Snow.

I thought it was supposed to snow today, but I guess it's not going to. I'm looking at the Doppler widget on my computer right now and I'm see White and some Pink over Wisconsin but when I look outside, It's bright and sunny and relatively warm. I love Snow. I hope it snows. This last week was a great week. On Monday Tara and I went to financial peace. It's a 13 week class and we have about 10 weeks left. On Tuesday basically the entire day I just watched photoshop tutorials, I feel like I'm getting pretty proficient with that program. On wednesday I got into the office at around 8 and started to work on slides for the baby dedication on Sunday for Adult service. We had 12 babies dedicated so I had to make 12 slides. That's a lot of babies! Praise God. It's fun but it's also very time consuming. Jeff asked me if I could do them so he could do other work. One of the other reasons Jeff likes having me around, to do the work he doesn't want to do. haha, it's okay, I like it. Here are the slides I made.












Jeff was pretty pleased with them. Jeff is my Brother and he's also the creative arts person here at 2|42, I'm interning under him as well as others. They showed in Adult service on Sunday, it's pretty cool to see your art work on huge screen that everyone sees, it was a pretty good feeling. It was also different to see how the screens and the projectors change the way the image displays as well as how it changes the color. On Tuesday I did the epistle and and watched a lot of tutorials. Then after that I went to go teach Tori, Ricky and Hunter drums at the Gibsons. They're an awesome loving family. I always enjoy going over there. They've been such a blessing and so giving. I ate dinner there as well with them all, It was nice that Sean came home from work early and then I went to Cell group at Michelle's Apartment. After that Tara came over, since I live basically 2 blocks from Michelle's and we watched Charlie Wilson's War. After about 30 minutes of that, we turned it off because it was really boring. Basically the whole movie is talking. I don't think there was one 2 minute block of silence is that whole film. The next day I work a lot on the baby slides but I have to leave at around 3 because I had to teach in South Lyon at 4. After that I went out to Westland to her school to help her hang a white sheet for her projector. I'm so happy for her, she's got a really cool classroom. The white sheet definitely helps and I also gave her my speakers so all the students can hear the computer. After that we went back to Plymouth to hang out with Tara at her apartment. We ate dinner than started to watch The family stone. After about an hour of that, we turned it off because it was really weird and the acting sucked. So that's two for two. After that I just helped her with some of her school work and we made a power point for her class room about dia de los muertos or DAY OF THE DEAD!!!! It was pretty cool. I got to use a lot of what I've learned with Photoshop in the slides. She was happy. The next day I got into the office at 10am because I'm there until around 10pm and sat through an awesome staff meeting. We talked a lot more about marketing, which is Sue's job and she is tearing that stuff up. He's been doing an amazing Job. We talked about outreach ideas and lesson topics for the first month or so. It lasted until about 12 and then we all went to White Castle. If you haven't tried their breakfast, you are missing out. It's the best. They serve it all day. I got back and finished up the slides for Sunday and emailed them all to Jeff for approval. At 4 I taught Grant Minney Drums, that kid is really picking it up well. Then at 5 I taught Jordan Voigt drums for a little over an hour. This kid reminds me of me when I was in HS, he has such a work ethic and really fine tunes everything I teach him. I'm showing him some pretty complicated stuff and by the next week, it's perfect! He's got a gift. I love teaching him because I know he works at it and I love seeing fruit be grown. What? Does that make sense? I don't know. After that we all had Band Practice at lakewood. Lauren and Ben lead, Jason Bellanti on Drums and Adam Vance on Bass. It was cool. I played electric guitar and it's the first week I actually put some lead lines into it. It was definitely a next step in my guitar playing abilities, haha. The next day, I went into the office. It was just Brad and I for most of the day and then Kevin Davis showed up. He took the day to work from home. It was cool spending time with him.

For lunch we went to three amigos and then just hung out the rest of the day. I have to admit, I really didn't do much this day except make a slide for the game on Sunday. Here's the slide . . .

