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| Operation Egg Drop
This past Saturday our church threw a three hour festival called Operation Egg Drop. For the first 2 hours we had a bunch of games, inflatables (which we couldn't inflate), a petting zoo, live music, and pony rides. For the final hour we dropped 25,000 Easter eggs into a football stadium from a helicopter. Using some connections we've built, we got permission to deliver flyers to every elementary and middle school in the city, and all but two of the schools agreed to pass out flyers to all of their students.
As it turns out, describing and promoting Operation Egg Drop is much easier than pull it off. Two days before the event, the city had the worst hail storm it's seen in a decade or two. This meant all of the fields in the city were soft and muddy. However, the weather reports claimed it would be sunny and 72 on the day of the event...uhhhh wrong.
I woke up on event day to discover 40 degree weather with chilling 30 mph gusty winds. People generally don't like 40 degree weather, and inflatables don't work with wind over 15 mph. I spent most of the morning in denial and bargain praying with God. Roughly an hour before the event, the inflatable rental people informed us we would not be able to use the inflatables de to the wind. At that moment panic started to set in.
As start time approached, things weren't looking much better. The temperate was still under 50 degrees. For the first hour people slowly trickled in until we had a few hundred people. The turn out was well below what we were hoping for. During the second hour, the trickle started to snow ball (I'm mixing metaphors). The people started to double every 15 minutes.
We'd hoped to keep people out of the stadium prior to the drop, but since we lost all of our inflatables, people started to get bored rather quickly. As the time of the drop approached, the stadium started to fill up more and more.
Then, before we were ready, the helicopter flew over head. This caused a mass rush for the stadium, which we already weren't doing a good job of watching. Here's where things got real confusing. The helicopter planned to do a mini-drop when they first approached in order to find out how far the eggs would drift when falling. The plan was for the stadium to be empty when this occurred, but since it wasn't, people started to get worried they'd missed the full drop...which caused an even greater rush for the stands.
After a few minutes the stadium started to fill up. I was the chosen MC for the event. I've spoken in front of large crowds before, but I've never had to give instructions to 1,800 impatient and restless children and parents. Unfortunately we didn't have much of a communication plan in place. So I didn't know when to give the instructions. The helicopter didn't know when to drop the eggs. And the crowd didn't have any idea what was going on.
While I was giving the instructions on how things were going to go down, the helicopter suddenly flew over the stadium and started dropping eggs. This caused a mass exodus of the stands to get in line to grab eggs.
Here's where things get juicy. Originally we only planned for one egg drop, but then the pilot informed us he could easily land in a field and reload the helicopter. So then we upped the number to three drops...but while the drop was going on we realize we were going to have 4 drops...which eventually turned into 5 drops.
In theory the first drop was intended for toddlers through kindergartners. Our plan was to have  people wait outside of the fence of the stadium until all of the eggs were dropped (to keep them safe), and then we'd let them rush in through the gates. Unfortunately, the gates created a bottle neck. So the first people through picked up dozens of eggs and dozens of kids got no eggs because they were way far back in line (including all 3 of my sister's kids). Therefore, we decided to let the people who didn't get any eggs run out first on the next drop. We continued that pattern for the remaining four drops. Yet there were still people who received no eggs (which was astounding since we had enough eggs for every kid to have 20 eggs).
As it turns out, people go insane over Easter eggs. During the third drop, I was trying to get crowd excited about what was going on. I was yelling about all sorts of stupid and cheesy stuff. Then I made a stupid mistake...as I watched some eggs fall, I screamed, "Here they go!" To an audience waiting to rush out and grab eggs, they heard all they needed to hear, and they charged the field while the helicopter was still dropping eggs. Luckily the pilot and the guy pouring the eggs were paying close attention to the audience and stopped the pour before any kids got pelted with falling Easter eggs.
The whole experience taught me several life lessons.- People go CRAZY over Easter eggs
- People don't listen to instructions
- Parents will push over and steal from kids if it means getting more Easter eggs
- Parents get very angry when their kids don't get any Easter eggs
Considering the way things turned out, we were probably lucky the weather possibly scared off some people and the loss of inflatables caused fewer people to come. If we'd had more people, things could have gotten dangerously chaotic.
All in all it was a pretty excellent, but insanely stressful day.
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| First Time Preaching to the Whole Church
This Sunday I'm preaching in the main service on Hope. This is the first time I've preached to anyone beside teenagers. So it's a very exciting and scary experience. It's very odd to think about preaching to a room full of people who are 20...30...40 years my senior.
My tendency is to over-think these sorts of things. I want to do well, so I start to over-think all of the ways to make it mind-blowing...which leads to me trying new things instead of doing the things I'm actually good at.
