Colleen

This is probably one of my favorite pictures of my sister, Colleen. It was taken in the summer of '06 at a beach house the fam was staying at in Nags Head, NC. There's something hilarious here I can't quite put my finger on. It's quite good when you click it and view it larger.

I just imported tons of photos from my old camera into iPhoto. It was so cool because it was like almost 800 photos from the last three or four years of my life, and they all flashed on the screen as they were importing, creating the illusion of motion occasionally. It was actually quite a poignant experience.

Donald Miller is riding his bike for Africa

I just heard about this RIDE:WELL tour on Donald Miller's website, and I thought I'd help spread a little awareness. This guy is one of the most down-to-earth authors who's a Christian (note the difference from 'Christian author') I've read. We'd love to have him come for our event on the campus of WVU in February '09, 'Another World Is Possible,' so stay tuned to see if we can get him...

MINISTRY UPDATE JUNE.2008

Here's my ministry update letter to supporters for June. Click on the picture below it view it!

florida visit

The family's visiting family in Florida this week.

My beloved Aunt Betty and Uncle Kermit (my dad's sister and her husband) live in Brooksville, FL and we all hadn't seen her for a few years and her health's been a little worse in the last couple years, so we decided to come stay near the amazing natural attraction Weeki Wachee Springs (we're right on the Weeki Wachee River with a little dock behind our house and canoe; there are manatee in the water [I touched one!]), which is close to Brooksville, and we've been going over every couple days and seeing them. There are also lots of cousins and newer second (and third!) cousins we've been getting to see. (I'm pictured above with Eric, Aunt Betty's youngest son and my cousin, at the Rising Sun Café, a really neat little coffeehouse in downtown Brooksville; you can see the original tin ceiling and the brick wall behind us).

My mom's dad ('Papa') and her sister Claudia also live in Orlando, a couple hours away, so we're going to see them today too. It's been a great trip so far and it's awesome to be with the whole family.

Here's Aunt Betty and me in our element.

Sarah and I will be getting back to Wilmington, NC on Friday night, where we'll be till August 3rd for the Leadership Training (LT) program we're helping to staff. More on that in my upcoming ministry update letter!

so.zo comics

Just wanted you to be aware of a cool artistic offering my friend Ryan Huffman has been keeping up with for some time now: so.zo comics (I put a link to it in my 'music, lit. & the arts' list). Our coffeeshop/cereal bar on High Street is called so.zo, and Ryan's created this little strip as an homage to it and the people who are in and out of there a lot. A lot of the jokes are a little inside, but I think anyone can enjoy the humor and the great art (all composed within Microsoft Paint amazingly!).

monthly post

I'm sitting with my wife at one my favorite Morgantown restaurants/music venues, Black Bear Burritos (notice how the door to the street behind me says 'GOOD LUCK' as you go back out into the world...)! It was a beautiful evening and we decided to walk from our apartment in South Park around downtown. We considered a couple places first, but inevitably came back to Black Bear. I used to always get the 'Double Wide,' which is just a big burrito with steak (or chicken), rice, black beans, onions and all kinds of other good stuff, topped with barbecue sauce. Mmm! But they took it off the menu a while back (though you can still order it if you want, they saved the recipe), and I've since gotten stuck on the Bear Trap, a little wrap with turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes and this really, really good dressing: honey mayo. I'm halfway done with one right now!

Anywho, I thought I'd try and get back in the swing of things (AGAIN) with this blog. I don't mind not blogging everyday (it can be time-consuming, especially for me, the slowest person on earth), but I hate when good thoughts strike me and I let them pass by. I need to get one of those Moleskine notebooks that slide right into your pocket like my friend Billy has (he blogs a lot more frequently than me, check it out).

I just wrote a new song this week! I'm a little concerned about copyright so I won't post it here (though I know I posted another song of mine recently, oh well...), but I thought I'd mention it because it started in a dream. Yeah, isn't that cool? I had this dream about a month ago that I was leading music at a big church (much like mine, but different) and I had a really long cord to my guitar so I walked out into the congregation and looked toward the stage with them. They were all raising their hands to God, and there was no band or anything on stage, it was all dark, but there was some ambient music. And all of a sudden everyone sang out: 'Be-hold! Be-hold!' It was really moving to hear all the voices in unison.

I woke up and was afraid I'd forget the melody so I wrote the notes into a document on my phone and went back to sleep. I didn't do anything with until this week, and all of a sudden the song came to life! I used the 'behold, behold' part in the pre-chorus. And I looked up some Scripture with 'behold' in it and came across a lot of end-times stuff in Revelation ('Behold! I come like a thief...' 'Behold! I am coming soon...). I love Revelation 21 as well, where he says, 'I am making everything new!' and how there will be no more mourning or suffering or pain or death; all our tears will be wiped away. And so I looked at other inspirational and mysterious Scripture about the end, like in 1 Corinthians 15 where it mentions that 'in the twinkling of an eye' we will all be changed, and in 1 Thessalonians 4 where it describes that those of us who are still alive when the Lord comes back will meet him in the air. Awe-inspiring stuff! So the song is basically about the Christian's great joy in looking forward to that.

I'll record it someday...

MARCH.08 MINISTRY LETTER

Please click on each of the below thumbnails to view my current ministry update letter!

Vote for Judge Drew Crislip!

My stepdad is running for office! He's the family court judge for Harrison County (after this election, he'll be working with another family court judge to jointly cover both Harrison and Doddridge counties), and after years of serving his position by appointment from the governor, the law changed and in 2002 he had to run for his office for the first time (he ran unopposed then).

This year, though, he's got some people running against him, so he's had to start the long, exhausting, expensive road of campaigning. He asked me to help with a TV commercial and radio spot. Jonny Haring filmed and edited the above commercial, and I recorded a radio spot at home with my recording equipment (I've also did the little jingle I wrote for him, which will be played during the intro to his website, which I haven't heard if that's ready for revealing yet), but I can't figure out how to post it.

So if you live in Harrison or Doddridge County, vote for Drew! He's a fair, totally uncorrupted judge who has no hidden agenda and only, always seeks the best choice, as hard as it may be in each situation. He holds himself accountable to God and to his own conscience.

My older bro, Christopher, designed Drew's campaign logo: