They're everywhere

I've been offering my nieces and nephews $5 to eat one. No takers so far. Gab said he'd do it for $20.

Iowa Family Reunion

We left the house at 5:30AM to meet up with most of the family. Cathie and I don't have the best track record for showing up on time to these things. Last time we overslept by about two hours and due to my travel woes in New York, we were about five hours late arriving at Mackinac Island last week. My Dad had bet $5 with Dan and Jon that we would be on time, and my Dad won the bet. Dan and Kris were actually 11 minutes late.

Mid-way through the trip we pulled off the expressway into some random neighborhood to stop at a park. I asked Cathie why and her answer was, "Your family has a history of odd pit stops." It's true. In the past we stopped repeated in industrial parks and other strange places. We don't need no stinkin rest stop. We met up with Jon and Beth and got to see my new niece for the first time ever. My family seems to really love my Hulk Hogan 'stache. They express that love through repeatedly telling me just how bad it looks on me. Odd family, I know.

We had custom shirts printed for our family reunion to go along with the custom beer-coozies. In Iowa, when you go to a wedding, there are no fancy center pieces - just custom beer coozies. Nice, huh? In addition to the t-shirts, Dan ordered Cathie a custom thong with the family reunion logo printed on the front and back. My wife loves thongs, what can I say? I'm a lucky man.

We got to Dubuque around 3 to the hotel we're at, which is a very nice water park as well. Dubuque is right on the Mississippi - the 'ol Miss, the 'ol lady - and with that we get Mayflies. These things are huge and they are everywhere. They live for a day and die. They end up in piles three inches deep everywhere. Each one is about two inches long and can carry off a small child, or at least you would of thought so from the screaming the girls did. It turns out that my sister Sooze is AS scared of these flies as she is of sea-gulls.

We spent the day swimming and then my brothers and I headed out on a beer run. As is tradition, we got lost again. Even with our GPS systems. We did this last time every stinkin time we went out without my Dad.


The hotel we're at has an arcade, and while the boys competed in the air-hockey championship (Nate came in 2nd) and we ended up torturing Jon on this crazy machine.

Tomorrow morning we're heading to the field where Field of Dreams was filmed (probably even less exciting than it sounds) and then we're heading over to my Aunt's farm for the family reunion. We've got hay rides and even a bus to shuttle us around to all of the different stops at my cousins. My cousins love Busch Lite beer, which we learned last year is basically water and on a hot day you can drink about 20 of these things. We brought Bud to try and be the beer snobs in Iowa.

Emily

I just licked the kitten, because that's what his Mom would do. The kitten probably thinks I'm his Mom. I didn't lick my finger first and then touch the kitten. I just licked the kitten with my tongue. --Emily

My Friend Ken

I got to know Ken Buck about ten years ago here at camp. I'd seen him around and somehow we ended up staying all night and talking. The following night he invited me out with the leaders to play a great game they'd invented. It involved two golf carts with at least eight people crammed on each. Each team had a about 50 boxes of whipper-snappers and we drove throughout the college campus chucking these at each other's heads, trying to crash the other cart. What can I say, we were young, dumb and didn't understand lawsuits.

At that time, Ken was a Youth Pastor in Xenia, Ohio where he pastored a fantastic band of misfits that reminded me a lot of the kids in my youth group at the time. Ken was a philosophy major at Cedarville and thinks deeply about things, but at the same time has a sense of humor that rides dangerously close to mine. Ken has a passion and vision for what the church is supposed to be and has been a huge influence on me in this area and my understanding of the oppressed. Although Ken is a Calvinist, (and one of the few that is actually not pre-destined according to my own prophetic word), he approaches his beliefs with humility and respect and doesn't act like the tool that many of a similar Calvinistic bent seem to enjoy. Ken has a this great ability to humbly listen to others points of view and discuss tough topics, without feeling the need to make their view his. Ken savors learning from others and going deep in relationships. Ken also has a pretty similar sense of humor to me and all of the other youth pastors at camp - sarcastic and at about a sixth grade level. Unfortunately, he also has no problem walking around naked, especially if it makes others uncomfortable. Ken has a man-crush on Noel (who he is more than just camp-friends with) and likes the band Wilco because he thinks Noel does too.

Ken was recently able to give his entire youth group (30 or so people) food poisoning that was traced back to the beef at the Burger King they stopped at on the way to camp. Five years ago Ken and I once emceed the last talent show (there's a reason it was the last) at camp. We spent the entire two hours up on stage saying things that were hilarious to Ken and I while everyone else stared blankly at us. Jason Shinn and Mike Dicurci sat in the back of the auditorium and heckled us with a bullhorn.