I also worked on the production computer and programmed the service and printed all of the cue sheets. I also found some videos for the service and made sure everything was in line with our Guest speaker this week. So I guess I did do a lot, but since it was the three of us, we just joked around most of the day, haha. I left that day around 3:30 to get to the Krause's at 4. The topic this week is Live to Love. So we asked Jay (one of the student artists) if he could do Crazy By Knarls Barkley. He was pumped about it so I went over to his house to work on it and he, his dad and I ended up making an audio loop for it, with drums and a little synth pad what have you. It was an awesome time. He knocked it out of the park on Sunday. So on Saturday, this was a crazy day. I got up around 10 and cleaned my room and got all of my clothes washed. I also cleaned the kitchen and prof's cage. Tara came over and was nice enough to start coking some food.

It was so good. After that we went to Brighton to go looking for some Halloween Costumes for the party we were about to go to. We had two events to go to, one of them was Darian (my wicked awesome super cool super manly man's man roomate) and Becky's Football Throw Down party where Michigan played Michigan State. Then after that we went to Jason Bellanti's Halloween Party. We got to Darian and Becky's party at Becky's house around 4ish. There were tons of people there and it was just really sweet. Lots of fun. There were two rooms, one for State fans and one for Michigan fans. The highlight was when at half time Darian, Justin and I jammed it out on Rock band 2, haha. We failed the first time and got booed of stage but the second time we freakin' rocked the house. Most of us were on expert too! A lot of people from 242 were there too, which is so cool. Michigan was beat by State in first time in 6 years or something like that at the Big House, which is pretty depressing. It was a great time and I was thankful I went. Tara, Justin and I left around 7:45 and then we head over to the Bellanti's. Tara and I were nurses and we both were dressed in scrubs, haha. They were a little too big for Tara but they fit on me. She looked pretty cute. On the way over there we stopped at a parking lot and that's were we all changed, it was COLD! The party was really sweet the house was totally decked out! A lot of people from 242 were there, mostly everyone was 242 was there. I really didn't know a lot of them too well, most of them were a couple of years older and had children and the such. But it was awesome. I'm glad they invited Tara and I. We left around 10:30 because I had to wake up at 5:30 the next day for church.
On Sunday I got to the school around 7am and started unloading my car. I carry so much stuff now. We had tons of help setting up, Praise God! We had a guest speaker, Jamison Davis who did a really amazing job, he's a really great easy going guy. His idea for the game was to see who could eat a whole chipotle burrito first. He ended up having a lot of students, more so than usual. It's been one of the best weeks in a long time.

So here I am, on my day off, blogging, haha. I'm watching Steven King's the stand in the background. pretty good film. I'm going to go do something productive. Until next time!

The Last Couple of days . . . .

