Global Rich List
I spent most of last week in New York City. Manhattan to be exact. New York was fun, but I got to go with an incredible team from CCC, so that made it so much better. We went to do some missions work and lend a hand to an affiliate church of ours that's there in Manhattan called Forefront Church. Brian Moll's the lead pastor there and he's pretty much awesome.
We flew in Thursday and our flight was awful. An hour and a half that turned into three hours. Most of which were spent sitting on the runway or flying circles around Queens. We finally landed and took the subway to Manhattan. We would end up taking the subway alot on this trip.
Another overwhelming piece of NYC is Central Park. I don't think I could have ever imagined how big this park is. It is an absolutely gorgeous piece of New York City.
This is Lilia. She's my daughter. She'll be making her appearance around August 31st. I've never been so excited to meet anyone in my entire life. She's beautiful.
This is the New Leader's Song from the May Leadership Community at the Yellow Box. I think we finally found the top of Eric Bramlett's range.
My day started at 4:30 tuesday in order to make the 8:00 flight. I met my cab at the Yellow Box at 5:30 and he was early. Funny thing is he told me he was just about to leave because he had been sitting there since 4:00 a.m. He was slow on calls and just found a parking lot to hang out in until a call came in. Finally when one did, it was for 1635 Emerson Lane. When he looked at the address of where he was sitting he realized he was already there. He thought one of his cabby buddies was pranking him so he was about to jet when I showed up. He was in a little bit of shock. I thought that God would be looking after me as I traveled, but it might have been a little bit of overkill to have my cab show up an hour and a half early. That's pretty unheard of. But I'll take it.
When I got to the airport a lady walked up to me and spoke broken English in a heavy accent. She told me her son had to make a plane, but he was Brazilian and didn't speak any English. I told her I'd help him get to his gate. I walked him through security, only being able to communicate by pointing and nodding. My plane was leaving from the B gates and his from the C, so I walked him under the runway all the way over to the C gates. It was a pretty quiet walk. I was wishing I could bring up the weather, you know, or talk some Brazilian soccer, but there was a wall of silence the whole way. He did work out a "thank you" when I got him to his gate and I was happy to help, but it was just an awkward 15 minute walk.
I learned something else at O'Hare. I started feeling sick before I got on the plane and I made a quick restroom visit. They have these killer seat cover things there that are moved across the seat when you move your hand over the sensor. That was really exciting.
While in Orlando, I stayed in a room with Tom Greever, our CCC media director, and Eric Bramlett, CCC's Arts Director. These guys are two of the funnest dudes to hang out with anywhere. My abs were burning from a mixture of coughing out my cold and laughing at the antics of these two guys. I would hang with them anytime.
I was pretty honored to be a part of Dave's main session at the Exponential Conference. Eric came up with this incredible rabbit idea as an illustration for reproducing churches. It really made Dave's talk over the top incredible. Dave was so on too.
So on to my Detroit Pistons story. Tom and I went to The Cheesecake Factory a little early to reserve a table for like 20 of us. As we were walking up to the door, there was a large man sitting outside the door on the edge of this fountain talking on the phone. I thought he looked familiar, but I just wasn't really sure. We went in and reserved our table and walked back out and I saw that the pants on this big guy had a Pistons emblem on them. I said, "Tom, dude, that's Rasheed Wallace." Tom said, "Who's that?" I mean the guy was like five feet from me. I was pretty much star struck. I told Tom we had to sit next to him and wait for him to get off the phone, but when he did I was to scared to talk to him. He went back into the Cheesecake Factory and we decided to walk around the mall. I stopped by Starbucks to get some badly needed caffeine and when we came out Chris Webber walked right passed us. I was like, "Tom, the whole team's here." We later saw Chauncey Billups and Tayshaun Prince. I mean, I expect to see these guys when I go to a game, but not out strolling around the local Orlando mall. It was pretty cool and they're pretty tall. I think I'm kinda tall, but these guys are TALL. So now I act like I know them, but really I was too scared to talk to them. They went on to sweep the Magic. Go RedWings!
I actually spelled that title right without having to spell check. That feels pretty good. So here's a general list of things going on in life right now since I don't have anything else real exciting to blog about.
Tomorrow night we find out what that little ball of joy is that's growing inside Jill's expanding belly. I'm totally stoked about this experience. A year ago I would've been scared to death about this, but at this point I'm not at all. Maybe I'm just to excited to realize that I really am scared or maybe I'm not at the point yet where you get really scared. Maybe that's the day of or the day after. I guess I'll find out.
I'm headed to Orlando next week for a few days of sun and fun and doing the craziest things Eric Bramlett can dream up. I seriously don't know where he gets his ideas from. I'm playing dueling banjos with a huge pipe organ and then leading the conference in the bunny hop. Didn't think I'd ever do that. Bramlett's keeping me interested.
I'm starting to get real excited about this new Yellow Box expansion. We'll get to have more office space and if you've ever been to the box on a weekday you know we need it. Kid's City's gonna have a bunch more space to do their thing and they really need it. For me, though, it means a brand new theater that's going to be the coolest venue in the Chicago Metro area. I love the possibility it presents to us and I really hope that God uses it to reach some people that otherwise might not be reached.
The NHL playoffs are still going on and even though I've only seen one Wings game so far I'm still keeping up with it. The Wings are looking good even though they lost last night. Datsyuk is finally scoring in the playoffs so that is huge for us.
The Cardinals stink pretty bad in the early season. They're off to the worse start for a World Series champ since the Marlins won and traded away all their players. Pujols is batting like .100 something. Larussa is in trouble with the police in Florida. But hey, we won it last year. Sorry Cubs.
Did anyone know there's another Die Hard movie coming out this summer. I remember liking those movies so much when I was growing up (the edited for tv ones mom) and then going back and watching them now they're so cheesy. I'm definitely going to see this one though.
I'm not real hot on the new Maroon 5 single. It's not really that great. Hopefully there's something else on that album that's good.
Caribou Coffee is really good.
Godspeed
The next season the NHL vowed to make a huge comeback. I've always watched hockey on ESPN growing up. They do hockey the best. Gary Thorne was born to call hockey games. The NHL had injured itself so badly though that when they went to ESPN to offer their league as a programming option ESPN said, "no thanks." The Outdoor Life Network, known for deer hunting and .... dear hunting, went to the NHL and said, "we'll show some hockey, yall." The only problem is, WHAT CHANNEL IS THE OUTDOOR LIFE NETWORK?
When I lived in Las Vegas I actually sort of got the channel, but it was like channel number 70 something and you couldn't even find it in the TV Guide. NBC decided they could show some hockey games too, but they only show about two games a month. I need my hockey fix man. I can't live on two games a month.
This season the outdoor life network changed their name to Versus, once again adding to the confusion. Maybe the worst tv channel name I've ever heard. This is also the first season that I've ever lived in an NHL city. Not that Chicagoans are racing to see the Blackhawks. Like every other Chicago team they've been terrible for the last 50 years. (excluding the Sox) None the less, I've got the best hockey in the world at my finger tips and this is the least interested I've ever been. Sometimes I forget the hockey season is going on. The only thing that has saved me has been DVR and an occasional game they show online on Yahoo. This time of the year should be heaven for a hockey fan, unless you don't get whatever network that is.
