During this Lenten Season when we are called to self-examination as Christians, I found Lewis’ insights especially poignant. By taking on the role of the devil’s advocate (literally here), Lewis is able to talk about real distractions and temptations from our walk with Christ: lust, love, pride, gluttony, and war. When Lewis was asked if he had to study philosophy and ethics to find all of the ways Screwtape would try to corrupt the man, he responded that he had to go no further than his own experiences and brain. I find this a powerful acknowledgment from a prolific writer that evil is able to seep into our lives and will continue to do so, but we are called by God to recognize this evil, turn away, and follow Christ instead.

One of my favorite lines from Screwtape is, “(God) wants (people) to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.” So friends, let us be concerned with what we do… this Lenten Season and beyond. God bless.

Here is a blog recap of our 2011-2012 Amor Trip.  This is not the whole story but some of the highlights.

Wednesday – Dec. 28 

The 11 of us arrive at Knox at 3:45 AM, ready to head out to Midway so that we can have our tents set up before sunset at the Amor camp outside Tijuana.  The traveling goes very smoothly.  We pick up Kenny at the airport in San Diego and then Melissa at the Amor Office closer to the border.  Our group is finally complete – the 13 of us.

We cross the border quite simply and take the toll road along the States-Mexico wall to the Amor camp.  We quickly set up camp and establish our home for the next four nights.  We are all quite tired from our long day of travel and do not have any problem or objection to our heads hitting the pillows.

Thursday – Dec. 29

Our Amor Team Leader is Fernando – he is the first Amor Team Leader who was born and raised in Tijuana.  He is laid back and easy to talk with.  We arrive at the Barron Rios family home and meet Enrique at the gate.  We are not sure who he is.  There are no grand introductions.  This is typical for an Amor Trip because sometimes the families want to be involved and sometimes they don’t.  We quickly start scouting out the area, lay and square the foundation’s frame, and start mixing, pouring, and smoothing concrete.  This takes up all of Monday and by the end of the day we have a foundation.

Toward the end of the workday – Mark decides to go over and join a soccer game that’s already started.  Mark’s a good soccer player.  Bryce and Kyle join in too.  Kyle is not a good soccer player.  Playing soccer with the kiddos becomes a regular occurrence when there is free time.  Another highlight of the day is meeting four extremely cute puppies that belong to the family.

Friday – Dec. 30

We arrive in the morning and our concrete has had a night to dry and we’ve had a night of sleep. Some slept well – others didn’t.  Sleeping in the Mexican desert should be classified as a form of art.  Day two is building the walls and roof and putting them up.  We set up our stations and start working.  There’s a lot of sawing, measuring, and hammering.  The paved soccer/basketball court is a really nice place to build walls.  Eventually, we have all the walls done and put them in place.  It takes a while to center everything and make sure the house is square.  Once it’s square, the roofing frame goes up and we’ve got ourselves something that resembles a house.  Pretty amazing for two days of work – the only problem is that you can see through it…

Friday we get to know Enrique’s wife – Avrea – and I start exchanging smiles with her.  We also meet more of the family.  Enrique and Avrea have three sons and three daughters.  One of their daughters lives next door in another Amor house.  Therefore, there are children around constantly, which is a great joy!  For us none Spanish speakers, it is fun to interact and attempt our limited Spanish with them.

Saturday – Dec. 31

Most everyone had a better nights sleep on the second try.  We return to the Barron Rios’ property with a structure that resembles a house.  Our roofing team heads up to the roof for a sun filled day spent with tar.  Our ground team then wraps the house repeatedly.  We wrap the house in lines of bailing wire, then in thick black paper (the house is no longer see through), and – finally – we wrap the house in chicken wire.  The house then receives its first coat of stucco, which is when the TEAM aspect of the trip is most visible.  There are people making stucco – watering stucco – carrying stucco – and applying stucco.  We resemble ants and a team the most at this point because this involves everyone running around a lot and we have found our groove after days spent working together.

However, the highlight of our day was definitely when the Barron Rios family made us a meal.  It was incredible chicken salad with pop to drink.  Momma Avrea served us all and then we went inside their new home to eat.  For the first time, we had a Q&A session with the family.  It was great for me to feel like I could finally communicate.  We wanted to know everything about them – little and big – how’d they meet? – how many kids and greadkids do they have? – are they going to keep the puppies?  Then the questioning turned on us and they wanted to know what each one of us did for our professions. We went around and there were some pretty comical moments.  We thanked them for their generosity and they thanked us for coming from so far to help them.