So this Yesterday at church was pretty awesome. We did a cover song by Flyleaf called Fully Alive. Allison, one of the students lead the song and she did an amazing Job. A lot of the students gave many compliments, it was cool. It's also cool that we've been starting to do cover songs each. Next week, Jay, another student and I are doing Crazy by Gnarles Barkley. He's singing it and I'm just playing guitar for it. It's going to be awesome. The Flyleaf song was the Drop D and that's the first time I've ever played a song in that tuning, not to mention that much distortion, I borrow Brad's guitar and amp. I would love to buy it's pretty awesome stuff and it's pretty expensive. Plus it's a lot to carry around. I thought since I'm not playing drums all that much anymore I wouldn't have to be carrying around 70 cases weighing 400 pounds each. But yeah, It went really cool. This picture is actually from the week before when it was an all student lead service. They did awesome. The slide on the screens is from a game we played called Russian Roul-EGG. Some of the eggs were hard boiled and some were raw. We had the students pick an egg and smash it over their head. haha. You can imagine the rest. I told Brad it would be funny to not even hard boil some, just make them all raw, but that would be mean. The winner, who didn't crack the raw egg over their head, won a StuCo T-shirt. Let's back up a little while to Thursday. Thursday is our staff meeting day at the office. Normally it lasts a couple of hours but since we've been working on AA, it's been lasting a lot longer. I must say, I came on this internship at an amazing time. I am learning SO much. SO MUCH. I can't even begin to tell you. I'm sitting in a room of amazing leaders and church planters, who have done it before, and hearing them vision cast and plan and work on marketing strategies and ideas and money and what if's and on and on and on and on. I'm so pumped because this is information I'll know for the next church plant. I'm seeing it from the inside, and it's amazing. Thursdays have quickly become one of my favorite days, if not my favorite day. So this thursday after the meeting we went down to Ann Arbor to go to a PACT meeting, this is a meeting where a lot of the pastors and leaders in Ann Arbor meet to pray and encourage each other. They meet regularly and it was really encouraging. We met at Kirk Schneeman's (sp? Sorry Kirk!) church. He's pastor of a church called frontline that meets in his building which is called the Boardwalk Creative Center. It's a center of creativity that businesses from across the country use to come up with ideas for products and basically, the community uses it for a lot of other events. It's a really cool place. We had the last AA service fest "concert" in this building. Anywho, Kirk's a really cool guy and it's been a pleasure to get to know him. At the meeting some of the pastors stood up and told about what God is doing in AA and there was even an Messianic Jew stand up and give a short message, that was powerful!
This is some of the bullentins we had made up for this meeting and for the future meetings. We forgot them and had to go back to get them. They weren't folded so we had to fold them on the way done. That's Dave driving and I love his minivan. It's got leather and has a lot of room. Steve is sitting next to him, Joy is in front of me and Jeff is sitting next to me in the back. He was AIMing Dave Webber the whole time about the website. I love iPhones. Period. Sue also went too but she must of drove herself. I'm watching Jurassic park right now as I blog. I'm pretty sure I watched this last week at the same
time when I was blogging. It's the first one, it's a great movie. Definitely going to be a classic. "Spared no expense!" This is a picture of the meeting at the Boardwalk Creative Center. The food they had was catered and it was mexican food and it was pretty good. If you want to know anymore information about PACT just shoot me an email and I'll be glad to give you more information. After the meeting we helped Kirk tear down and then started on our way home. I had band practice for StuCo that night so I just basically worked more on the fully alive song and the worship song and
Getting used to an electric guitar, I primarily played acoustic on Sundays, and working on the worship songs. If I don't know them, how can I lead them?? At 5 I taught Jordan drums right up until back practice. That kid has some skills and a work ethic. I showed him some pretty complicated stuff last week and but this thursday he had it down. Really impressive. He kind of reminds me of myself when I was his age. His dad is a pastor and church planter, and so is my dad. Ricky was playing drums that week, Zack was playing bass and brought Kim, and I was leading and playing electric. Also, Allison came and so did her new Boyfriend, oh crap I forgot his name. I was to say Mike? Anyways, he's a really sharp kid and very polite. I'm proud of her. Practice went well and after Jordan and I (he stayed for rehersal) went to White Castle. If you haven't had their breakfast, STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND GO GET SOME. RIGHT NOW. They serve it all day long now and it's amazing. They use real eggs, not the junk beaters kind of whatever that is. It's so good. Then I went home. Thursdays are always long days. On friday Jeff and I had an appointment in AA with New Life church to check out their sound equipment and stage set up for Sunday night. This was to make sure everything would run smoothly for the Discovery Meeting Sunday night. The picture is of the driveway next to the church, I took it because of the trees. The building is the brick building on the right. Their sound board is a digital sound board, which we've never really worked with and for the most part is pretty rare, I would say. Basically, instead of knobs and sliders and faders, it's digital, it's a touch screen. Sure, they have some knobs and faders but they only control that which is on your screen. In a regular sound board the signal flow comes in the channel insert then is affected as it goes through the channel. it's hands on, very easy to effect the sound, eq it, etc... With a digital sound board, The volume fader, for example can control a million different things. It's a "matrix." It can be programmed to whatever you want it to do. Basically, they're a waste of time and super expensive and other than the infinite possibilites of options and customization, It's not very good. Also, for our church, we have a lot of different volunteers running sound each week, not to mention it's stored in the trailor all week long so that would be such a headache training people on it and it would last about 3 weeks being in the trailor with our -130 degree winters. It was cool, the New Life staff (New Life is a college aged church in AA that has about 600-800 students each week come, their church is in an old sorority house right on U of M's campus. They recently just converted the house and they have amazing space and equipement. They have a very open hand and are helping us greatly with our new church plant. New Life really doesn't have a children's ministry or HS ministry or a lot of ministries for the non College student so they happy we're coming along side them to reach the demographic that really they aren't reaching. Like wise, we're not eagle eying UM students so we would point them to New Life if our church didn't really meet their needs at the time.) I went to New Life for about 6 months a couple of years a go when I went to school in Ann Arbor and 242 really didn't have a lot of college students going, and I must stay, it's an amazing church. We met with their arts guy and he showed us a lot of what the sound board can do. It's pretty impressive. After that we helped them pack up for their fall retreat, they basically cleared the stage and put it all in a trailor. They were saying it was so much work, and we were like, "We do this every week, and we have 3 freaking huge trailers!!" It was pretty funny. They're cool people. After that we went to Briarwood mall to eat chipotle and get a new iphone power cord, apparently they catch fire and Apple recalled all of them. It was free so whatever. When we were standing in the line of Chipotle Jeff and I saw the California Pizza company across the way and he treated me because I've never been there before. Surprisingly, it was amazing. Jeff got some sausage one and I got the shrimp scampi pizza. It was amazing. Check out these pictures. . . .