Ken recently moved out to Jersey where he's going to seminary and youth pastoring. We get to spend a week together each year at camp, visit as we're in each other's area and we talk on the phone pretty frequently. Since Ken's parents are reading this, it's very important that you know that Ken is in fact heterosexual.

Phil will never read this

This is Phil. As you can see, Phil has a giant paint ball wound on the side of his neck. He's a Youth Pastor out in Livonia. Phil has dyslexia, but most people would have no idea. I always figured this meant that you see a couple letters backwards and it's a little tougher to read. Phil has a very extreme case of dyslexia and can't read at all and never will be able to. When you and I see a stop sign, we think the words stop. Phil sees four letters that don't correspond to anything in his brain. Everything has to be read to him. Stop and think about how many things you read in a day and what the world. This really blew me away. I seriously couldn't imagine never being able to read a book. I read a book a week. I read menus. I surf the internet. I read newspapers. I read directional signs. I don't know what I'd do.

The amazing thing is that Phil runs a construction company, has his Bachelor's degree in Youth Ministry and knows the bible inside and out. He doesn't look for pity and he's able to laugh about it.

Velocity - Thursday

I'm leaving today. It's bittersweet. I can't wait to get home and see my family, but to leave early blows. The best part of camp is the last two days. By today, our group has gelled and the kids have softened, connected and are really thinking big thoughts on their faith based on what they've experienced all week.

After session, we played volleyball. We weren't very good, but the game was so representative of our group. We laughed and had a blast and encouraged each other, no matter how well or badly people did. The only exception was one of the leaders (whose name rhymes with Kave Durt) that was a little overly competitive, but only because he wanted the best out of his people, or so he says.

We all felt bad for Kasey, pictured on the right, because she had played volleyball in high school and had lost so much of her ability in her old age.

Most of our group went canoing today and just skirted past the rain. This is the last update from me, so be sure and be at church next Sunday to see the slideshow of all of the pictures taken.

You can see the rest of my pictures from Thursday here.

Our Speakers

These are our two revered speakers - Scott and Noel. Both are mega-church pastors (Scott at Willow Creek in Chicago and Noel at Riverview in Lansing). Scott runs Willow's Junior High Youth Ministry, Elevate, and Noel is the Senior Lead-Co-Pastor at Riverview. They have a secret mega-church hand-shake that they won't share with me. The two are inseparable, spending every waking minute together. It's been a great time hanging out with them this week.

Leaders

The best part of camp for me is hanging with the group of leaders, many of whom I've developed close friendships with over the past 10 years. We've seen each grow, mature (only slightly), get married and have kids over time.

The group has grown as leaders have been raised up from within the group and added other leaders into the relationship. It is such a fantastic group of people, all with a similar sarcastic sense of humor, love for kids and love for God. I love having the new leaders coming out of high school in our group get to see this group of leaders and how they relate.

Mark Butler, on the left, raised up a slew of leaders here as a youth pastor. He's a junior high youth pastor who has done and seen everything out there in youth ministry. He raised up guys like Tim and Jason and he's the COO of our camp.

(Note the water spot on Paul's pants in the picture on the right. For the record, Paul said he DID NOT pee himself here and claims he spilled water on his pants)

Velocity - Wednesday

We got to bed last night around 12:30 after sitting around in the hallway with some of the high school kids and leaders from other churches telling great stories of the adventures of the leaders over the past 10 years at camp. We were laughing so hard as we talked about some of the different screw ups and debacles. We told the kids that the real reason we come to this camp is to hang out with the leaders from other youth group. We come from all different denominations, but we have all have the common passion for kids and God and love to see what the two combined can do.

It's still hot and we're still sweaty, unless we're in the air conditioned dorms. The only real downside to air conditioned dorms is that nothing dries in the room. My towel is still wet from Monday. Our youth group game consisted of trying to do a large group jump rope. Last year we were amazing and did 30 in a row. This year we tried to get 3. The band was participating with us, and I'm pretty sure they were the anchors.

Jess coordinated a gig today in the cafeteria to clean-up afterward lunch. It was nothing the kids had to do, but they did it to serve the cafeteria workers. The workers really didn't know what to do with it, but were pretty surprised and pleased. Almost all of the kids from our group participated, including all the kids you would think wouldn't really want to serve others.

