Brighton High School Choir Concert DVD.

I've been working a lot on a DVD for the Brighton Choir. They've asked us to make them a DVD to help them fund raise for a new Grand Piano. As long as it helps the community and has our name on it we agreed to it. I had a little help from Jeff on getting the camera set up but other that, I pretty much did the entire thing myself.

I used the church's camera and recorded the whole concert on Thursday night the 11th. The choirs all did a great job.

If you'd like to buy a DVD and see the menus and all the graphics I did, that would be awesome, plus it would help out Brighton. Let me know if you want a copy. I've learned so much about video editing, how to work a professional video camera, doing graphics within specified templates and setting from the Duplication companies and just working with people skills. It was a great time.

If anyone needs a DVD, let me know!

Well, I tried to upload the graphics but this is the web so the Colors are RGB, not CMYK, like in print. Oh well, I'll take pictures of the DVD when they're done.

I'M ENGAGED!!!

Yes, it's official! I'm engaged. In my blogs, I've talked about Tara Mason, my junior high sweet heart. She's wonderful and I love her dearly and he is definitely my bestest bestest friend. We're going to get married! Let me tell you the story:

I went home for thanksgiving not really expecting to buy a ring or get engaged or really any of that sort of thing, my main thing was taking Tara's parents out to eat and asking them for their blessing. Which as you can imagine, I was already freaking out about.

So the tuesday before Thanksgiving my mom and I decided to go shopping at the Greenwood Mall in Greenwood Indiana (I'm from and my parents currently live in Columbus Indiana). I basically turned into an all day all jewelery store shopping day. I really enjoyed it and I learned so much about rings and diamonds and cuts and clarity and on and on and and and.

We easily went to over 15 stores just that day (not to mention the million stores I went to in Michigan). Basically, when I got my tax return last year, I put a certain amount away for a ring and never touched it. I did add a couple hundred to it over the year so I had a little cash to deal with. (This is of course added to my emergency fund, just keeping Mr. Ramsey AND Mr. Murphy off my back). All of the rings I wanted to get Tara were around $1300 to $1500, the ones under that were just too little, carat wise, and the clarity and color were just too blah. So I started to get a little disapointed.

The last store we went to had a million red signs screaming "STORE CLOSING . . 70-90% OFF!!" So I thought, "How good can this be?"

So we went in and I said I have X number amount to spend and I can't spend anything over that, they had the same rings people were selling for $1500 for literally $600. But I have more than that to spend (if you can't do the math on an estimate I had to spend then . . . .) and if they were selling these things for a great price I wanted to get as much for my money as I possibly could.

Just as I told him how much I wanted to spend again, his partner walked by and said . . .wait . . . hold on, I have just the ring!

She went in the back and pulled out one of the most beautiful rings I've ever seen. I knew this was the one. It took me a while to get there, but deep down I knew. When my mom saw it she was like, get it. GET IT.

The tag on the ring said $4999 but I know how much they mark these things up. (Tara already knows all this, she asked because they wanted to make sure I didn't go broke and go into debt with this ring, haha, but seriously.)

So I bought the ring for exactly how much I wanted to spend, actually, it was $69 more because of tax but I can't complain.

Not that anyone cares but I'm so proud of the fact that I shopped around like crazy and prayed like crazy and gave it all to God and he definitely rewared that. Here are the stats on the ring. It's a .75ct, G VSI with an 18k gold band with 2 little .06ct diamonds on the side. I'll upload a picture.
Maybe I shouldn't put all this info in a blog but I'm so happy and this is just another of many confirmations that makes me feel that God is in this marriage and that Tara is definitely the one that God has for me.

Last Saturday Tara and I got the ring appraised for insurance purposes and we drove to Toledo to see a guy who is one of 13 in the country. He travels all over the world and is certified by the GIA, ICGA, on and on. Basically he will appraise the diamond and ring right there in front of you. He also is a non interested party because he is not selling the ring nor trying to buy it off us. I just didn't feel comfortable leaving a diamond at a jeweler for weeks to have them appraise it.

When he heard how much I paid he said, "Some one got in big trouble for selling you this at what they did." Long story short it appraised for $5445.25 and he said the cut is excellent, which is very rare apparently. The coolest thing was that he wrote up a whole 3 page appraisal on the ring's diameter, how it tapers from .09mm to blah blah and the total carat weight and the weight of the gold and the diamond and this and that. Basically someone could take his measurements and recreate the ring. He does this so if, God forbid, we ever have an insurance claim on it and they have to replace it, they have to replace it with the indentical ring (or something exactly equal or greater) than what we have now, even if it costs them $10,000. As apposed to, here's a ring that is worth $5445.25, good luck. Pretty cool stuff.

So praise God! It's now insured and everything is ready to go on that end. Tara is thrilled and I'm thrilled and everyone is thrilled.

Next Blog, I'll tell you about how I asked her to be my better half.

Until next time!

Meet the Parents.

It's been a while, and that's been terrible, and for those of you that read my blog, you know just how long it's been.  Brad said I need to have more paragraph breaks so here we go. 

I'm trying to catch up on everything that happened within the last month really, but that would take too much time.  

Paragraph break right here.

I would say one of the highlights by far is the fact that my roommate, Darian, got baptized.  That was so huge! It was so crazy to see what has happened over the last couple years and see how 2|42 has had such a huge impact on this life.  As soon as we make his baptism video i'll upload it and you can hear his story for yourself, it's amazing.  He's a very educated guy and is knowledgeable about a lot of the world religions and different beliefs out there.  He's been searching and searching.  It's amazing to know that the person of Christ can stand against any worldview or claim or degree after degree or any intellectual arguments.  Christ is definitely unique.