After that I went back to the office and programmed the service in Media
shout and printed off all the cue sheets for Sunday. I actually stayed at the office until about 7pm. Then I just went home and chilled for a while. Saturday, well, see the last post. That's the trailer fiasco. Then on Saturday night I went out with people from our Cell group and we went down to Ann Arbor and ate at Mongolian BBQ. I've never eaten there before and it was really good. It was for Stephanie's birthday. Tim Stockdale and I rode down there together and got to know each other more. On Sunday night was the AA discovery meeting. We all got there around 3:30 and starting setting up our equipment. I was playing drums that night and the rest of the adult band was playing as well. Jason, Jim, Jeff, and Ashley played Keys. The sound board caused a lot of sound issues, I couldn't really hear anything and I didn't use a click track, because they couldn't patch it into my monitors, and they couldn't even find my monitor. Stupid board. But for the most part, you didn't even notice. We all have played in places a lot worse than that. It went awesome and we had a pretty good turn out. I'm terrible at estimations so I'm not even going to begin to say. I'll find out later. Here's a picture of Dave vision casting. Alright, I'm going to cook some food and
take some aspirin, my head is killing me. I can no idea why this is now blue and underlined, anywho, I have financial peace university tonight with Tara and I actually look forward to it. I've already taken it but Tara hasn't so we're going together. Until the next blog. . . .

Battle Scars . . . .