The guys and I played football today in the Kenyon stadium. It was 90+ and humid and we were roasting, but we had a blast. The coolest part was when the older guys picked teams. They started with the youngest, smallest guys. They just lit up when they were chosen first. The big guys went out of their way to make sure the middle school guys got the ball and got to make the big plays. We had no major injuries except for Michael (Kasey's fiancee) getting a bloody nose. The group of guys is so great. Watching the older guys talk to and hang with the middle schoolers tells me we're doing something right.

The kids are settling into the rhythm of camp and starting to open up more and more. As part of the middle school session, we break out into small groups and talk through what we just heard, going through three questions that spark great discussion. It's great to see some of our college students leading these group. Mike and Tiffany led the groups today and did a great job with it. Our small groups tonight were a little different. We were talking about how God is there in the midst of our sadness and tough times and the small group questions were on the same topics. The first question dealt with what the saddest movie they'd ever seen. One kid started off talking about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and how sad it was. Other kids joined in and shared more details. Let's just say that junior high boys don't watch too many sad movies. The next question was on a time where they'd been sad because of something in their life and how they responded. Most of them had some kind of experience, but when asked how they'd dealt with it, the common answer was, "I don't know. I was 6."

There is a ton of walking and Jason and I have been shuttling kids around the campus. Only 18 year old leaders are allowed in the trunk. (Parents. I'm kidding. Not really.)

Our guys got smoked in a Halo 3 tournament tonight and we continued to play our new racquetball court game - four wall. We've got this down to an art form and no one got hurt. It's so cool to see the way the kids in general and the guys specifically have bonded. The older guys have really taken the junior high guys under their wing. The Rays boys do a great job of modeling this for the other high school guys, and they've started doing the same.

We're starting to wear down a bit, but the group is bonding and the kids are opening up more and more. Keep praying for us.

You can see the rest of the pictures here.

Lesson from Shinn's lesson

"The Church is like Noah's Ark. It may be full of crap but it's the best thing floating."

Happy Birthday Madeline

Happy Birthday Madeline!

My beautiful little girl is nine today! Here are nine things you might not know about Madeline:
1. Madeline loves to read. She will often read through a decent size chapter book in one night.
2. Maddie is scared of worms. She'll hold snakes, she will ride any rollercoaster you can find, but worms terrify her.
3. Madeline loves to be the center of attention. Not sure where she got that trait from.
4. Madeline's favorite pop in the whole world is Dr. Pepper.
5. Madeline is very generous. She loves to help others out with what she's got, whether it's with her allowance or her toys. She was given an award at Spring Hill for her generosity.
6. Maddie has her own style. It's usually a pretty one and the parts that aren't, we attribute to Jess living with us for a year.
7. Madeline is a minimalist. She stores nothing and when cleaning her room would sooner give something away or throw the stuff out.
8. When I wear ugly sunglasses in public, I embarrass her from her "head all the way down to her toes."
9. Maddie has a pen-pal that she met while Cathie and I were on our time-share spiel in Florida. The two been corresponding for almost a year, a few times a month.

Breakfast in Bed for the Birthday Girl

Velocity - Tuesday

Our first full day of camp went off without too much of a problem. One of the church's (Ken Buck's) came down with mass food poisoning. After doing an intense House on the group, the best they can figure is that they all ate a bunch of cherries that Ken purchased at a farmer's market and didn't wash. Could be something else, but this is too good of a story to remind Ken year after year.

After this morning's session we had some team games, including this one called blind thwacker. It involved blindfolds, water noodles and poking people. It doesn't get much better than that.

For our "Buck Wild" time, we had the giant slip and slide going. It's a 200 feet long piece of visquene, coated with baby shampoo and constantly hosed down. The kids go flying down this into a giant pool of soap, mud and grass - all while getting sprayed with a hose.

Everyone got into it and we had some quality pile-ups at the bottom as people didn't get out of the way fast enough. No injuries, though.

I took a group canoing today and the river was super low. 80% of the kids I took were junior highers from other schools and NONE of them knew how to canoe. Tim Wright and I flipped 20 capsized canoes and freed up another 50 canoes stuck on rocks.
It's only day two, but it feels like we've been here a while already. As usual, the kids were up early this morning - but as we run 'em hard, they start to get to bed a little early and sleep in a little later. Breakfast is at 7:30, so there's not too much sleeping going on.

We had one guy end up with a bad hair cut and make the choice to go bald instead. I'm not mentioning any names, but his name rhymes with Brad Wheelock. We made our annual Wal-Mart run tonight in another church's van. We took two groups, each ended up with all sorts of quality crap, once again.
My vow to only take the stairs is seeming a little dumber each day. I go up the stairs at least 13 times a day x 16 stairs per flight x 7 flights of stairs x once up+once down. If my math is right, I figure I'm doing about 2912 stairs per day. I'm eating more lettuce in a given day than I do in a month. Two huge salads each day combined with my friend Mr. Gold Bond Medicated Power and I'm a happy guy.


