Went to Mt. Shasta and Burney Falls Saturday. It is amazing up here. So pretty.

Took a picture of me at Burney Falls and had to add in the squirrel:

see here.

Meeting Ken in the morning. He promised firearms and possibly live targets. I hope he’s talking about animals……..why do I have a vision of The Naked Prey in my head…..

If I don’t come back, avenge my death!!!!!

Well, well, well…I had a GREAT time in California last week! As promised, I have lots of pictures after the jump. Make sure you check them out.

The reason for heading out west was to attend a church conference up in Redding, CA. The conference ran from Monday night through Wednesday night. Since I don’t get out west much, I decided to leave extra early to take in some sites and to be able to attend Sunday services at the church.

I flew to San Francisco on Friday and headed up 101 across the Golden Gate Bridge.

I love bridges and I have watched shows on the building of the Golden Gate for years, so it was surreal to be on the bridge. The scenic overlook is worth the extra bit of traffic navigation, but as you can see, the views are amazing.

After crossing the bridge, I headed north on 101 until crossing the bay over to Richmond. From there, it was north on I-80 and I-5 to Redding.

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….but…at least our commute is better than this guys.

Just a little education for the masses:

Yeah so I am still having that mystery pain in my left side. It doesn’t hurt all the time, but lately when it does hurt, it really hurts.

To that end, I tried to get a CT scan about a month ago but since I was within the pre-existing conditions window, my insurance had to run a pre-existing conditions review. No big deal…..

The breakdown appears to have been on my doctor’s side. They claimed they mailed things, but my insurance never got it. I would usually believe my doctor, but they didn’t seem to have a record of the request and it took some effort for them to figure out that they sent something…or didn’t.

Long story short, I have my CT scan scheduled for Thursday morning. Hopefully, they will be able to figure out what is going on and then fix it.

If they give me any cool pictures of my guts, I will be sure to post them here!!!

*fingers crossed*

UPDATE: Well, good news and bad…the good news is that my CT Scan was normal, nothing showed up as being wrong. The bad news is that means I just dropped a bunch of money to STILL not know what is causing the pain in my side…my guess is they will want to do a colonoscopy. Boy! Won’t THAT be fun!

I survived my CT scan MRI this morning.

It was kind of a strange experience, but it wasn’t to terribly bad.

I had to drink something 45 minutes before my appointment to help highlight things. For once the stuff a doctor gave me to drink actually had no taste at all. The best part was I was able to mix it with a Coke, so it went down nice and smooth.

After I finished all the initial paper work and signed all the forms that say that you understand you could die and that you won’t sue us, a nice lady took me back to the room. She was very friendly and did a good job explaining things to me.

She had me finish my drink and then it was time to get on the gurney and head into the machine.

In order to get a good picture, even more contrast was needed, so she hooked an IV up to my left arm. I hate IV’s. I really don’t like needles in general, but I think IV’s are the worst.

Maybe it’s because I had a bad experience with one when I had my wisdom teeth taken out.

About 10 years ago (almost exactly) I had to go see the oral surgeon to get my wisdom teeth taken out. They hooked an IV up to me and it hurt like a son of a…I was complaining about the IV as they gave me the anesthetic. In fact, my last words had something to do about how bad the darn IV hurt. Anyway, when I came to after the surgery, the first words out of my mouth had something to do with the blankety-blank IV…and on and on I went. Apparently, one of the side effects of the anesthetic is cursing. Who knew? The nurse later told my wife that sometimes people come out fighting and other times they come out crying. Guess what? I came out doing both.

I would curse and curse and then start sobbing…then curse again…then complain about the IV…then curse again….then sob some more…then exclaim that “I don’t understand”…then cry again. When Jen was coming down the hallway, she heard me and prayed it wasn’t me. To her dismay, it was me and I was a wreck. I don’t remember much about the whole thing, but the nurse and Jen filled me in later…

So, yeah, I don’t like IV’s.

I liked the nurse doing my CT scan MRI because she was honest with me. She mentioned the waiver I had filled out and asked if I had read it. Of course not. Well, it appears that the dye they inject into the IV can kill you. Seriously, your throat could swell up and you won’t be able to breathe.

Well, isn’t that comforting?

But, she said, that probably wouldn’t happen to me. I asked what would happen if it DID happen to me and she calmly explained that she would call 911….great….

At least she was honest. She also got the IV in the first time. No digging around for her. She said the dye would make me feel warm all over and that I would feel it in the back of my throat and it might even cause a burning sensation.

Oh, and one more thing, it will feel like you have just wet your pants…but you haven’t and that’s normal…

They took a few preliminary measurements and had me keep my hands raised back over/behind my head.

Then it was time for the dye and the actual imaging.

She wasn’t joking. I did feel warm all over and I felt it mostly in my throat. I felt it slowly go throughout my body and about the time it reached my groin, no joke, I thought I had just wet myself. Thankfully, it was just a feeling…this time…

What followed next was about ten minutes of breathing, then not breathing while the machine moved me in and out taking pictures of my abdomen and pelvis. Then that was it. Not to bad.

The machine was not too bad. It wasn’t one of those new fangled open air MRI’s but it wasn’t a cave either.

It looked a lot like this one:

It felt weird going into the thing. One moment I felt like I was stepping through Star Gate and about to enter a parallel universe and the next I felt like I was being inserted into a giant donut. Your mileage may vary.

They said my doctor should have my results today and I hope to hear back from her soon so we can finally figure this thing out.

Ace is on fire with this post on Socialism and what is going on with the health care bill.

Whatever you believe about reforming the health care system, you need to read this. Take a step back and think about what this means for you and your children.

Think about this.

The left says: You are crazy to claim your so-called freedoms are being taken away, and you are a lunatic to scream about an overly powerful state which will use violent coercion (no one goes to jail without the threat of violence if he doesn’t, after all) to enforce its notions of the “economic good.”