So unfortunately Trooper got a little hurt today, which is pretty sad, I try to keep my car really nice as much as I can, but it never fails, something always happens. This is why I'm never going to have a car payment and never drive a luxury car or an expensive car that I want to try and keep nice all the time. It's almost impossible to keep it nice, especially here in Michigan with all the salt and the pot holes and all the idiot drivers. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten chips in my windshield or in my bumper. It's ridiculous. A car is simply that, something to get you from point A to B. Not only do they go down in value so much, they're so expensive and not worth investing in. Here's a link . . . .http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIgLyl66QxQ. Let me tell you a little story of my saturday morning and afternoon . . . .
It started out very nice at around 9am. Darian, my roommate and I had planned on picking up a new riding lawn mover for his girlfriend, Becky. Darian asked me if I could help him getting it to Becky's, since my truck has a hitch on the back of it. I said sure, Troops was made to haul stuff and haul stuff it will. So yesterday Darian called U-Haul and got a reservation for a little trailer. Today we went to go pick up the trailer and when we saw it, it was a car transporter and there was no way this thing would work. The trailor Darian reserved was already rented out. What is the point of reserving something when the company doesn't keep to it? So I called Bob Keesee, who has let me borrow his trailer in the past, he didn't pick up, I just got his voicemail. While we kind of stalled for him to call back, we all went to McDonalds to eat Breakfast. Also, Tara came too for all of this . . .Also, Becky's Dog. The dog is a chocolate Lab and husky mix and it's really cute.
We just decided after we ate to just go back to the uhaul place and get the trailor they had available. When I saw the one, I have to be honest, I was a little concerned, Troops has a lot of power, but it's also a V6. This trailor was pretty large, also with this thing my car would definitely get less than 10 mpg. Anyways, we loaded it up and had the uhaul guy check everything out and went on our way. On my way down to Dexter, where the lawnmower was, I noticed a car hauling an empty unhaul trailer that would be PERFECT for what we needed going the other direction. I just joked to Darian, "Hey, there's your trailor going back to the uhaul place now." Sure enough, about 10 minutes later the unhaul guy called and told us the trailer Darian RESERVED was back. So suggested we go back, even though we're already there because we had to drive all the way up to White Lake, that's where Becky lives, and drop off the trailor etc . .. .So we had a long way to go still. We went back and got it . . . . Here's some pics of the difference. Also, this trailor is lighter, smaller and is more aerodynamic, all which helps Troops out. After we wasted about an hour of time, we got it all worked out.
So U-Haul trailers aren't like your normal trailers. The latch that hooks onto the ball is nothing like the usual. In NORMAL trailers the latch has a hole, in which you can put a lock or a bolt through to make sure it doesn't come out. U-Haul trailers don't have that at all, they have a handle you turn to make sure they're clamped, basically, you screw it down to make sure it's on. That's the stupidest thing ever. So in the process of hooking it up, I tightened it down, but it must have not been seated right. Normally I would bounce it up and down to make sure it seated but I guess I forgot.
As we were driving down US23 going about 70 miles an hour, suddenly I feel the rear of my car swaying like mad and screeching tires. You got, it unhooked. Thank God for the chains. I guess I didn't seat it right and it unscrewed on me. You should have seen what I saw in my rear view mirrow, the thing was fish tailing like crazy!! I'm surprised it didn't flip over and I THANK GOD there weren't any cars beside me. I remember multiple times seeing the whole entire trailor from my side mirror, that's how all over the road this thing was! I certainly made traffic slow down that's for sure. I tried to stop slowing as I didn't want the freaking thing slamming into the rear of my car destroying everything. I was so thankful it only did the damage it did (see above). I remember tightening it, but I guess it just didn't seat right and the empty light little trailor going over bumps managed to untighted and come up. I've hauled many trailors in my life and this is the first time this has ever happened. Thank God it didn't come unchained, that would have really caused some damage, although not to my car. So we went to Dexter checking every 10 miles or so making sure it was tight, and we didn't have a problem with it again. Anywho, the Riding lawnmower is awesome, they got a great deal on it, they got it for almost half of what it's worth. Becky wasn't at her house, she's with her family at Central Michigan University for the weekend.

Okay, I'm going to hang out with Members of my cell group tonight, I'll blog more tomorrow.

Tuesday.

