I love books, especially when I have time to read them.

It was nice to be able to read some books over the break before school started. Unfortunately it has taken so long for me to tell you about it. But I'd like to share with you about the books that I have read the last few months.

First, I've been wanting to shamelessly promote my uncle's book, but I'm not just promoting it because it is my uncle's book. It was a fantastic and intriguing book. The book is called The Awakening and is a fascinating read about bioengineering. It is a fiction book about an young man name Art who finds himself at the center of a controversy dealing with science and bioengineering. Art a teen piano prodigy and orphan begins to look into his past and discovers much more than he ever bargained for. He and his friend dizzy dig deep into the conspiracy that turns out to be Art's past. The characters are well developed and the plot will keep you guessing. I don't want to reveal too much more for fear of ruining the story, but I will say if you are curious about what the future may hold or just enjoy a good thriller (and almost sci-fi) you will enjoy this easy to read (and hard to stop reading) book. You'll also be supporting a great guy. It's on amazon and on Facebook. If you want more info head over to www.theawakeningbook.net.

Secondly, I recently read a new book from one of my favorite authors. Don Miller recently put out a new book entitled A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I have loved everything that Don has put out before and loved this one just as much. It's an intriguing look into how we ought to be living from the perspective on someone turning his life into a movie. When Don was asked to turn his book about his life into a movie, he begins to look into what kind of story he's been living. If you've read Don Miller before, you won't be disappointed by this book. I would recommend this book to everyone especially to those who are into writing and reading good stories. This book will cause you to reflect on your personal story and if you are really doing all that you can do to make it a good one.

I also read a lot of books for school. Recently I read the Jungle as a part of the class I lead a discussion group for. That certainly is a interesting and depressing look into the life of an immigrant around the turn of the century. Just don't read it while you're eating. Most of my books, however, but most of them end up being more technical than fun reads.

I leave you with this question: what have you been reading recently? And did it cause you to rethink something or think about something you never thought of before?

Post your thoughts.

What I did on my Christmas Vacation...

Here's the promised post on the Christmas Vacation...

On December 20th, Linds and I embarked on our Christmas Vacation. We started our trip in Bone Gap, only staying their briefly, and quickly headed to Baltimore to spend time with Lindsay's sisters. Over the week that we were there, I think we celebrated Christmas (or at least had a Christmas meal) about once a day. The highlight of the Christmas festivities was the Christmas play put on by the children under the direction of my mother-in-law. It was very cute and a joy to watch. It really was just a jam packed week of hanging out with nieces and nephews.

We rode out with Lindsay's parents and her grandparents also made the trip out. And aside from sleeping on a futon for a week, it was a great trip. It had been since the wedding since we had seen most of her sisters and nieces and nephews. We had our fair share of playing Aunt and Uncle and truly enjoyed it. We can't wait to go back, although the beginning of school really makes it hard to travel longer than just a weekend.

From Baltimore, we drove back to Bone Gap and chilled for a few days before visiting Indy for the weekend. This was more Christmas for us and my family, although we really celebrated over New Years. It was very nice to be in Indy, it's a wonderful city, that I miss especially during Sundays in the football season. Go Colts!

The rest of the vacation we spent in Lincoln. We got a few weeks of rest combined with a little bit of work in the coffeeshop for me and the library for Linds.

Because it's Christmas, I ought to mention our favorite gifts. Linds is in love with her chair from Ikea bought with Christmas money from Grandma and Grandad, and I am getting frequent use out of my new coffeemaker (although the mugs seem to be in short supply after a few days of coffee enjoyment).

We have now gotten back into the swing of school. These last two weeks were the first weeks of full time school and work, and a return to the volunteer ministry gig at Jeff Street. I just started teaching the college students again and Linds is back to leading the choir. That's all for now from the frozen and windy cornfields of Lincoln. Soon, I hope to share with you what I read on my Christmas vacation.

The End of the Year

2009 was a busy year. I'm sure if you've read any of my blogs, you've noticed what I've done this year. The first five months of the year were crazy. They ended with the biggest month of the year: May. Linds and I got married at the end of may right after I graduated from college. It certainly made this year interesting, but I have to say that the last 7 months have been great. I also started on my first year of Seminary this fall. It was certainly much different than college, and it is certainly better than college. I'm happy about where this last year has taken me and very happy to have my wife along with me in the journey of life. I'm very excited about where my wife and I will be going in the next year.