 I did the video taping of his baptism and I'll never forget video taping his words and hearing what has happened, not only through my but through 2|42 as well.  It's awesome and humbling and encouraging to be used by God for another's benefit.  

We baptized him at Lakewood Church in Howell, which has a baptistry but it does not have a water heater.  Keep in mind when I pulled up to the church there was already about 2 inches of snow on the ground and it was still snowing.  COLD.  I'm glad I didn't get in there, haha.  But seriously.  Darian wanted to get baptized outside at Kensington Park but choose not to because of the weather.  The water actually probably would have been warmer.  

So the day before the baptism Darian told me he would rather just do it at Lakewood so I called Dave and we scheduled it for 3pm on Sunday.  Too Bad Financial Peace university was having Class that day at 3.  It worked out well though and It was really cool for the people in the class who don't attend 2|42 to see how we baptize and actually show them live change does happen in Church.  Who knows, maybe just that brought some people coming to 2|42 and maybe next  year we'll be baptizing them?  Who knows?!

But yes, it was awesome to see Darian get baptized and I look forward to what he'll be doing in the future and where God leads him next.  (Darian:  Watch those Ravi Dvd's!)

PARAGRAPH BREAK!!!!!!!!!!

As a lot of you know we're launching a campus in Ann Arbor in March of 2009.  If you want to know more info or keep up to date on that you can visit . . . 

www.242community.com/a2

A lot of my time last week was spent doing the Ann Arbor Prayer walk.  Steve O' Dell and I (Connections Person/Teaching Pastor/Cell Group Guy/All around happenin' guy/man's man) made a prayer walk.  Which you can download from the A2 site.  

Steve did all the writing of the content and I basically did all the recording of the staff, all the mixing and engineering, put music along to do, edited the music and what have you.  All the technical stuff.  Steve wrote some really amazing stuff and really, if you want to pray for Ann Arbor and you don't live near A2, just download it, listen to the directions, listen to the music and just Pray that God will build his church in Ann Arbor.   Seriously though, go ahead and download it, put it on a CD or burn it to an iPod.  What?  Burn it to a CD or put it on an iPod or other applicable media player.

 

   Isn't this the HTML code for break?  I think it is.  Or CSS or whatever it's called.  

Thanksgiving.  I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.  One of the reasons why I love working for a church is that you basically, within reason, can make your own hours.  You just need to make sure that your job is done and down with as much excellence as possible.  

The last 3 years I didn't get to go home for Thanksgiving because I always had to work.  And Christmas, I was only home for about 2-3 days after or before.  And when you're driving 6 hours one way it doesn't make for a relaxing trip.  

This trip I left Monday morning and came back on Saturday.  It was glorious.  I've never spent that much time at home since I've moved to Michigan.  My parents were like, "Wow, you're still here!"  

It was an amazing Trip, I didn't see a lot of my friends but I did see a lot of Tara's friends.  I also took her parents out for "Dinner".  And my "Dinner" I mean Dinner.  I don't know why I wrote dinner in quotations but I'm too lazy to push the backspace button and delete it all.  So I'd rather explain myself then go back erase all of that.  

No, what I mean is, I took Tara's parent's out to one of their favorite restaurants, Johnny Carino's, and asked them if they would be my Mother and Father-in-law.  

I WAS SO NERVOUS!!!

But it went really well and they graciously accepted and were Thankful.  Rick her dad, as soon as we stopped having small talk and the conversation started to get a little heated (heated is a bad word) started to get a little serious, he just ate his food, listened to me while smiling the whole entire time, hahaha.  He knew.  Her Mom, Marge, honestly, I don't think she had a clue.  

When I finished saying, "Your daughter is smokin' hot and ME MARRY TARA NOW!"

Just joking. 

When I finished saying, "I love your daughter very much and she is my best friend . . . You know what, I don't even remember what I said I was so nervous.  I didn't even touch my food.  It just pretty much congealed in front of me.

But after I asked them, her dad just responds, "I'm okay with that!"  It was cool.  He mom said something supportive too but I was just more surprised at her dad's zeal.  When leaving her mom hugged me and said, "I'd be proud to have you as my son-in-law."  It was very awesome.  I was afraid they would both say something about how I don't make any money and how am I going to support her and yeah . . . . I just need to keep on praying that God continues to build 2|42 and that God has a place for me here in full time ministry.  Not only because I'm passionate about Youth and Leading Worship but now because I need to support a family.  

Excuse me while I go pray face down to the ground before Jesus . . . . . . 

But seriously!  Please pray for the future of 2|42 in the middle of a economic crisis.  Please pray that people in Michigan keep on supporting 2|42 (and I, and everyone else) and that we would be the church that gives to everyone as they have need.  

 

 

So step one is done and step two is asking her to Marry me.  Does anyone have any ideas?  I pretty much know already what I'm going to do but I'm always open for advice!

But Thanksgiving was good.  

Also, if you haven't checked out the StuCo Myspace definitely Check it out and add yourself to it if you have myspace.  It's been going really well and the students are really connecting to it. Brad's been making some awesome video's, haha.  

This week in StuCo we're encouraging (and the weeks up until Christmas) to tell their parents to not get them as many gifts and instead use that money to Support Rain Catchers.  Rain Catchers in a Ministry run by Bob Keesee, who attends our church, they go down at least 2 times a year to Haiti to build devices that catch rain so the people can have clean water.  Amazing.  Advent Conspiracy, check it out.