So today was a pretty uneventful day, but it was a good one. Last night I spent about an hour on Google Maps, planning out how much I drive every month on average. I primarily drive from my place in Whitmore Lake to Howell, MI. That trip is around 18.5 Miles. Which I rounded up to 20 miles. So round Trip each day, 40 miles, give or take. Then I drive 4 times a month to Church in Brighton. That's 10.3 miles according to Google, so I rounded that up to 15, just to be safe. I drive to church four times a month so that's a total of 120 miles per month. Then I drive to Tara's about two times a week, and that's 24.2 miles according to Google. So not to bore you with my math, I drive on Average 1600 miles a month. Yes, 1600 miles a month. Which, it's bad considering I have a friend who drives 120 miles round trip to work each day. So, it gets worse. It's bad enough I drive that much each month, but it's even worse to have a car that gets 16 miles a gallon Highway. Yes, my lovely Isuzu Trooper. So yes, I spend over $350 a month on gas. I also have a 1984 Buick Century that's my dad's that he's let me use so I don't have to get 16 mpg. His gets around 24 mpg, so that's better than 16. So really, between the two I spent a little over $300 a month on gas. With all that said, on some tuesdays I've decided to work from home. So today, that's exactly what I did. I got up at 8am went straight to the kitchen to get a yogurt. It was kind with fruit on the bottow and it was strawberry. It was pretty good but I like food with some texture. I would have loved to put some granola in it or something, but I don't have any. Anywho, I started right on the epistle, which is our StuCo weekly newsletter. I got that all worked out at around 11, yeah, it really does take along time, consider I had to make a couple of designs for it. So after that I added some names to the email list from my address book, we're up to around 120 subscribers now. I hope the people don't mind. It's all the people who have children in StuCo and who are involved in StuCo so I doubt they'll mind getting the email. I got a call from Darian (my super duper amazing roomate who is the coolest guy ever! EVER!) So after that I went and cooked some food. I made some brats and some peas and green beans. It was pretty good. After that I wrote an email to all the student artists informing them of some things. We do all of our scheduling and contacts through email and access to the service flow sheets and music online. So it's very frustrating when the students don't check their email for two weeks. Also, there's been an issue that has been brought up to me and Students not coming to practice and being able to play on Sunday. So I put in effect the "NO PRACTICE, NO PLAY" rule. I've already gotten a phone call and a text about it. Either way, I'm going to make someone unhappy, at least this time it's fair. Then after that, I went to go teach at the Gibsons. They have 2 sons and one Daughter. Ricky, one of the sons is playing in StuCo this week. We're doing a cover song by fly leaf called Fully Alive, it's going to be sweet. They ordered pizza and we all ate and talked about life and Financial Peace, which Tara and I are in every Monday. Kendall, the Mom is one of the FPU facilitators for one of the classes. I've been trying to fix a check engine light in my Trooper. About six months ago the CEL went on so I took it to auto zone and it was throwing a P1392 Code, which is the G Sensor code, low voltage. So I went on ebay and bought a new Sensor. The G sensor is located in the center console right next to the parking brake hook up. In order to get to that, you have to take the passanger seat out, and both center consoles. That's what I did Sunday afternoon when Tara was working on her lessons for the next week. The code went off for about a week, then came right back on. So I kind of gave up on it. After teaching I went to Autozone again and had them read the code, sure enough, same code. I think I'm going to go someplace to have it actually diagnosed. We'll see. The car runs fine and it gets the same MPG, so I don't know if it's worth my time and money. I just hate seeing CHECK ENGINE blaring at me in the face. We'll see. So here I am, at Cell group. It starts at 7 but I got here at around 6:40, I didn't want to go home. Okay, I'm going to get some Apples. We have snacks here!

Here are the videos!

So here is the video I promised to upload. There's another cool Intro that Jeff made for the W242 skit element but it's over 1.3GB bigs so I'm not going to wait for that thing to upload, plus it's designed to be projected onto 3 screens. Anywho, it's Wednesday here in Michigan, and most of the rest of the world for that matter. It's been rather cold and gloomy and dark. Just the kind of weather I like, I think the sun bothers my eyes, I don't know. Maybe I'm just a vampire and don't like the light, or those creatures in I am legend. Have you ever watched that movie? It's pretty crazy. But it could totally happen, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW. I don't know. okay, so I'm at the office right now and everyone is here. What did I do today? Hmm, let's see . . . I got into the office at 9am. Tomorrow I'm going to get in at 8 and start to read my bible and start on other books. My goal is to read one book a month. Mostly Christian leadership books or anything on Christianity, I have to be honest, I've been really really bad about that. So tomorrow I'm going to start that process and each day get here early and read and just have my quiet time. Plus, I've decided that getting up at 8am is a little too late to start the day. I got here at 9am then I started to work on the epistle and made a couple of slides for it. Then we had our Big Idea meeting, we have that every wednesday. It's where we talk about the upcoming services and program them as well. We also think of creative ideas and the such. We did that from about 10am right up to lunch. Sue, who is our Director of Contribution, was awesome enough to bring in Pulled pork that she had made for the staff to eat. Honestly, I've never had such amazing pulled pork. It was perfect, it just melted in yo' mouf! Then after that I practiced singing then Brad and I met for the StuCo Big Idea Meeting. It's the same as the adult big idea meeting but obviously, we don't do all of the same stuff as Adult service. We do this everyday at 3pm. I usually lasts one to two hours. We've got a lot of awesome stuff planned for the upcoming weeks. Let me tell you my story about the RAM for my Powerbook (my Apple Computer). Now that I'm doing a lot more with graphics/video and Audio I definatly needed more RAM. I had 786 and my computer can hold a maximum of 2GB. I decided on filling it up, since it's already 4 years old and could use all the help it can get. I ordered two 1GB sticks from www.newegg.com and of course being the penny pincher that I am, I opted for the 3.99 "egg saver" shipping through USPS. Well, after 14 days of waiting, I called and filed and claim. Yep, USPS lost my RAM. So after another week of waiting, they credited my account back the money and I ordered new RAM, BUT wait . . .there's more! So I was a little upset but the cool part is, the RAM dropped in price $20 a stick. So it was $40 cheaper! So It really worked out for good. It came in the mail today and I installed it and I was absolutely amazed at the speed of my computer. The audio bars in Live 5 are dead on. It's crazy. Best money I've spent. I was thinking I needed a new computer but now I'm content. So here I am, at the office blogging . . . Let me get a picture of this . . . . . this is where I work everyday!

