Motor City Bowl

On Tuesday I went with some family and future family to the Motor City Bowl at Ford Field. The Chips of CMU were playing in their first bowl game in several years against the Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders, whoever that is. It was a fun atmosphere and our seats were awesome. 7 rows up on the goal line. CMU pulled out a 31-14 win. Hats off to the good ol' alma matter.

Surprise #3: The Ring

As we are sitting in the carriage, I told Hayley that I had something I wanted to read to her. She seemed a little confused like, why would I have something to read. I pulled a poem out of my pocket and read it to her. She was crying before I was done which is what I was hoping for. You know it was a success if she starts crying and she did even before I pulled out the ring. Good Stuff!!! After I finished reading the poem I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me and be my wife. Her response was, "Are you serious right now?" I laughed a little and told her I was and she said, "YES!!!!" I was an amazing moment in the Chicago streets. It was just me and her and seemed like everything just stopped. Definately something I will never forget. So there you have it. That's the story and I wouldn't change anything about. Now I look forward to planning life together with Hayley and I look forward to what God has in store for us.

Surprise #2: The Carriage

To continue the story...after Hayley and I finished dinner we started heading back in the direction of the train station. After we had walked about two blocks I asked what she would say if I told her I had another surprise. I walked her over to the horse and carriages that were stationed around the block at the Water Tower plaza. I had made a reservation to take her on a 30 minute ride and I also had them supply one red rose. We jumped in the carriage and the ride began. At this point, she still had no idea what was coming...but my heart was pounding knowing that I would be engaged in a matter of minutes.

Chicago Pics

I have added some pics from Chicago. Just scroll down to view them. I will put more on as I continue to fill you in on the story.

Rich or Poor?

Take a look at this site to see where you rank in the world in the area of annual income. You might be surprised at the result. I know I was.

Global Rich List

Surprise #1: The Dinner

The first Surprise I gave Hayley in Chicago was Dinner. I had made reservations for 5:15pm at a restaurant called Tucci Benucch. It is located on the fifth floor of the 900 Michigan Ave. shops mall. We arrived at this mall at approx. 4:15 so I had to figure out how to burn one hour. Now this was not your typical mall. There were not a ton of stores in there and the ones that were there were not that interesting. Eventually we found a Walden Books on the sixth floor that we could sit down in and rest our feet for a little while. But then around 4:45 Hayley suggested that we leave and start looking for a place to eat or else we would be waiting forever. So we made our way down one floor to where Tucci Benucch was located. I said that maybe we should look at the menu here because maybe it would be a good place. Then I said let me see how the long the wait is. I asked the hostess if it was ok that I showed up 30 minutes early and she said no problem. I motioned over to Hayley to come in and we got seated. Hayley did not know I had made reservations so after we had gotten seated I told her what I did. I said that I wanted to surprise her with something special to end the night with so I thought a nice dinner would be sufficient. And at that point it was for her because she had know idea what was coming later. So we ordered the chicken parmesan to split which really turned out to be pretty much two full dinners. It was really good food and a really big surprise for Hayley. So far so good...

ENGAGED!!!!!

That's right. Hayley and I are ENGAGED!!!! And I love it. Last night (Dec. 17th) I asked Hayley to marry me and she said, "Are you serious right now?" I told her I was and she said YES with tears in her eyes. What a moment. It is one that I will never ever forget. Not only was it the perfect day, but it was also the start of my best friend and I planning life together. What an unbelievable last eight months in my life. But anyway, I'm sure you dying to know the how, where, and when questions to this day so here is a quick timeline of events from our day of December 17th, 2006.

