WE'RE HAVING A BABY!!!

GOD IS SO GOOD! well, after just over 6 years of trying and spending THOUSANDS of dollars on fertility doctors and medications and the doctors finally saying that there wasn't much else they could do, God decided to step in.

Jeanette has a condition that is called PCOS, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. this causes her not to ovulate, therefore making it impossible to get pregnant. over the past couple of years we had been going to a fertility clinic and had spent literally thousands of dollars trying to get pregnant. we have done everything short of spending 13k on IVF for one shot at getting pregnant, we didn't have the means nor the want to gamble on that much money; especially with our luck thus far in the process.

so, we had decided to stop going to the fertility clinic and try on our own. honestly, at this point, we knew more about fertility and getting pregnant than the average 3rd year med student. it has been well over a year since we last went to the clinic and jeanette hasn't been on ANY medications for some time now. about 2 months ago we decided to stop trying for the rest of the year. we wanted to go ahead and enjoy the rest of the year not worrying and stressing out about it. low and behold, this is when GOD decided to step in.

HE waited for US to stop trying before HE started...

memorial day weekend

i am so pumped about this weekend. a bunch of us are leaving today at 3pm to go ATVing today and tomorrow. this is going to be so much fun. the last time i actually got to go on an overnight trip and do this was when me and pastor jeff did it about 7 years ago. we are going to have so much fun. i am going to miss my beautiful, lovely wife however. also, we are leaving after church sunday to go to texarkana to hang out with friends and family for a couple of days. it's not very often that jeanette and i get the same day off, so this is going to be a lot of fun. happy memorial day weekend!

officially in AWE...

nike and apple have teamed up to make an amazing combination. nike is now making shoes that will talk to your ipod nano and tell you how far you've been running/walking, at what pace, and a whole bunch of other statistics. when you start to get tired you can push a button and play your POWERBOOST song to get you pumping again. i like to walk and run and i love my ipod mini. this definitely makes me want to get an ipod nano. nike is a marketing genius! something else that's cool is, whenever you sync you ipod to your computer it logs your running/walking statistics and it tracks you over a period of time to show you your improvements. HOW COOL IS THAT!!!

fun weekend

well, this weekend was a lot of fun. we had graduation friday night and got to see all of our seniors take the stage to receive their diplomas. i must say that i am so proud of all of them.

we also, had tony and erin velasquez in to interview for the children's pastor position. we had so much fun hanging out with them and riding 4-wheelers and taking them to look at houses. they're great people and a lot of fun.

7mins. 8secs.

this is how long david blaine held his breath underwater last week after living in a life-sized fish aquarium for an entire week. he was attempting to break the world record for holding your breath while underwater. the record is 9mins. however, the guy that holds the record didn't live underwater for the full 7 days before that and escape from chains and handcuffs while he was holding his breath. the record itself, is something that i believe that david blaine could break with little effort. it is his desire to do things with style and flamboyance that kept him from breaking the record this time. you gotta give the guy credit though, 7mins. and 8secs. is a really long time to hold your breath. heck, i couldn't even hold my breath long enough to write this blog.

SMASHED

well, i played in the high school dodgeball tournament yesterday and...OH MY GOSH AM I SORE!!! our team went 0-5; for those of you who don't understand sports records, that means we played 5 games and lost every one. we had an absolute blast though!

the first match i literally lasted 3 seconds...NO KIDDING, THAT'S ALL! our team wasn't the most athletic team, we just wanted to get out there and have some fun. however, the first team we played was the most athletic team and they just wanted to get out there and hurt somebody. they succeeded with me. as i ran to the center line to grab a ball with 2 other team mates i reached down and as i'm in a crouching position reaching to grab the ball i look up just in time to see 2 dodgeballs traveling at the speed of sound coming right at my face. as the first one bounced off of my forehead the second one was less than a thousandth of a second behind hitting me square in the mouth.

honestly, i couldn't help but laugh because i could only imagine how funny it was for the several hundred spectators. if they would have given an award for "Most Punished Player", i am very confident that i would have won hands down. i can't wait for next year. maybe i'm just a glutton for punishment, but i really did have a lot of fun. well, i have all year to practice; i guess i need to start dodging wrenches right away.

YOUR MOM

you know, there is a phrase that never ceases to be funny to me. i can be sitting in the most serious conversation and at any point take just about anything that anyone i'm talking to says, and turn it into a mama joke. i know, i know, i am extremely immature and need to grow up. but, your mama jokes never seem to lose their humor. i've heard that there's even a show on MTV devoted to "Your Mama" jokes now. in fact, i use the statement so much, we're going to make a shirt for our youth group that says "Your Mom Goes to Journey Church". HOW COOL IS THAT?! i can tell that some people around my age, 20s and 30s, get preturbed by my uncanny ability to turn anything they say into a "Yo Mama" joke. so, you guys tell me, am i really still that immature or am i justified in admiring a timeless phrase that has been engrained in our culture? seriously, leave a comment, i want to know. if you don't have a blogger account just click on anonymous and put your name at the end of your comment. let's see what everyone else thinks about YOUR MOM, 'cause i know i love her...

Put Things Back Where You Found Them

i started a new series this week entitled "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". this is going to be a super fun series to preach. i'm taking some very simple, yet profound, statements that i learned in kindergarten and tying them into the Word of God.

the first message was entitled "Put Things Back Where You Found Them". it's crazy that i still have so many memories from way back in kindergarten. i remember playing with these huge life-sized blocks that we use to make buildings out of and then play King-Kong vs. Godzilla and destroy the entire city. then after playtime was over we all had to put everything back from our station back where we found it. this started to carry over with everthing; we had to put the scissors back where we found them. we had to put the crayons back where we found them. we had to put the glue back where we found it...except for the kid that always ate the entire bottle before we were done with the project. he just got to throw his away.

it was some time later, as i was sixteen, that i remember sitting in my living room late one night reading my Bible that i began to think about how excited i use to be about my faith when i first committed my life to Christ. i remember the feelings that i had after being delivered from a lifestyle of drugs, alcohol, depression, and gangs. i couldn't help but tell everyone that i talked to about how good God was and how he had completely changed my life. yet, as i sat in my living room a couple of years later i was curious as to where that zeal had gone. i had gotten so caught up in school, friends, and even church that my relationship with God had taken a backseat.

i finally realized that, that rule that i had learned in kindergarten applied to more than just putting up some blocks when you were done playing with them. it was applying to me many years later as a teenager in a totally different light. as i sat there that night, i finally realized that i needed to put my relationship with God back where i found it.