And with the next breath the left says: By the way, you shall either buy health care insurance or we will throw you in prison for two or three years.

I’m paranoid? Really? I am not fretting here about some remote and unlikely possibility. We are not speaking here of “slippery slopes” or in terms of “what comes next?”

We are instead objecting to a black-letter law spelled out for all to see in the very first piece of legislation you’re proposing.

Right out of the box. The state here — Pelosi, Reid, Obama — are claiming that they can imprison people for behavior that has never before even been hinted as being a crime, on the theory that such behavior constitutes unpatriotic economic behavior which is detrimental to the state’s balance sheets.

Go read the whole thing.

Why do bananas taste so good in a bowl of Cheerios?

Some local news for you:

Load of chicken nugget dust flares up in Lee Co.

Oh, this isn’t going to end well is it?

There was an aroma of burnt chicken nuggets in the air Wednesday morning after trailer filled with chicken nugget dust caught fire.
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But to all those nugget lovers out there, don’t worry, the burnt load was not edible and was on its way to be disposed of.

Thank the Lord!

BTW…what in the world is “Nugget Dust”?

My day so far:

Is it any wonder engineers get all the girls?

Hope everyone has a great turkey day.

I am very thankful for my family…and bacon…. How about you?

I’ve been meaning to write about the real reason for my California trip, but I have been just too busy.

Sorry Ken, the main reason of my trip was to go to a church leadership conference in Redding, California…but getting the chance to meet you was an awesome perk!

Our church, Wellsping Fellowship, is loosely affiliated with Bethel Church in Redding, California. We are part of what is known as Global Legacy, which is Bethel’s way of relating to churches:

Global Legacy (GL) is an apostolic, relational network of revival leaders whose purpose is to bring Heaven to earth (Matt. 6:10). Following the New Testament model for apostleship, GL seeks to establish Kingdom government and to build empowering cultures.

The main purpose of Global Legacy is to equip church leaders to spread revival in their hometowns. One of the biggest way this works is through Leadership Advances. They hold two a year and it is a chance to get to know the staff of Bethel Church and more importantly to touch the amazing culture that they have cultivated in their church. This culture has many aspects but two of the most amazing are Honor and Freedom.

There are many, many amazing leaders at Bethel, but the big three who have had a great impact on our lives and the life of our church are:

Bill and Beni Johnson
Kris and Kathy Vallotton
Danny and Sheri Silk

The last one, Danny and Sheri Silk, have had a huge impact on us due to their teaching on raising children. Hearing them speak at a conference 3 years ago changed our lives. It really did.

Not only do they have great teachers and leaders, but Bethel has been blessed with a tremendous gifting in worship. They have some of the best CD’s out there right now. Very anointed songs.

The conference started Monday night and went through Wednesday night, and boy, do they pack it in. I was as full as a tick by the time the conference ended. Such great teachings and amazing worship.

It felt like all the messages were tailor-made for me. Almost like I was the only guy in the audience. It was just what I needed to hear. Don’t get me wrong, they were very challenging messages. Messages I still haven’t figured out what to do with yet.

On a personal note, I’ve been really going through the wringer over the past few months. We had dinner with a dear friend of ours who challenged us to examine what “roofs” or limits we have placed on God, our lives and the church. At the time, it seemed like a simple word and as such was easily dismissed as “Nope, I’m good”.

I was wrong.

It is almost like her words broke something that needed to be broken. Like the scales have come off my eyes and I do not really like what I see about myself. But, the cool thing is that when the Lord starts pointing things out in your life, it means He knows that not only is it time to deal with it, but that you can do it with His help.

Back to the conference.

The first night Danny Silk gave an amazing teaching on the Five Fold Ministry:

Eph 4:11-12: And He Himself gave some [to be] apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,

It was a teaching about how the Church often has conflicting views on the order of things, as given in this scripture. There are aspects of the 5 Fold that we do very well such as teaching and evangelizing, but we often neglect the apostolic and the prophetic roles in the church. It was an amazing teaching.

The other messages given during the conference were equally amazing, but there was one other that really, really, really had an impact on me.

It was a message given by Bethel’s Youth Pastor, Banning Liebscher, called “Pressure Free Ministry”. Wow! It was amazing. The gist of the message is that the Lord will inhabit what He builds. Too often we find ourselves working within our own strengths and giftings to build a ministry that we call the Lords work, but really, it’s just our own work with His name on it. So, if we build it in our own strength, we feel pressure for what we have built to perform. Banning put it this way, if I open a door in my ministry, I have the responsibility to keep it open, thus pressure, but if the Lord opens the door, then He is responsible for either keeping the door open or shutting it. After all, if we are truly building His church, then we really only want the doors open that He wants open. It also keeps us actively engaged with Him to see where He is moving next. Just because a door is open today, doesn’t mean it will be or should be tomorrow. But if we build it and we open the door, then letting that door shut will feel like failure.

Banning also touched on the performance mentality and he really put it back into perspective of who are we co-laboring with. If you are in ministry *cough* Chet *cough*, I highly recommend this message. You can purchase the individual messages as mp3’s if you wish.

The last night, Bill Johnson and the entire leadership team from Bethel laid hands on each and every one of us.

So, I am still working on my crap, but it’s always amazing how the Lord is right there to walk through it with us.

If any Bethel people come to your town, go hear them, you won’t be disappointed.

UPDATE: The bums…geesh way to NOT play defense…seriously… Also, what’s with calling three 30 yard pass plays with 1:20 and 1 timeout left????? AND….why couldn’t the Tech receiver catch a simple first down pass while standing all alone….

Georgia Tech vs Georgia!!!!

Go Jackets!!!