Definetly nothing fancy, but what can I expect? I'm an intern. Okay, let me upload these videos. . . .
This is the video that I was talking about with me playing an anchor.

Here are a couple more slides I made for the epistle. If you want to get on the news letter, just send me an email to Jonathan@242community.com and I'll be sure to add you!!
Until Next time!

Jonathan

Monday, Monday, Monday.

My parents came up from Indiana this past weekend. They came up on Friday night and stayed until Sunday at about 4pm. It was a great time. We went a lot of time just hanging out and talking. On friday I got in the office at 9am and got the production computer all set for Sunday and made sure everything was cued up with the videos and audio etc. Jeff was playing drums on Sunday for adult service so we went to Guitar center to get a sound hole cut out for this Bass drum. It was a good trip. It's always good hanging out with the older brother. I really look up to him a lot and he's just a great guy, good influence. Except that one time when he did that one thing in that one time in that one place. He knows what I'm talking about. Haha, no just joking. But seriously though, I got back into the office and started to make a slide for the game on Sunday, "The Great StuCo text off!" Here's the slide . . . . .
The game went something like this . . . . We would put a phrase up on the screens like "StuCo is the most amaziest thing ever" then we'd put Brad's phone number up on the screen, so the first person to text Brad the complete phrase, with no spelling errors, one a StuCo shirt. It was pretty fun. We thought it was funny how most churches are like, "Put your phones away in Church!" and we're like, "Get 'em out and use them!" We also introduced a new Texting service where it can send out Mass Texts. We would have the students right after the game send "IAMSTUCO" to 41411 to recieve the mass text. We'd send texts like, "We're going to a movie on friday at 7:40 be there" or something like that. We plan on Sending about two texts per week. It'll be sweet. So far, the website says we have about 30 subscribers. Pretty cool.
Brighton's homecoming was this weekend so a lot of students didn't come to church on Sunday. Honestly, I don't know how I feel about that, maybe this blog isn't the place to express myself about that. I remember when no matter what happened on Saturday night my friends and I and the people in my youth group would be at church the next morning no matter what. It was like we knew that we needed eachother to be there, it was the place to be on Sunday and we would all sit on one side of the church and worship together and just be the Student community of the church. I remember coming to church on Sunday where I only got 2 hours of sleep. Some days no sleep. I remember waking my friend up because he was snoring, haha. I don't know. ANYWAYS . . . . The worship band on Sunday was only Me, Ricky on Drums (who did great!) and Adam Vance (who also did great). A lot of the regulars didn't come either. I don't know, it's just disappointing when you know no one is going to come because they of an event. Sunday is only one day a week. But on the flip side, I LOVE small worship bands. It was so intimate and I could tell the students enjoyed it, when I backed off the mic, they were singing so loud! I love that, that's why I do what I do! On Band practice on Thursday it was the same thing, just guitar, bass and drums. Oh let's talk about Thursday. So I get into the office at 10am for the staff meeting each week. I get in so late because I have to be there until about 9:30pm. I teach 2 students after work at Lakewood and then I have band practice. So after band practice Jeff wanted me to stay after and help him with a video element they were doing for adult service. They were doing W242 news, haha. They were interviewing people who were completely wrong about the future. For example, in the 50's IBM's President said, there is maybe a world market of 5 computers max. Haha, boy was he wrong. There were about 5 of these. I did an interview with President Grover Cleveland who said, "No sensible women would want to vote . . . . ." I'll get the video from Jeff and upload it here soon . . . STAY TUNED!!!
So it's really gloomy outside here in Michigan. I'm just blogging watching Cold Mountain in the Background. That movie is insane. Tonight Tara and I are going to Financial Peace University. It's the first week and it's a 13 week program. I've taken it once before, it's amazing. I'm proud to say I have absolutely no credit cards and no credit card debt. Tara has never taken it but I have given her the CDs that came with the pack. He's listened to it and so have her parents. Her parents are hooked. I'm going to get something to eat. I'll have that video uploaded here soon.

