Couches

Well, I suppose I've been due for a new post for quite a while. So here's sort of a "what's been happening in the life of Bob" kind of post.

A lot of things have happened over the past few months. During the summer, I spent a total of 4 weeks up at our American Baptist church camp for Oregon, Camp Arrah Wanna—one week in late June to plan the summer camps, and 3 in late July/early August for the high school, middle school, and elementary camps themselves. These four weeks were incredibly frustrating, but also incredibly fun, and in the end, extremely rewarding despite all the frustration.

At the end of August, I went with a group from my church (and a couple others) on a mission trip down to Mexico. The purpose of our trip was to team up with Ray and Adalia Schellinger to help build Deborah's House, a shelter for abused women and their children in Tijuana, Mexico. (For more information on that ministry, read up on their website, especially the journal entries.) The trip was an amazing experience for all of us. For me, it was a chance to get back out of America, and also a chance to show my church family (who have pretty much become my extended family) who I am and where I come from. I was one of the leaders of our group, and relished the opportunity to guide the experiences of those who had never stepped foot in a third world country.

Since then, I have been back in Eugene, and a lot has happened for me. I have a job now, as the youth pastor at my church, Emerald Baptist Church. After about 14 months of doing this on a volunteer basis, and becoming more and more involved with it as time went by, the church has decided to hire me as the youth pastor. It's part time, but it's enough to live, and I'm really excited about it.

Right on the heels of that, I have moved out of the parental units' house! I now live in an apartment with my friend Dave Cramer. I first met Dave up at Camp Arrah Wanna. He plays bass for the band Holding Out, which is one of my favorite bands ever—if you don't know them, then get your act together. You can start by listening to their songs on their MySpace site, and then you'll obviously have to buy their CD. Hhhhanyways. As a band, Holding Out leads worship for our high school summer and winter camps, so that's how I know Dave. At the end of the summer, he emailed me that he wanted to move to Eugene, and wondered if I wanted to get an apartment together. Which I did, so we did. I am currently writing this in our apartment, sitting on one of our couches in the living room. This couch is actually about as comfortable as the carpet—perhaps because, like the couch across from it (the couch Dave slept on last night), as well as the dining room table and all of the chairs in our apartment, it's imaginary.

That's right. In reality, we have no furniture. I have a mattress on the ground. Dave doesn't even have that. We don't even have a single chair. It's pretty ghetto fabulous, which is pretty flippin' alright for right now. I did buy a shower curtain this morning, only to realize upon my return that the holes were too small for our rod and it came with no hooks. So we tied it up with shoelaces, which actually worked pretty awesomely.

Dave is a pretty cool guy. He's an awesome Christian, and a guy you should know. Besides that, probably the most important thing you should know about him is that he is a ninja. So don't mess with him, or he might feel compelled to flip out and kill people. Seriously.

Actually, though, it's been awesome getting to know Dave. He's had his car broken into twice, and lost pretty much everything he brought over here, including two bass guitars (one of which was a brand new 5-string), an acoustic guitar, a computer, eighty CDs, and quite a bit more. It's been really awesome to see his attitude in reaction to that, a rare reflection of the true Christ in a man, like I have seen only a few times. If you want to know more about that, go to his MySpace (linked above) and read his blogs. Pretty amazing.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Oh, actually, there's one more thing. I got a new guitar. It's a Takamine, and it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen or played. It's so sweet it makes me want to crap my pants. But I'll post more about that later, because she's my baby, and she deserves more than a footnote at the end of a post.

The only other thing you need to know is that Dave and I are writing music and preparing to rock the world in Open E tuning. If you have the privilege of hearing us play, prepare to break down into tears of musical ecstasy.

That is all for now. The end!