I'll write more about our Christmas vacation soon. Good luck in the new year.

"The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace." - Numbers 6:24-26

Life goes on in Lincoln.

Life has been really busy which has kept me from posting. No much exciting has happened in Lincoln since the last post. There's still corn, it's still windy, and there's still homework.

Linds and I have been to Indy twice, however, since I last posted. The first time it was for Dave Ramsey. Linds' dad graciously provided tickets for us to attend Dave's Total Money Makeover. It was fantastic and we were very glad that we could go. Sadly, we were only in Indy for about 16 hours. It was on a Thursday night so we couldn't stay the weekend, since we had to be back to work on Friday.

Two weekends later we went back to Indy to see my sister, Julie, and her kids. She was in town and so we went home to hang out. It was a great weekend. It was nice to enjoy the amenities of Indy that Lincoln doesn't have (a used book store being one of them), but it was more fun just to be able to spend time with family.

Other than that, my time has been spent grading, teaching Sunday school, reading, writing papers, going to class, and working. Life is certainly busy in Lincoln.

It has begun.

My first week of seminary at LCU is officially over. Yesterday I had my first Hebrew Class and today I had my first "Shaping the Heart of the Leader" class. The experience is certainly a lot different from college. The classes are longer, the demographic is a little wider (everyone from new college grads to retirees), and the work is harder. I am very excited to push on and learn more.

Hebrew is what the name suggests, we will be learning Hebrew. Yesterday was sort of a linguistic "culture shock" for most. First of all the letters look like this ב ג ד, which is the equivalent of b g d. Second, what you see there is really d g b, because the writing goes from right to left instead of left to right. And Third, there aren't really vowels, for example one of my favorite words is "שמצ" which is pronounced "shema" but spelled (transliterated) šm' in English. So, needless to say, life is interesting in hebrew.

Shaping the Heart of a Leader is going to be a great class to start seminary with. Over the next three weeks we will be doing personality evaluations like DiSC and Myers-Briggs. Then we will integrate our personality in to how we do leadership. Also, all of that is combined with learning about and focusing on the spiritual growth of a leader. I look forward to learning about myself, how I lead, and also how to take care of spiritual life.

I won't start my third class until the intensive week, but I have enough on my plate currently, so the next few weeks should be great.

quick blog update

I have deleted my second blog that I posted a total of two times on. It was a failed experiment in to how much time I had to actually be in the blog world (can that be called the "blorld", if it can and no one has thought of it before I want credit for that). I will instead relegate any and all posts to this blog.

Also, as a side note. I LCCS will now be known as LCU. It was a big day for Lincoln Christian now University.

August

Well, I almost let an entire month of the calendar go by without posting anything at all. It seems like the month went by pretty fast.

Like I said in the last post, I spent the last week of July at Little Galilee in Clinton, IL. It is a Christian camp and I am friends with the dean of that week. The week was wonderful and went very well. Probably the best part of the week was being able to spend it serving beside one of my great friends, Sam Davis. I love working with him. We spent the week making up new games and figuring out how to get campers with water balloons and them not expect it. I also spent the week teaching at the campfire times. The theme for the week was built around Gilligan's Isle. So every night I used a different lost on a desert island tv-show or movie. For example, I spoke about who you are when know one is around using Castaway as an illustration. The week went very well and a good time was had by all.

A few weeks ago, Lindsay and I went home to Indy so that I could attend the no man left behind conference and so that we could go to the state fair. It was a great weekend, I learned a lot at the conference and enjoyed attending it with my Dad and the men of the church that he serves. The state fair was HOT, but fun. We spent the afternoon with my sister and her family. It's always fun to hang out with nieces and nephews and that certainly was the case that Sunday.

It's been a long month and I'm almost ready. Before September can come, however, I'm going to be sentimental. Today was the very last day that LCC&S will be known as such. Tomorrow is the beginning of Lincoln Christian University. And so, I share with you a picture of something that will not be seen again: the entrance to LCCS with the signs for the two schools, in the future they will read, Lincoln Christian Univerity. And thus, I bid LCCS a farewell.