You can see the rest of the pictures here.

His name is Reagan Rose

Not to be confused with my niece, Reagan Violet Agnes Kurt.

Velocity - Monday

We got off to a good start to camp this morning. We only left one kid behind. He was late. He caught up to us when one of the vehicles stopped to get gas. Since I'm leaving on Thursday, I drove separately with three guys in my car. I hadn't even looked at a map and I blindly followed my GPS. Probably not the best idea. It took us on the weirdest, roundabout way over to Sandusky and then back roads from there to Gambier, Ohio. On our way, we got to see some pretty strange small-town church signs - including this. We found all sorts of fault with Ohio, including the fact their Arby's don't recognize the coveted 5 for $5.95 deal. Our church has our own floor this year, which is nice. The downside, is that it's on the 7th floor. I'm trying to not take the elevator at all. That may become a much dumber idea as the week wears on. Our air-conditioned dorms are nice, but they're a loooong ways away from the temporary cafeteria we're using, while the old one is being rebuilt. It's at least a mile walk across campus to get there and it's probably not designed to deal with this big of a group.

We get a lot of time to meet in our youth group, so we hung out today, got to know each other and shared what we're looking forward to this week. Lots of kids looking forward to getting to know each other and connecting with God.

The first day is always an interesting one with kids transitioning into "camp-mode", burning off excess energy and getting out from under Mom and Dad. Michael and I took three seventh graders to Wal-Mart today to get stuff. It's awesome to watch junior-highers flush with cash going shopping on their own. They bought candy, mountain dew, legos, a remote control car and a rip-cord motorcycle. Awesome.

I get the chance to do some of the up front announcement-type stuff at the beginnings of session, which I have a blast with and have to make a real effort to keep them short-ish. 400+ people in the auditorium makes it feel very full with lots of energy. The worship band this year rocks. Our speakers are both great. I'm hanging with the junior high kids and get to listen to Scott Rubin, who is great. I introduced him and explained how he got his nickname "El Matador" and other fun facts. Last year, our speaker memorized all 200 junior high kids names in the room. I shared that Scott wouldn't have to go through the pain, because he had been studying their yearbooks for the past two weeks and knew each and every one of their names. The caveat was that he wouldn't use their names and embarrass his protege Jason Raitz, so he will only share the names one-on-one.

We all hit the gym tonight and came up with a great game played in racquetball court, involving chucking a racquetball around the court, catching it and trying not to get hit. Fun stuff.

You can see the rest of Monday's pictures here.

Velo-City

I'm heading out tomorrow morning to Camp Velocity. This is my 10th year or so of doing camp with our church's youth group, all with the same churches - with some additions over the years. Noel is the High School speaker and the junior high speaker is Raitz's boss at Willow Creek, Scott Rubin, their Junior High Youth Pastor.

For the fifth year (i think) we're at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH (the middle of nowhere). The good news is that we're staying in air conditioned dorms this year. The bad news is that they're on the other side of campus from everything else we're doing. We've got about 400+ kids going overall from a bunch of different churches around Michigan and Ohio. We're from all sorts of denominations and none of us believes the exact same thing, but we all love kids and believe that Jesus loves them too, so we work to teach the kids to know and follow Jesus. We've got 30+ kids going from Crossroads, with a great group of leaders, many of who've grown up through our youth group from junior high to high school and now help as leaders as they're in college.

I look forward to this week every year. It's an amazing, life changing, draining week. I'm going into it this year already kind of worn down with a couple of crazy weeks leading up to this one. Hanging with this group of youth pastors, hearing the speakers and the worship is a great way for me to reconnect with God. Having the great conversations with kids about their life and faith that happen so often in these kind of settings where you're together 24x7 also fill me up.

If you have a sec, please pray for me, the other leaders and the kids we're taking this week.

My Beautiful Girls

Cheap Hose

Cathie thought she'd be nice and get me a hose. It's the worst hose ever. It's constantly getting twisted and it's really flimsy. Here's what we learned out of this situation:

1. Cathie does not know good hose from bad hose.
2. Cathie thinks that $20 is a lot for hose.
   
3. Cheap hose are twisted.
4. Cathie is good at straightening out cheap hose.
   

Pictures

Anytime my family gets together, we have four people taking lots of pictures of the same thing. My sister took the picture on the left, which she was very amused by because of the old woman on the scooter zooming by on the left. Dan was kind enough to take this picture up on the right. I'm not sure what he was going for.