Netflix + XBox360 = Great Idea
This past week Netflix and xbox teamed up to make it possible for users to stream a limited number of films and tv shows on your xbox. Thus far, it appears to be a great feature. As of right now, the selection is only ok, but as a feature, it's amazing. I predict that sort of thing is the future of home tv and movie viewing. | | |
| Hill Country Bible Church Hutto:
A little less than a month ago I start working half-time as the interim Junior High pastor at a growing medium sized church. Thus far it's been a really good experience. The church is only a year and a half old, and they just split the junior high from the high school. So I've been given a fairly clean slate to work with. The church is located in Hutto, Texas which is one of the fastest growing small cities in America. In the year 2,000 there were only 1,200 people in Hutto. By 2005 there were over 7,000, and the city has continued to grow at the same rate. And there is literally nothing for teenagers to do in the city besides go to high school football games. So it's a very neat place to be doing ministry.
www.two14hutto.com
www.hcbchutto.com
or
renew116.org
In addition to the church being in a very neat location, the pastor of the church is the guy that spoke at many of the youth retreats I went to when I was a teenager. He used to be my mother's boss at HCBC Pflugerville, and now he's my boss. He's quite good at exegeting scriputre, making intreging observations, and connecting it all to life today. His sermons are always challenging.
Substitute Teaching
Since my job at the church is only part-time and my major was in education, I decide to get some extra cash by subbing. My first subbing job was a 3 day stint subbing for one of my friends. It was a neat experience. I subbed classes for 7th-9th graders. I taught 7th and 8th grader logic. It was interesting to see just how much of a difference a year can make (with both maturity and reasoning skills).
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| It's been awhile. So I better make this a good update. Moving to Texas On June 27th, Jennifer and I packed up our stuff and moved back to Texas. We're currently switching back and forth between staying at our parent's houses. It's actually very strange being back in Texas. I had heard people refer to going off to college as initially feeling like summer camp, and that seemed to be my experience. If going off to college felt like summer camp, returning home from college as a graduate feels like visiting for the holidays. The first week back it felt like we needed to cram as much in as possible. Of course, now that I'm getting used to being back, I'm starting to feel the reverse effect. House Hunting In moving back to Texas, Jennifer and I made a conscience decision to move to Texas for at least the next 5 years. Between college, job hunting, getting robbed, and graduating, we've both had so much uncertainty and instability for so long that we're ready to make at least one thing permanent. It's been over four years since I've lived anywhere for more than 12 months. During 2006, I literally changed "homes" every 3-4 months. Thinking about it, I've 12 moved times over the last 10 years. 1. 1998 - Keystone House 2. 1999-2001 - Acacia House 3. 2001-2002 - Dad's Condo 4. 2002-2004 - Acacia House 5. 2004-Summer 2005 - Willowcreek Apartment 6. Summer 2005 - River Birch House 7. Fall 2005 - West Dorm 8. Spring 2006 - East Dorm 9. Summer 2006 - River Birch House 10. Fall 2006 - Ex-Con Street House 11. 2007 - Crime Ridden Apartments 12. Spring 2008 - Overlook Apartment 13. Summer 2008 - Parents
Now one these moves is just switching dorms, and another is staying at my mom's house over summer break. So those weren't major moves of my stuff, but they were fairly extreme examples of not having a stable place to live. I'm very much looking forward to moving into a house where there are no plans to move in the near future. I want to setup my home so it's comfortable and fuctional, not so it's easy to pack up and move out in 6-12 months. House Buying With that said, we've found a house we want. It's right in the neighborhood we want. So we are in the process of negotiating a deal. So we might be house owners very soon. Job Hunting Moving back to Texas was a bit of a blind leap of faith. Neither of us had definite jobs. However, we had several prospects. Jennifer's prospects have paid off a bit faster. She has accepted a job working in the office of a high school. Hopefully, I'll be hired as a sub at a Christian school. I'm also looking into another part-time position. I'm hoping to keep my work load a bit light this next year so I can pursue some of my interests and volunteer at a greater level at my local church. Church Hunting I'd like to find a church where we can have a high level of commitment volunteering in the youth ministry. With that in mind, we've visited two churches thus far, and we'll be visiting a third this Sunday. Several of these churhes I've wanted to visit for over a year, but I never had the opportunity. So it's kind of nice to have the freedom to visit various churches. So that's what we've been up to the last month and a half. I tried to answer all of the questions that people have been asking me in person. | | |
| I've had several occasions recently where some one reminded me of something I did that I hadn't thought of in a long time. So I'm trying to make a database of all of the foolish things I've done (for when I write my autobiography).
So I was hoping you guys could share some of your favorite memories of the crazy things we've done together.
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