7:40am - Leave on train to Chicago
9:00am - Arrive in Chicago (central time now)
9-9:30am - Walk through Millennium Park
9:30-12 - Walking North, shopping along Magificiant Mile (Michigan Ave.)
12-12:45 - Lunch in the Chicago Plaza building (Great Steak and Potato Co.)
12:45-1:45 - More shopping on Michigan Ave. (niketown, Apple, watertower)
1:45-2:30 - Hancock Building (95th floor)
2:30-4:30 - more shopping (feet hurt and we are at the end of good shopping on Mich. Ave.)
4:30-5:30 - Surprise Hayley with dinner reservations at Tucci Benucch. (fancy Italian place)
5:45-6:15 - Surprise Hayley with a Horse and Carriage ride, a red rose, a poem I wrote and the
Ring!!!
6:20-6:45 - Taxi back to Millennium Park
6:45-7:45 - Walk around by outdoor skating pond and Christmas Market, bought ornament
7:45-8 - back to train and board train.
8-11:30 - Back to South Bend.

What a trip, what a night, what a thing to now look forward too. I thank God for His provision in this relationship and all that He has done to prepare us for each other. I may write more later and possibly add some pics from the day. I'M ENGAGED!!!!

Lion Chaser: Part 2

This morning Mark Beeson held the second of three breakfast meetings with 200+ guys to discuss the book "In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day." What I took away from it this morning was that we are not called to live a life of maintaining what we have. We are never called to just settle with what we have. God continues to call us to take steps. Now I'm not saying He is always calling us to live in a new area but that wherever He has us, we are called to press forward and compete for the Kingdom. Many times we regret actions that we take. But our biggest regrets will be the inaction in our lives. Those things that we chose not to do that leave us asking "what-if." I don't want to have regrets. I want to be a person who looks back twenty years from now and doesn't have many if any "what-if" questions. I want to take the steps God is calling me to no matter how hard and scary they may be. That is the life God has called us to.

Thoughts from chapters 4-6:

"I think we'd be amazed at the percentage of prayers aimed at problem reduction."

"Many of our prayers would short-circuit God's plans and purposes for our lives if He answered them. Maybe we should stop asking God to get us out of difficult circumstances ans start aking Him what He wants us to get out of those difficult circumstances."

"Our feelings are determined by our subjective focus."

"No adversity equals no opportunity. Without those extremely adverse conditions, Benaiah would have faded from the script of Scripture."

"Lion chasers are more afraid of lifelong regrets then temporary certainty."

"Faith doesn't reduce uncertainty. Faith embraces uncertainty."

"Some of the best things in life are totally unplanned and unscripted."

"Good is often the enemy of great."

"Generally speaking, you are probably never going to be more than 80 percent certain. Waiting for greater clarity may cause you to miss an opportunity." - Andy Stanley

"Faithfulness has nothing to do with maintaining the status quo or holding the fort. It has everything to do with competing for the Kingdom and storming the gates of Hell. With a squirt gun, if necessary!"

"One courageous choice may be the only thing between you and your dream becoming reality."


So there you have it. What God-ordained opportunities are you shying away from?

U2 Christmas

At GCC, we are doing a U2 Christmas. Each week follows a theme of a U2 song. Last weekend was Vertigo and it was incredible. So, if you are a U2 fan, you may want to check this out.

U2 at GCC.

Food Drop 2006

156,000 pounds of food

3,500 families fed

2,500 volunteers mobilized

It was an incredible day at GCC this last Saturday. The annual Food Drop took place here at the church and it was an event not to forget. The impact that was made in our community was felt by nearly everyone. The cool thing was that I got to play a fairly significant leadership role in all that happened that morning. This was definately one of the biggest impact events that I have ever been apart of. Politicians came, the news was there, and God prescence was made known. It was an awesome day. Below are news stories you can read about:

Story 1
Story 2
Story 3

For pictures click here
For video click here

Who Chases?

As I continue to think about what was written in my last post, Jon "Cowboy" Shupe came up with a good question. He asks, "Is actually God who chases the lions" and "Do we just need to be willing to get in the way of them?" After spending a little bit of time thinking about this here is my conclusion.

If we are people who are willing to live the life God has called us to no matter what the cost we are going to have to face lions. I love the saying that nothing good or worth while comes easy. The life God has for us is the most fulfilling, rewarding, exciting, adventurous, innovating life that we could ask for. But it may well be the hardest and most challenging lifestyle. See, when we choose to let God lead, eventually that path will lead us into situations where will meet lions face to face. And in that moment, what will we choose to do? Will we run away or will we charge? Will we drop our weapons or will we fix bayonets? If our desire is to bring God's Kingdom to earth, we must choose to stare evil in the face and eliminate it from its existance.