Sunday – Jan 1

We woke up to a New Year.  We pack up the tents and head over to the Barron Rios house for the last coat of stucco and the last time.  We go straight to work when we arrive – we are in the zone after three days.  Some of the family had come over to their house for New Years and they still had a rented karaoke machine so all of the sudden some unexpected Backstreet Boys starts blaring as we stucco.  This eventually leads to karaoking and incredible dancing by the entire group.  It is a really joyful party and once again it feels like the language barrier does not exist as we rejoice together.  However, after one last song it is time to go.  So, we gather and pray for the family.  Bruce gives them the keys to their new home and we load up the vans.  As we pull away, the entire family is outside the gate waving goodbye to us – it is a beautiful God moment to complete a beautiful God-filled trip.

1. InQuiring – is the new section for those inquiring minds that want to continue to read about my escapades and thoughts.
2. Youth Ministry – is a new section where I will share some of the things I’ve learned in youth ministry and will hopefully start some conversations to learn from you all.
3. Tech Bo-jazz – is a new section where I will share the newest tech that I am nerding out on or enjoying.

You can subscribe to everything or just an individual thread if you would like to (ex. just to tech OR just to youth ministry).  Check out the new updated subscribe section.

German Hammer Juggler

Hallelujah sung by four Norweigans

Ben Howard – Under the Same Sun (Thanks Patrick Michael Quiring for the intro)

Kittens on a Roomba – I had never searched for animal humor until this past month

The new prank:

And the original prank:

Today, August 15, 2011 is my one-year ordination birthday!

August 1, 2011 was my one-year at Knox birthday, which was surreal to think that I’ve been in Naperville for a year and survived one winter.

Being a Minister of Word and Sacrament is an awesome privilege and responsibility.  When I felt called to be a minister in the 8^th grade, I wanted to be ordained then and there.  I wanted to skip college and go straight to seminary.  It wasn’t until late in college that I started to realize that God’s call on my life to ordained ministry wasn’t a race but was a process.  It was about the finished person, thus, a year in Kenya and a more healthy approach to ordination and life.  That’s the thing; I’m not a finished person and never will be while I’m alive.  God’s lifelong call for us is not to race to the finish line, but to view life as a process.  And that takes a lifetime and makes us ask some big questions:

• What do I spend most of my time thinking about?
• What do I spend my time doing?
• Where do I spend my money?
• Am I rushing through life or am I enjoying it?

God has given me the opportunity to officiate at weddings, funerals, and baptisms.  These have been really powerful experiences for me during the past year.  Life beginning, lives merging together, and life ending.  This reminds me of the song lyrics, “There’ll be two dates on your tombstone – and everyone’s gonna read ‘em – but all that really matters – is that dash in between ‘em – it’s a great big world – life down here on earth.” (Kevin Welsh)

I look forward to God continuing to form and mold me and those God brings into my life as The Potter does with the clay.  And every day, I will continually pray for the strength and wisdom to not dry up.

Update: As I was writing this, my family called me on Skype from Oklahoma and sang to me “Happy Ordination Day.”  I wish they were more supportive of me, gosh.

Mr. Olsen driving us to Camilla’s apartment:

One of my main connections to Denmark is Karen Blixen, who was a Danish writer who spent 17 years in Kenya from 1914 to 1931.  During my year in Kenya, I lived in Karen, a suburb outside of Nairobi, where Karen Blixen had lived and is now her namesake.  I actually lived less than a mile from her house the entire year.

Quiring family in front of Karen Blixen’s home in Karen, Nairobi, Kenya:

She wrote Out of Africa, which was made into a movie in 1985 with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep.  It was funny that in 2009, I still saw pictures of Robert Redford and Meryl Streep posted on walls of certain shops they had visited in Nairobi when they filmed there in 1985.

Since I lived in Karen, Nairobi, Kenya for a year, I wanted to visit Karen’s house outside of Copenhagen.  However, the Karen Blixon museum was closed on Monday, as is a lot of cool stuff in Copenhagen, and that was the only day we had in Copenhagen.  Well, I decided I still wanted to see her house and visit her grave.  Rachel decided to go home after a long day in Copenhagen; so I set off for Rungsted, Denmark solo, which is a 30 minute train ride from Copenhagen.  After the train, I took a bus that brought me right by the sea and dropped me in front of her house.  It sounds a lot easier as I’m typing, than it was when I did it.

Her house had a beautiful exterior and the backyard was incredibly lush with vegetation that smelled amazing.  Her house is right across the street from the Sea with a backyard that looks like this.

She owned several acres behind her house as well and it has been turned into a national park.  There is a beautiful garden farther down the path in her backyard that was gated off and I assumed that her grave was located in there. It wasn’t.  I spent half an hour wondering around taking everything in and then decided I’d head back because I couldn’t find the grave.  As I was turning the last corner to exit the property, I saw a very small sign that simply said, “Grave – 300 meters” with an arrow pointing back the way I had come.  So, I turned around and headed back down the path.  I had been down the path before, but it became too muddy and I assumed that they wouldn’t put the grave that far back.  Well, after walking through the Danish mud and vegetation, I stumbled upon her grave at the end of the path.

