Quote of the day

Jenn called me earlier on her way into town.

In mid sentence she stopped and said "I think the Blue's Brothers are walking towards me on the side of the road... " [ long pause ] "Oh, never mind.... It was just a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses".

Although I suspect it was a couple of the local boys from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and not, in fact, Jehovah's witnesses, the phone call still made my day.

Lost & Found.

I took a walk today instead of going to lunch.

On my return walk I stopped at the little coffee joint just down from the office to get a hot drink, and when I left to come back this way I noticed a cell phone laying in the road.

There were no vehicles in the immediate vicinity and no one on the street, so I grabbed the phone and pocketed it for the walk back to the office.

When I got back to my desk I tried the "Home" number in the contact list and got no answer, and was in the process of trying to determine who the phone belonged to and how to return it, when it rang... The number on the caller ID said "Mom". I let that call go to VoiceMail, waited a few minutes, and then called the Mom number from my own phone.

A girl named Alex picked up and said she was trying to call her phone from her Mom's phone because she couldn't figure out where she had put hers. She seemed pretty relieved when I told her I had found it and would be happy to return it to her.

Since I work at a large building downtown, it was no big deal to drop the phone in a padded envelope and leave it at the front desk with her name on it. I told her we were open till five, and that she could stop by and get it anytime. I put a note in the envelope saying

"Hey, I'm glad I found this and was able to get ahold of you... Happy New Year, -Eli"

Much to my surprise, the receptionist called me just a few minutes ago and asked me to come down to the desk.

When I got down there, she handed me back my envelope.



It has $15 in it.

I was just doing what I hope someone would do if they found my iPhone laying in the street. I know I've dropped it enough times that it's only a matter of time until I leave it laying somewhere.

Thanks for the gift Alex. It wasn't necessary, but Thank You and Happy New Year.

Dad's boots.

Silas turned one on Saturday.

We had a small get together at the house. Mostly family and really close friends just getting together to eat cake and ice cream. Although Ellie was excited for the birthday party, Silas doesn't quite "get it" yet.

He was just happy to have cake, and seemed to think it was weird that everyone crowded in the kitchen to watch him eat.

Anyhoo... Although Silas got waaaayyyy too much for Christmas, and his birthday get together was specifically advertised as "no gifts please"... He got some anyway...

One gift in particular though needs to be mentioned...

From his Great-Papaw Ruggles ( my Dad's dad ) Silas got a pair of black cowboy boots.

Here they are...



Some pretty snazzy kicks for a guy who can't even walk on his own yet... They're a little big for him, but at the rate he is growing he'll be running around in them in no time...

The boots themselves are a nice gift, but what makes these boots special is that Papaw Ruggles gave them to me, more than twenty-five years ago.

This is me, wearing them. I would guess myself to be between two and three in this photo.



After I outgrew the boots, Papaw made sure they got passed on to my brother. Then he made sure they got passed on to our cousins Kristopher and Matthew who each wore them until they wouldn't fit anymore.

I probably hadn't given the boots a second thought from the time I was two, until Silas pulled them out of the bag on Saturday, and here Papaw had re-claimed them when Matthew grew out of them and polished them up, and put them away, and waited until he had a great-grandson to pass them on to... And now, more than twenty five years after his daddy wore them Silas will be stomping around the house in them.

How cool is that.

Oh... in that photo of me I had just received a fancy new farm tractor to peddle around on. My brother and sister and I played on that tractor inside and out until we were all too big for it, and then it dissapeared.

Well... Here is a photo of Ellie playing on the tractor at Papaw's house when she was about a year-and-a-half old...



It won't be much longer and I suspect that Silas will be inheriting another one of Dad's old toys.

I just hope that we can take as good care of them as my my Papaw did, so that one of these days when I'm Papaw-Ruggles I can pass on to my Ellie & Silas's kids and grand-kids toys that belonged to their mom and dad when they were that age.

Jesus Junk

Dan Kimball's book, They Like Jesus but not the Church, has a great chapter on Jesus in pop culture, and even touches on Marko's oft posted topic of "Jesus Junk".

Was out Christmas shopping on Dec 23, and ran across a rack of these guys at Border's in Parkersburg.



I really wanted one, but Jenn wouldn't let me.

If you read the fine print you'll even see that he has "poseable arms, and gliding action!"




Oh... and the best bit.... Jesus is not recommended for children under three years.

Long Overdue Post...

Well... Tersie was kind enough to remind me today that my blog is getting stale...

I've been meaning for a week now to write a follow-up ("this is how it went, and what I learned") type of post about the NYWC... but as the days stretched on, and I got busier and busier with real life I just didn't feel like putting the pen to the paper, as it were....

Well anyhoo... Tersie reminded me that it is better to post late than never, which is great advice.

So here goes....

NYWC Atlanta - Day 5 in review

I was right about the short night... Knowing that we would need to be packed up and out of the hotel before we headed over to make 8 AM sessions, and not having packed, organized, or made a plan for the morning, we fell into bed about 2 with our alarms set for 5:15...

I'm not quite sure how... but we somehow managed to get up, get showered, get packed, cart everything to the car, and be checked out of our luxury accommodations by 7:15 AM... This left us plenty of time to drag ourselves to the convention center, detour by Starbucks ( There is nothing that says "Good Morning!" like a half-quart of vanilla-bean frappuccino with a quad shot of espresso ) and get Jenn settled into a session when it started by 8.

