Everybody can help conserve animals. The easiest way is to fight for poaching to be illegal where it is legal and for the laws to be enforced everywhere.

No matter who you are, you can help with the conservation of amazing animals.                                           From the biggest lion to the smallest ant, they all need to be saved from poachers. In my opinion, poachers are the most evil humans.

from the biggest lion to…

   …the  smallest ant…   

I love Minecraft, you should try it!

Welcome! Are you wondering how we got these pictures?  Well that is what we are talking about today. So,we went to Pennsylvania, there, there are Steel and Orangy at our freind’s house. Then because we had our cameras we took their pictures.  And that concludes another NATNEWS….bye!

On October 12,2016,I made a spider!!  And I also wove it’s web!! It was so awesomely amazing!                                           The spider was green and the web was orange.  It fits perfectly with the webs we put up near the house.  His name is Spidiey, Spider King!! And, most of all, he scares my mom!!

This year our annual meeting was held in Holland, my second favorite country in the world. I always enjoy my time there. The Dutch are wonderful with their hospitality and straight-talk. And they do everything on bikes, which is a huge plus, if you know me.

This year we tackled some very foundational issue for RescueNet, including putting down on “paper” our core values, mission statement and a significant number of protocols and procedures. Not glamorous, but very solidifying for our growing team.  As we continue to expand internationally, we need to make sure we are all building on the same foundation, no matter what cultural and procedural differences we encounter.

It is a challenge, but there’s nothing I’d rather tackle. We are striving to be the standard out there; we’ve got to set solid foundations.

Pictures from the Council and my time away here:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151069121625030.484668.704120029&type=1&l=bcae0bc92b

Ever since I was a child and my mother dragged me out to Las Vegas one summer to visit a friend that had moved here I said “I will never live in Las Vegas.” That was 25+ years ago. I have now spent 13 of my last 15 years here in Sin City. It is my home. My “hometown” will always be in southeast Pennsylvania, it’s just who I am, but I have come to appreciate, tolerate and even love this city. God does. I suppose it’s only appropriate I should, too.

It didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen in a year. Maybe not even in a decade, but now that I have established an international outreach organization here, got married here and am raising kids here, there is no doubt this is home. A wild, exotic, in-your-face flamboyant and unashamedly unashamed city of a home, but home nonetheless.

Why Vegas? Great question. I got here via Amsterdam. Yes, that Amsterdam. Europe, red lights and canals. The most beautiful city I have ever been to. I did a school with YWAM back in 1995. It was my first trip out of the US and it led me from Europe to the southern tip of Africa and back again. It opened my eyes to our big world and sparked a desire to play a bigger part in it than just being a number at electronics repair depot. Now there’s nothing wrong with a desk job, but I God calling me to get out there and get my hands dirty and to rub shoulders with all these other cultures I knew nothing about.

As my time in Amsterdam was wrapping up, a staff member there invited me to help him start a branch of YWAM in Las Vegas. I kind of chuckled and thought “No thanks!” but I did take time to think and pray about it and much to my surprise  it seemed right. In 1996 I moved out there with a team of six from four nations and we opened shop. It was a long, hard road starting a ministry in a city much of the church has written off.

After a couple years back east when my mother was very ill I headed back to Vegas and found myself in the path of a beautiful young woman who stole my heart and was passionate for ministry as well. She had moved here to start a church, so we were in the same line of work. We got ourselves married and eventually brought some amazing little boys along on our faith journey. Neither Stacey nor I ever expected to make Las Vegas our home, but here we are, thirteen years later with a home and family of our own.

Now the question is: how do we raise kids in this place? That’s for a later time, but it’s probably the same as the story thus far: one surprising step at a time.