Middle School Sweet hearts.

I can definately tell it's starting to turn to fall here in this lovely state of Michigan. I had to wear my little jacket all day long. I even had my space heater turned on last night. It's starting to get COLD. But at the same time, it's really starting to look beautiful with all the leaves turning colors. This is by far my favorite time of the year. I love fall, and I love Winter. I also love Christmas. Not because of the presents and Santa. Did you know my parents never even gave me the opportunity to think that Santa is real? It just wasn't celebrated in my upbringing. I mean sure, they're weren't against it, but it just wasn't a thing. It's cool though, I still believe there's Santa out there. I don't like this time because of the presents, like I said, I like it because it's the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (Can someone give me a gold star? haha) But really, I love when the weather is all nasty and everything. Probably because I'm excited to use my 4x4. Also, I like right by a lake so it's really cool to see the lake all covered over. Anywho, I can tell my little Parrot professor is cold because she's all poofed up. I got into the office today right at 9am and started working on the StuCo epistle, it's an online newsletter, in email format. I normally do that on tuesday but the staff and I went down to AA yesterday to check out buildings for our new campus down there. That took the whole day but I really learned a lot about what we'll need. Even the stuff you'll never ever think you'll need.
After that I went over to the gibsons and taught them drums. They're doing really well, I'm excited from Ricky, he'll be playing in StuCo this week. They always feed me which is really really kind of them. Then after that I went to Jay's soccer game. Brad and I went, I should of gotten a picture. But the kid is awesome at soccer. He's plays guitar regularly and is one of our student worship leaders. He also sang the National Anthem at the game, and it was really impressed. I was impressed. He's gotten a lot better since coming to StuCo. The came was cool but I was shivering by the end of the night. All I wanted was a cup of hot chocolate, but I didn't have any cash. BOOOOO for no Cash! BOOOOOOOO!! Back to today, I got in at 9am and I worked on the epistle and make a slide for the new Disc Golf event we have every thursday. Actually, it's not new at all, but now it's promoted and advertised, here's a slide I made for it. It took about two hours! As I got more proficient with the program, It'll go a lot faster.
So after that on Sunday we're playing the song Gone by switchfoot. We're playing it a long to a video so it needs to have a click track. I sampled, programmed and arranged the song and put it a long to a click track with the drum loops to the band can play a long with the song and have the loops and effects playing as well. Wow, that gave me a headache just reading all that. Anywho. Dave took us out to lunch and we ate at the Chinese buffet in Howell, right by the offices. I don't really like that place but he paid for it, which was really nice. It was pretty good. If I had to pay I wouldn't have gone. It was nice to hang out with all of them. I did the Gone song until 4:30 when I gave the mix downs to Jeff, he'll put it along to the video which you'll see on Sunday. Listen for the loops, if Bob decides to turn them up. haha. I left at 4:30 to go to Brighton and teach Carter drums. He's a pretty solid drummer. Then here I am, with Tara. We're reading all the notes from when we started dating in 6th grade. She has them all the way to High School. It's hilarious. Let me get a picture of this book and of her . . . this book weights about 30 pounds. She's saved all of our hand written notes and emails, hahaha.



Okay, we're going to wash the dishes and make something to eat. Maybe watch a movie and just relax for the remainder of the evening, until next time! Yeah, I really need to take my contacts out.