. Our numbers were 31 for the first night, 55 for the second night and 126 for the final night. Chuck made major in-roads, being invited to speak to the local JDC in mates while we were in Kyle and being invited to speak at a Gang Awareness event that is to occur next year sometime.
Tennis Ball Collection
Our efforts in Modesto to collect tennis balls for the Headstart program chairs exceeded the goal of 1000 balls by 300 balls. These balls will give the children in the program a better chance to learn and keep the cost of floor maintenance down at the same time. A cool way to recycle and have multiple positive results.

Summary

The 2008 Kyle Mission Trip has positioned the Davis Park Church of Christ to reach out to the Oglala Lakota people of South Dakota. We met or exceeded the goals associated with this year’s mission trip in every way. I would recommend that we continue our relationship with the people we have encountered during this trip and seek new ways to serve this population and bring Jesus Christ into their lives.

Kyle Mission Trip Photos limk

Here is the link to Mission Trip Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/19978632@N05/

Kyle Team Arrives Home . . .

The Kyle Mission Trip is over. We arrived home at 8:30 last night. Two grueling days of driving at the end of an exhausting week. The trip exceeded expectations on our end as we made in-roads into the community in and around Kyle.
Our Thursday night, family night was a big success. We had (20% of local populaion) in attendance from the community. We fed them Indian Tacos, Beans and Rice. The Indian Tacos are made on Indian Fry Bread, a delicacy in that part of the world. We had three local ladies cook the fry bread for us. It was wonderful. Highlights of the trip also include parting gifts from several organizations for our team members. One Lakota man did a song for us and had us dance in a circle to the song as he "blessed" our return home. I will be posting pictures and giving more stats in the near future.

Kyle Update #2

Kyle Update . . .
Tuesday proved to be a very busy day. Wayne, Darren , Art and Shane worked on the deck project at the early Headstart Facility. We finally started building it after revising the revised plans several times. The wheelchair ramp has to be about fifty feet long to meet ADA code. Not that code matters, there are no inspectors watching over our shoulders. Wayne is determined to build it right.
Shelia continues to cook stellar meals. Each day we have more locals for lunch and dinner. I would estimate that we are having more than 30 additional guests each day. Chuck's seminar on meth was great. I hope we can have him do it in Modesto sometime. At the seminar we had 31 adults and 9 children. A good showing in a town of 1000 people. All of the woman are working hard each day, doing a variety of activities. Things are coming along just fine.

Kyle Photos

Kyle Update. . . .

We made the trip with very little problems and it was a blessing to arrive in Kyle safely. We have a lot of work before us, however we have completed many tasks already. Wayne, has learned some old lessons concerning thermocouples, and only has hairloss and sunburned looking skin to show for it.

Our first task was to make our living quarters livable. We were able to do that in a few short hours, next we gutted out all of the water damaged sheetrock and flooring from the house. We are going to start getting the house reading for interior paint next. We have also taken out a large deck in front of a daycare facility and as we speak Wayne, Darren and Art are installing a new accessible deck and handicap Ramp. We have a lot of traffic around our basecamp, people are curious as to why we are here and what do we want? We continually tell them we are here to get to know them and provide assistance to their community while we are here.

Tonight we are having our first seminar at the Little Wound School. We will have three nights of activities, please pray that these go well.


Here are some pictures of Kyle, SD.

Excitement, anxiety, uncertainity, and faith.Kyle SD - Coming Soon, less than 7 days. . .

Excitement, anxiety, uncertainity, and faith. These are the things that make up a mission trip. I am excited about this trip as adventure in kingdom activities, we are going and doing something outside our zone of comfort. We are going to help start a renovation projection on a house to help an organization start helping teens who are having family difficulties. The anxiety is about what the conditions will be like, how we will be perceived and how effective we will be. The great thing about all this is I have faith that God will use the trip to better the kingdom. Pray for us as we prepare.