So who actually chases? Well I think it is ultimately up to us to decide to chase the lions. To face our fears of doubt, the unkown, failure, and persecution. To live the life God has called us to live will take hard work and much effort. But the pay off and outcome is worth all that we have.

Lion Chaser: Part 1

For the next 3 weeks, 200+ men from the church will be meeting together on Wednesday mornings at six 0'clock. We are reading together the book titled "In of Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day" by Mark Batterson who is the Pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C. These meetings are being lead by our pastor Mark Beeson. Today was the first meeting and I loved it. If I told you all about it this email would be too long to read so here are a few excerpts from the morning:

(in order for some of these to make sense you may want to read 2 Samuel 23:20-21)

- "Normal people run away from lions."
- "God-given opportunities often come disguised as man-eating lions. And how we react
when we encounter those lions will determine our destiny."
- "Maybe following Christ isn't supposed to be as safe or as civilized as we've been led to
believe....Maybe God is raising up a generation of lion chasers."
- "Too often our prayers resolve around asking God to reduce the odds in our lives...But
maybe God wants to stack the odds against us so we can experience a miracle of divine
proportions."
- "How you think about God will determine who you become."
- "Our problems seem really big because our God seems really small. In fact, we reduce
God to the size of our biggest problems."
- "Half of spiritual growth is learning what we don't know. The other half is unlearning
what we do know. And it is failure to unlearn irrational fears and misconceptions that
keeps us from becoming who God wants us to be." (John 5)
- "Think of your fears as mental lions. If we don't learn to chase those fears, they can
keep us at bay for the rest of our lives."
- "Courage is putting yourself into defenseless positions."
- "If you take a second to reflect on your life, you'll discover that the greatest experiences
are often the scariest, and the scariest experiences are often the greatest."

- "So here is my question: Are you living your life in a way that is worth telling
stories about?"

That's just the first three chapters. I would highly recommend this book. I would also highly recommend chasing your fears and letting God work through that process to take you where he wants you to go. Mark finished the morning by sharing with all of us what God has spoken to him with clarity recently and it is this: "God has provisions you know not of, more than you can ask or imagine." That's is true for all of us. What he has in store for us is better than anything we have dreamed of and I have dreamed of some pretty incredible things. It must be good.

Overdue

I guess it's time for a new post. This is the longest drought to date. I apologize for putting this blog on the back burner for the last week. But now I'm back and I do have some things to share.

This past weekend Hayley and I traveled to Mt. Pleasant to take part in the third-somewhat annual-Jesus Loves Steak Christmas party. In case you don't know what Jesus Loves Steak (JLS) is, let me inform you. JLS is a group of ten guys from Pigeon, MI who grew up together through high school and parted ways to go to college. While in college we decided to stay connected by way of an e-group. We chose Yahoo! as our site and created a place where we could all communicate through email and instant messaging. This allowed us to continue to hold one another accountable and share prayer requests as well as updates about what is happening in life. So once a year we try to have a Christmas party as a way for all of us to get together again. We spent a great deal of time playing Ping-Pong, Super Tecmo Bowl (yes I said Super Tecmo Bowl) and watching a days worth of football. It may sound like a unproductive, waste of time weekend, but it was far from that. We are continuing to do life together. Despite the miles that have come between us, we are making it a point to pray, encourage and love one another. I would not be who I am today if it were not for this group of guys. And not only the guys but also the Godly women that some have chosen to add to this circle of steakers.

This year was really cool because it was the first year where there was a new generation of "Steakers" among us with the additions of Isaac Sturm and Kaylyn King. It is awesome to see us grow up and begin to take on new roles in life. Dads, Husbands, Uncles, etc. I look forward to what God still has in store for this group and how he will use each one for His Kingdom.

Thank you Jesus for the warriors you have surrounded me with and who have played a huge role in helping me to develop into the person I am today!!