It was absolutely beautiful and a very quiet and pleasant place to be buried (although I have not been buried yet myself).  There was a bench by the grave and so I sat down and spent some time with Karen and God’s beautiful creation.  Before I knew it, I had been sitting there for 30 minutes in what would be the most peaceful 30 minutes of my vacation.

I can’t believe how much I sound like my dad in this video. Thanks dad.

Earlier in the day, we had walked all over Copenhagen and my favorite part was Rosenborg Castle.  Rosenborg Castle was built by Christian IV, who was a pretty incredible king.  He reformed the government, rebuilt the army, expanded Denmark’s territory, and was a renaissance man… during the Renaissance.  He built this castle as his summer home and it now houses the Crown Jewels and was were many kings lived after Christian IV.  The coolest part of the castle though isn’t the gold clock, the golden crown, the ivory throne – nope.  The coolest part of the castle is the moat.  I’ve always wanted a moat!  (Nevertheless, it is quite difficult to photograph a moat in it’s entirety)

The Crown:

Final Danish thought:  I was impressed with Denmark’s public transit and was interested to learn that Denmark has a 180% car tax.  So, if you’re buying a $20,000 car it will cost $50,000.  A good way to make sure most people are using public transit.

Rachel and me on Hans Christian Andersen’s knee (author of little mermaid):

Norwegian Parliament Building (flag is up when Parliament is in session):

Thursday we got up and headed over to the City Hall, which is where the Nobel Peace Prize is handed out every year.

Nobel was Swedish and the rest of the Nobel Prizes are handed out in Sweden, but he wanted this one prize to be handed out in Norway (there are some assumptions to why he did this, but no one is sure).  We had an excellent guided tour by our guide, Ivan, who was paid by the city to give tours throughout the day at no charge.  They only had two murals on the wall of previous people who had received the Nobel Peace Prize: Obama and Wangari Maathai from Kenya.  I had the opportunity to meet Wangari Maathai when I was in Kenya at an Obama Election Party… kind of cool.

Pic in Oslo City Hall of Wangari Maathai receiving Peace Prize:

The City Hall is decked out in amazing artwork from different Norwegians.

Next, we took a ferry to the Folk Museum, which had what I was most excited about seeing that day: a Stave Church.  In the early 1200s, Norwegians (before they were Norwegians) used their wood working skills, which they acquired making boats, to make churches.  Stav in Norwegian means “staff” and you can tell that these churches are made from lots of tall, vertical staffs.  There used to be a little over a thousand of these churches in Norway, but now there are only 28.  Sadly wood burns….

Friday we headed northwest to see the famous Sognefjords of Norway on a tour called “Norway in a Nutshell.”  First, the express train from Oslo took us along the most mountainous stretch of railway in Europe.  It was impressive.  We sat across from two Norwegian college students and struck up a lively discussion as well.  One of them worked at a light bulb store for the summer, which she said was ironic because the sun sets at 11 PM and rises at 3:30 AM so no one needs light bulbs.  She said that yesterday she had sold six bulbs in eight hours.

Second, we hopped off the train and took an old-fashioned slow train to Flam, where we, third, jumped on a ferry to take us around the lower half of the Sognefjords.  This fjord is the longest at 120 miles long and the deepest at 1 mile deep.  Fjords were formed during the Ice Age three million years ago when glaciers advanced and cut their way to the sea, now Norway is left with this breath-taking piece of nature.  I took some 720p video with Knox’s GoPro camera to try to capture what the fjords are like:
I took out the audio and added a Song: “Doubting Thomas” by Nickel Creek:

Fourth, we leapt onto a bus, which brought us, finally, to one last train to Bergen.  Bergen is on the west coast of Norway and we walked to the waterside and had dinner there.  We sat enjoying dinner until we realized that everybody else had left and it was 10:30 at night, even though the sun was still out.  Tricky.  After this realization, we headed back to the train station to catch the overnight train back to Oslo.

We returned to a deeply troubled Oslo that morning.  However, we were blessed with Rachel finding a really cool person for us to stay with via couchsurfing, Alf.  Alf is taller than I am, which I don’t appreciate.  However, he welcomed us graciously and took the time to answer all of our questions about Norway: how health care works, how maternity and paternity leave work, how taxes work, and he patiently answered any question we could think up to ask him.  As with my previous couchsurfing experiences in Europe, I am impressed with how I have always found the most informative and best experiences can come from staying with someone who lives locally.  Alf was definitely a highlight for us in Oslo.  Thanks Alf.

We are now in safely in Copenhagen and I will write more after we move on to Helsinki, Finland.  God bless.

Electric Car We Passed: Notice the Charging Stations that were on a Few Streets:

Oklahoma License Plate I found in a bar while we were looking for a place to have dinner: