Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day, Dad. I love you. I am glad that we were able to come over for the reunion and see you and the family.

Nava: 1st Pitch = Grand Slam

From Boston (AP) via Yahoo Sports

Red Sox outfielder Daniel Nava has hit the first pitch he faced in the big leagues for a grand slam.

Nava became only the fourth player to connect for a slam in his first major league at-bat—and second on the first pitch. Cleveland’s Kevin Kouzmanoff(notes) did it on Sept. 2, 2006, against Texas, according to STATS LLC.

Nava accomplished the feat in the second inning of Boston’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies on Saturday when he sent Joe Blanton’s(notes) fastball into the Red Sox’s bullpen in right field.

The lefty hitting Nava was called up from Triple-A Pawtucket before the game. Outfielder Josh Reddick(notes) was optioned back to Pawtucket.

Nava is the 10th player in Red Sox history to homer in his first at-bat, and just the second to hit a slam. Rip Repulski hit a slam on May 10, 1960.

I think he should retire ....

Manassas, Virginia

Here we come.

One of our best family friend (Crystal)and myself are going to be taking 9 children and youth (10-12 year olds) to Manassas tomorrow. We will be there from Sunday - Friday.

We are looking forward to serving and our service may look a little something like this:

- therapuetic recreation camp
- summer camp
- helping at an assistant living center
- VBS outreach
- neighborhood clean-up projects

It should be great and I am looking forward to watching them serve and shifting my mind (hopefully) off the move for 6 days.

21 Days ......

21 days till we move in Indianapolis, including a mission trip to Virginia and a day reunion in West Virginia.

My mom came over for 24 hours and helped get us started. There is a lot that is left to do in the packing/cleaning stage and time is of an essence with everything else on the table. In the end, I am sure that everything will get done.

Last night, Stacey and myself agreed that we are so looking forward to being done with the move and beginning to start this new chapter in our life. Don't get me wrong, we are going to miss Wooster and we are going to miss some of our wonderful friends greatly. Thankfully, we will only be about 4 1/2 hours apart.

But, we want to be out of the chaos of the move and we want to be in our new home and we want to be working for/with the great team that is in place over at CTS.

The next three weeks will be insane. Let the rollercoaster begin and we look forward to landing in Indy in 3 weeks from today.

Lady Gaga on Church

Lady Gaga is on the top of the music world right now. She is a very controversial musician and as an individual that works with teenagers, she is talked about quite frequently. She reminds me of the Madonna when I was a teenager.

She is "racy" and she tackles some themes that are very edgy and many would consider very disturbing. However, this post is not about that. I just want to share a PG picture of her (in case you do not know who she is) and some of her words recently about church that she shared when she was on Larry King.

"I struggle with my feelings about the Church in particular....in terms of religion, I'm very religious. I was raised Catholic. I believe in Jesus. I believe in God. I'm very spiritual. I pray very much. But at the same time, there is no one religion that doesn't hate or speak against or be prejudiced against another racial group or religious group, or sexual group. For that, I think religion is also bogus. So I suppose you could say I'm a quite religious woman that is very confused about religion. And I dream and envision a future where we have a more peaceful religion or a more peaceful world, a more peaceful state of mind for the younger generation. And that's what I dream for."

I put a bold on the word that is very telling for me. I think that there are many individuals are CONFUSED about religion, church and spiritual issues. They are on a journey and they struggle to grasp what is happening in their life and this crazed world that we live in.

Just some words to think about. For me, it is just a reminder of how important conversation is and to listen and hear people's stories.

Compassion

Words of Wisdom today are brought to you by: Arthur H. Stainback “The value of compassion cannot be over-emphasized. Anyone can criticize. It takes a true believer to be compassionate. No greater burden can be borne by an individual than to know no one cares or understands.”

Today, make sure that each person that you come in contact with knows that they are cared about or that that there is understanding.

This is tough, but if we can begin to truly have each person understood and cared for, wow.