getting fitted for my boots...

finally, I was able to get fitted for my boots. I thought it would be weird to put on my boots, and it was a little but not as much as I expected. They still really didn't feel like my boots because they didn't really fit as well as I thought they would, but that should change once they make the adjustments.

where should I live?

so I found this quiz online that would tell you where you should live based on a series of questions about things that you like and dislike. This is where they thought I should live...

1. Greenville, South Carolina
2. Knoxville, Tennessee
3. Tulsa, Oklahoma I really don't want to live in Oklahoma
4. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
5. Charleston, South Carolina
6. Clarksville, Tennessee
7. Chattanooga, Tennessee
8. Louisville, Kentucky
9. Nashville, Tennessee
10. Jackson, Mississippi I mean really it's not like I haven't spent enough time in this town
11. Athens, Georgia
12. Tuscaloosa, Alabama
....19. Bryan-College Station, Texas whoop!

I guess I have picked some of the right places to live or my preferences are due to the fact of where I have lived.

expectations...

Sometimes there are times when I know that I have been spoiled, especially within the church and body of Christ.

One of these times was this week. I spent a week in Grove City, PA with a church plant. I realized how my high expectations are for things, in general, but especially when they are related to God and his work. I went into the trip with an attitude of going and doing things. I really didn't know what those things were going to be, but I wanted to do something, get my hands dirty. But really the trip was about encouraging my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. I had the privelege of getting to know the Lewis' (the family that planted the church in Grove City) and the members within the church. I got to go a local college's Christian student organizational meeting, a time of worship and teaching. I was able to sit in the church's youth group stuff. And during the entrire week, all I did was think of ways I would have done things differently, wanting them to be better. And the reason, I think, that I continued to think this way is because I have been blessed to be apart of churches and ministries that have the resources (people, wisdom, monetary, whatever) to do many different things to allow me to know God better. Which I took and caused my mind to have really high expectations. I am not saying that having resources and wanting to do things to cause people to know the Lord better is wrong, I am so thankful for those things. But those are the things that I want for the people that I came in contact with, for them to know the true God and all aspects of His character. But at the same time, I have to get over my way of thinking and see that the Lord works through different people and ways of doing things.

It was such a blessing to be with the Lewis' and the Church at the Crossroads, to learn from them in many different ways and hopefully to encourage them to persevere.

the adventures of Captain Crabby and Sergeant Sensitive

Our journey first began when we boarded this amazing crop plane, that felt as though we would plummet down to the ground and vomit on our pilots.


Once we landed safely in Pittsburgh, we headed on to the metroplex of Grove City, Harrisville, and Slippery Rock. After our long trip of driving and flying to our humble abode, we decided on who was sleeping where. Little did I know, I would be sharing a room with the coolest, most amazing cook, most fun, and glorious person I have ever met in my entire life, Alisha "Sergeant Sensitive" Lombardi.


As we continued in our travels, we stumbled upon the campus of Grove City College. During our time there, I had the amazing privilege of meeting a bronzed replica J. Howard Pew.


Later in our trip we took a tour of the largest privately owned waterfall east of the Mississippi River. During our time at there, a mountain man named Jack Stone came out of the woods for an all natural photo shoot in the elements of the forest. He laid down all of his manly mountain tools, such as his axe, and posed for this spectacular picture.



more adventures in the coming episodes....

signed off, Capt. Crabby

North Country

This weekend I rented this movie, really because blockbuster was all out of Walk the Line and Pride & Prejudice, which I guess was a good thing because I had seen both of those movies in the theater and hadn't seen this one. There were a bundch of theings theat were really interesting in the movie. (ok, so if you want to watch the movie don't read the rest, it will have spoilers)

The whole movie is about this woman who works at a mine and all of the women that work there are being harassed by the men. On the surface it would seem like the movie was all about the "liberation" of these women to be able to work in a man's enviroment. But that is not what the movie is really about.

Really it's about the story of this woman, who has this reputation of being a whore, but never in the movie do you see her engage in any activity that would be worthy of that description. The reason for that label is because she had two children from different fathers, and she left her husband because he was beating her. Her oldest child, she says that she doesn't know who the father is. And because of that her father is angry with her and alienates her. But in the harassment trial, the prosecution brings up her sexual history. Through that, she finally comes out with the truth that she was raped by her teacher when she was sixteen. And because of that she was pregnant, but instead of telling anyone about the rape, she tells people that she doesn't know who the father is.

So, all I can think about is that if she had told people that she had been raped, her son would have never been born because society would "approve" of an abortion. But she didn't do that, she gave up her reputation and dealt with all of the public criticism to have her son.

I don't know how much of the story was true, but if that part of the story was true, man, I have some kind of respect for that woman.

Radical Reformisson

So I ordered this book, along with 2 other books, on amazon.com a couple of weeks ago, and they came in the mail on Tuesday. I finished this one last night, it was pretty interesting and a guick read. My youth minister recommended it to me when I went to see him at the beginning of Feb. and none of the bookstore in town had it, so it took some time for me to get my hands on it.

The basic drift of the book is that we as Christians should not reject the culture around us, but understand the culture we have been placed in, so that we can communicate the gospel in a way that is relevant to the people around us. The book is specific in not embracing the culture so that we look like everyone around us, but by understanding it and still being in it. The whole "in the world but not of the world" idea.

The book had lots of questions throughout, that helped the reader to see what the culutre around them was like. It had practical ideas and suggestions as to what "reformission" looks like.