While Jenn was in her session I went ahead and picked up our DVD's ( Shane Claiborne's and Phyllis Tickle's general sessions were must have on my DVD list ) and some of those cards for downloading MP3's of the sessions we really liked or didn't make it to... I was lazy and just sat around in the YS store, slurping my frappuccino and making new friends until they opened the gates for us to take seats in the general session.

Since the Monday morning general session always feels sparsely populated after the others of the weekend, it was nothing to just wander in and grab a seat right up against the center stage. I will never get tired of the Skit Guys and Lost & Found... Great stuff that...

This shot is from one of the skit guys skits before the general session...



And this one is the guys giving the sign language interpreters ( who were amazing, throughout the weekend ) a hard time by saying "dog poop" over and over again...



I felt bad for Marko... The technical glitches in his presentation obviously frustrated him, but I don't think they took away from his message. The way we do Youth ministry is changing. It has to change, and we can either be on board with the change or get left behind... ( Sorry for no more recollection than that... It was a week ago and I haven't re-listened to the mp3 yet... )

Jenn and I made some last minute grabs from the YS store after the session, and then headed back to the van for the long trek back home... Oh, and after their prompting on the night before we went through Centenial Park on the way back to the hotel and found the brick donated by Lost & Found.



Long story short on the drive... We left Atlanta about 3:30 in the afternoon, made a stop in Knoxville to switch from me driving to Jenn driving, and then stopped again in Louisville to trade back... We made it home safely ( jamming to Lost & Found most of the way ) at about 12:30 AM... grabbed our laptops out of the van and went straight to bed.

Now that we've been back for a week and had time to re acclimate to "real life" I think that a Highlights/What I learned blog is in order... Since this one is getting long though, I'll adjourn to a new post... See you there.

NYWC Atlanta - Day 4 - wrap up

Well... the rest of the day was a crazy blur, pretty much like I predicted...

At 3 (ish) Jenn took off from the convention center to find us some milk and take more bags of our "stuff" back to the hotel. I feel like we could start a Youth Ministry library with all the books we've carted back from the convention. To make that funnier, I procrastinated in buying some books today until there were none left, so I was able to order them at the show price and have them shipped to me... At least we won't have to find room for them in the car.

I helped Alan & Ed pack up the LW booth, and get it loaded up into Ed's van. By the time we were done with that we were all thinking dinner, so Jenn met us over at Ted's again for a sit down meal ( probably the last one in Atlanta ).

We shared the shrimp appetizer again, and I had a cup of the bison chilli. I also had a bison burger, and onion rings. All tasted good, sweet tea got an A+ again.

Because of the crazy downtown crowd this afternoon ( Falcons at the Georgia Dome, 5000 Youth Workers in town, and a Police concert at the Tabernacle ) we had to wait about 45 minutes for a table at Ted's. So by the time we ate, it was time to book it back down to the convention center for the 8PM General Session.

On the way in to find seats we bumped into Carol again, and got the great opportunity to hang out with her the rest of the evening.

Lost & Found, Bob Stromberg, and Skit Guys all got to play a "warm up" act in the general session. A teaser for the Late Night, if you will.

Worship with Leland was good. I think they might be growing on me.

The speaker at the general session was Marquis Laughlin.

Marquis recites the Bible, from memory, as performance art. Tonight he shared with us Genesis chapter 12 through chapter 22. The story of Abraham. It was awesome!

As Marquis was getting ready to go on, Jenn and Alan slipped up to the Thomas Merton theatre to get some seats for the Late Night. The Skit Guys are some of Jenn's favorite people, and she is being totally honest when she says that the Skit Guys and Lost & Found tonight at the Late night were the highlight of her weekend.

The show was fantastic! Afterward we got to hang out with Tommy & Eddie for a little bit. I absolutely love these guys! Not only are they hilarious, but they are genuinely great guys who really love God and love what they do.



It's now 10 till 2. Jenn really wants to attend an 8 AM Seminar, and among the other things happening in the morning we need to pack up and move out of the hotel, buy our CD's and DVD's from the conference, buy the last couple materials we wanted from the YS Store, attend the closing general session, and prep for the 10 1/2 hour drive home.

Going to be a short night I'm afraid.

I suspect no more blogging until we get back home to Ohio... I will post a Monday wrap up and an overall take on the weekend once we are settled safely back at home.

NYWC Atlanta - Day 4

Got up early again this morning so that we could be up front and personal with the David Crowder Band in the morning general session. We stopped in the CNN center on the way over here for Arby's and Starbucks. Weird breakfast combo, huh?

Jenn's mad dashing skillz were in full effect this morning, and we sat in "the cheap seats" just to the left of the stage. The morning general session was really good overall. Taylor Mason is great. David Crowder Band rocked, as expected.

I really appreciated Doug Field's talk more than I expected that I would. Not that I had low expectations for Doug, I just have heard him speak before and was worried I wouldn't connect...

His message was fantastic, and something I really needed to hear.

After the general session, David Crowder Band was kind enough to be signing autographs and getting photos with people. Jenn got her picture taken with Bwack, Hogan, and Crowder. She's very excited. I will let her post them though.

We wandered around the exhibit hall for a while after the session, and now I'm doing a quick blog update before the day gets all crazy again.

Our plan from this point out is that at 3, I need to help Alan and Ed tear down the LW booth...

Then we're going to run some things back to the hotel, and get some lunch. I'm craving Chinese, so maybe we'll try to find something of that sort...

We're hitting the general session again then at 8 PM, and definitly seeing the Skit Guys and Lost & Found at the late night tonight...

It's sure to be after midnight when we get back to the hotel. I will update again later if we have downtime, but I suspect we will be on the run the rest of the day.