Q Crashing

I've made it through month 1.  Here are some pics with me with the same clothes. The damage.  Shoes held up. Blue Jeans are a little more frayed on the end, but otherwise fine. Basketball shorts are near indestructible. My green button up shirt has a bleach stain on the bottom left.  I can rock a bleach stain.  Even at a city wide prayer breakfast.  My blue t-shirt has held up like a champ, even through my constant abuse. My green t-shirt  now has a convenient ventilation system right in my left arm pit. But the brown pants have taken the brunt of the damage.  Right side pocket has hole in it.  The right seam are coming unraveled at the pocket.  And a left belt loop and auto tightener have both snapped. The lessons. Clothes can easily become about impressing people more than anything else.  It is amazing how much unfair labor happens to produce clothing that we buy.  A pair of pants that cost $100 dollars is 3 weeks pay for the median of our world population. 

Yet You by: Quinton Williams The walls keep falling down. Structures shake. People fall to the ground. You weigh the pain by the pound. Yet you dance. The sky is full of smoke. Hunger grows. Truth makes the masses choke. They burnt the books the poets wrote. Yet you dance. Riots crash like waves. Insults fly. Rocks fall down like rain. The Captain's Carnival is marching insane. Yet you dance. The whole world grows cold. Life fades. We all look for a hand to hold. Death comes leaving stories untold. Yet you...

Wow this was so much fun.  Let me explain.  This last Sunday night the Beautiful Mess decided that our church gathering should look like a basketball tournament for the night.  In my Easter post I talked about spending some time with guys down under the bridge playing basketball.  Since that time I have been wanting to serve those guys and build some relationship.  So we met them where they are at.  We went to the bridge and put on a basketball tournament. The totals for the night were staggering.  We gave out over 300 hotdogs, 6 cases of water, a bunch of cupcakes, and one ziplock bag of dog food.  There was over 200 people who came and watched, participated, served, or ate.  The tournament went off without a hitch and no fights broke out. These are the totals, but not the wins.  The win is that we connected with these folks.  We were giving each other high fives.  We were telling jokes to each other.  Guys were getting facebook names from one another and passing along phone nu

Something I've said for most my life is that God has an amazing sense of humor.  There have been these crazy incidents in life that make me think, "God, you were watching that weren't you.  And I be you were laughing your butt off."  For instance, once time I had a paycheck fly out the window and so I turned around and walked to where I thought it might be.  I spent the next 2 hours walking long stretches of highway in hopes of finding the check.  After my happy hunting I returned to my car to find the check lying right by my front tire.  "You got me good there God." Now I know God didn't really tune into the Quinton comedy hour, but it felt like it.  Here is the latest episode in my life.  Yep.  We got a new baby on the way.  So here is the humor.  Not planned.  It took us a year to get pregnant with December and we were trying every pregnancy trick in the book.  And now, unexpectedly God throws us the big curve ball.  Hilarious. I should say I&

So people have started calling me avocado.  Thanks Green Shirt. Besides that it hasn't been that bad except on a couple of occasions, which have prompted me to prayer.  The first one was last Monday when we decided to go to the coast for the day.  Audrey's dad, step mom, and brother are all visiting so we went to have some coastal fun.  It was suppose to be a sunny day, so I slipped on my basketball shorts and my green t-shirt.  Avocado Man to the rescue.  Then we headed toward the beautiful coast to goof off.  When we got there we decided to go see when there was an opening to ride the dune buggies in Florence.  If you've never done this, make a point to.  It is like star wars.  You jump, slide, and dive off of huge sand dunes that go for miles.  It is a blast.  The problem this morning was that when we got there it was only about 60 degrees and we rode at 65 miles an hour and dune buggies don't have doors or walls or roofs.  And all I had was a t-shirt and basketbal

So I was sitting around with the leaders of the Beautiful Mess two weeks ago and we were praying and dreaming about what we could do to really reach out to our community and at the same time enrich community among the people attending.  The Big Dreamer (Ethan) said what about an open mic night.  I thought sure, why not.  But in my head I didn't really see this working. Boy was I wrong.  People shared poetry, life stories, and songs.  They opened themselves up and were transparent about life and art and God.  This last week was our rough run through and it was so amazingly beautiful.  We are going to begin doing this the first Sunday of every month.  We go live in June.  So whatever ever talent you have to share please come.  We got free coffee, free dessert, free mic, and we will show love.  Jesus love will pour through our relationships and we will tell of His Gospel.  I'm excited. Contributors and leaders at the Beautiful Mess Open Mic.

So me and Audge, along with Alec and Holleigh, read this amazing book by Jen Hatmaker that focused on fighting excess in our life and using that as a tool to fast and pray.  For 7 months Jen stripped down different areas of her life.  So me, Audge, Holleigh, and Alec all decided to put 7 to the test.   Month 1 is clothes.  We picked 7 articles of clothing to wear for the month.   Here is mine. 1 pair of blue jeans, my brown pants, shoes, 2 t-shirts, a button up work shirt, and a pair of basketball shorts.  I want to take the month to focus my prayers on the people throughout the world who don't have clothes and shoes available to them.  This became real, when on the first day our staff at the Eugene Mission had a discussion on the lack of men's pants and t-shirts we had available for our guest.  I thought about all the clothes sitting in my closet during this month.   So this morning I picked out some t-shirts I wasn't wearing very often and brought them wi

 So this last week I met an amazing man named Gene Hall.  He is not amazing in the since that he is a leader of a huge organization or making millions of dollars.  He is amazing in the the fact that he is leading a church outside of it's walls.  he is also a husband, father to three, and fighting cancer.  This last Sunday the church he is pastor at, Christ Centennial Church, decided that the church for them looked different than your typical Sunday morning gathering.  They decided to set up a water station serving the Eugene Marathon.  Sounded like a great way to step in and serve the community.  This is a church that preaches the Gospel weekly and found an opportunity to build connection and let people know how Christ love has transformed them.  The sign made by the youth group.  One of the guys from the church made a sprinkler you could run through.  Awesome.  Gene serving Gatorade.  The aftermath.  It all got cleaned up.  Cowbells