Mystery Box

This was our first time getting the Mystery Box at church. The idea is that our Pastor has no idea what's in it and has to teach a quick message on it's contents. The kids have fun trying to stump the pastor and it's always amusing for the adults to watch Joe try and dig his way out of tough spots. Our kids couldn't agree for the longest time non what to put in the box, coming up with everything from a bottle of plant fertilizer to a dead raccoon carcass - the more obscure and harder to teach on, the better. We thought long and hard and finally filled the box with a giant alligator head with a hot dog stuck in it's teeth.

Not my best idea ever...

Mackinac Island

We just returned from our final trip to Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel. For the past 15 years my dad has been in charge of the Michigan Bankers convention up there and he's kind of a big deal (our description, not his). It's a five-star hotel and after 6pm men have to wear a coat and tie. It was one of my Mom's favorite places and she always loved the conference, the people, the food, the hotel and island. We must have mentioned a million times how much my Mom would have loved this or that aspect of the time together. We had so much fun hanging out as a family. We laughed, ate and drank pretty much non-stop. This is my Dad's last year up here as he is retiring this year, and he treated us to a first class time up there to be with him and celebrate with him - and wow did we celebrate.

Due to my flight debacle, instead of leaving at 5AM, we left at 11:30. We got to Mackinac city in time to make the 3:30 Dan. When the Ferry arrived, we were greeted by a huge group of people (Susan claims they were waiting in line, I'm pretty sure they were there to see me.)

We had the most amazing rooms at the hotel - some of the best (it helps to have your Dad know the owner and organize the shindig), right at the front, overlooking the property and the lake. We had an amazing view with balconies that were perfect for sitting out and reading as you heard the horse hoofs clomp on the sidewalk below. If you look at the picture above, we're dead center in the top of the hotel.




As a retirement gift, the owner of the Grand Hotel took my Dad for a ride on his high stepper horses. All of the girls went with my Dad (including Dan). Kevin and I decided instead to ride our bikes around the island. It seemed like a good idea until we hit the gale-force winds on the back half of the island. We decided to cut through the middle of the island which was 90% up-hill, and 10% down hill.

We were able to get lots of free swag at the conference, including these nice sunglass holders. Dan took the instructions seriously that suggested he could wear these on his belt clip. Most of the staff at the hotel is brought up from the Jamaica to work for the summer. My Mom and Dad had gotten to know the maitre'd at the Grand Hotel, who leads the midnight Jamaican worship service at the catholic church on the island. Susan and my Dad headed over to see that while Dan, Kevin, Cathie and I hung out on the porch of the Grand Hotel, drank expensive scotch and smoked cigars.

Wednesday night's entertainment was the music group The Letterman. There were no top-ten lists or stupid-human tricks - instead it was 3 pretty old guys singing even older songs. I had low expectations, to say the least. I had no idea who these guys were or what they sang, but I could not believe all of the songs they have. Check out this list of singles. Ok, I wouldn't have recognized many from this list either, but as they sang, it turns out they wrote just about every song from the 60's and 70's. I recognized at least 30 of the songs they sang, including Unchained Melody from Jon's favorite movie, Ghost. At one point in the concert, they said we could come up on stage and get a picture. We did.

My personal highlight for the whole trip was when we all went on a bike ride with boxed-lunches for a picnic. As we sat and ate our lunches the seagulls came around like scavengers. I knew my sister didn't like birds, but I didn't know she was afraid of them. As the seagulls came closer, she ran screaming and hiding behind the person furthest from the bird. My brother-in-law Kevin impressed me by continuing to throw potato chips at her, which would draw the seagulls right to her and send her screaming in another direction. I laughed so hard I just about wet myself.

One of the best parts of the event was hearing Dan Dierdorf speak as the keynote. Dan played for U of M, the St. Louis Cardinals, is in the Hall of Fame and is an announcer for ABC. He talked for almost an hour and half, and every guy in the room was hanging on his every word. We could have stayed another hour easily listening to stories about the NFL, his career, and about coach Bo Schembechler. When we saw Dan walk into the room, he could barely walk. He has two new knees, two fake hips and his body shows the beating he took.


We had to leave early and took the 9pm Ferry off the island. We stayed at my friend Bill's cottage in Gaylord before heading to Spring Hill to pick up the kids.

You can see the rest of my pics here, and other pics here and here. You have to read my sister Sooze's rendition of the whole event, which you'll find here.