Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Day 345

special days have have appeared in different adventures and inspirations and relationships and today was one of the more cool kinds of them that i can remember.

i woke up early and parker's dad ken and i drove to a job site. he's finishing a deck on the back of a multi-million dollar home near tacoma and was able to offer me a day of work. the sun was out and shone like summer. we had some great discussion on the way there and back and filled each hour-plus commute with stories about places and business and talk about spirituality. it's really good to be back in this area with the gohricks. mount rainier loomed large and familiar in the blue horizon and was barely wholly visible in the window of the country club restaurant where we had burgers for lunch. at the end of the day we drove back and i heard jaw dropping stories of the lifestyles of some of the rich people who own these houses ken builds. it's nuts. those people waste enough money for someone like to me to live for the rest of mine.

ken has a youth group at the house on tuesday nights and he asked if i'd share tonight. during the drive home we outlined a few ideas and topics and i picked a verse to tie in with the tales of the adventure and faith and hope and love, community, adventure, provisions, and finding what i had been hoping for when while leaving i'd had that strange feeling that i might not be back to illinois right away. some of the kids remembered me from back in september/october. one girl wanted to know if i was religious and i was given words to answer her question while explaining this pursuit and adventure and discovery of deeper, real life faith and of Jesus. afterwards some of them told me they were stoked by the story of the adventure and spirituality and they were excited too. the biggest idea i wanted to give was encouraging their decisions for pursuing Jesus while still in high school before things get too crazy. the stories of traveling and faith and provisions were cool little additions. i don't know, it just came so clear to me then and i didn't even need the desperate outline i'd scribbled.

this was the first time telling the whole story in a group setting and it was exciting. i'm pretty tired from the labor in the hard sun and wish i could write more of what went down this evening but sometimes moments like that are better left in their place and time.

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