Month April 2010

Top Five Tuesday: Childhood Toys

Brian Aaby 5 Comments

Join me in my walk down memory lane.  I can honestly say that taking on this subject will be tough, and will make me seriously wonder about hitting Toys-R-Us tomorrow just to re-enter my childhood.  I might just have to.

This top 5 looks at my favorite toys as a young’n.  The criteria… I had to have owned one (or more) of these in order for it to qualify.  They don’t necessarily have to be legitimate “toys,” rather something I used to do to go out (or in) to play.  Side note: Do you remember the days of just calling your friend and saying, “can you come over and play?”  I think we should still do that.

Without further ado, the list.

Honorable Mentions: Electronic Football Field, Intelevision and Nerf hoops.

Five: Legos.  Spaceships, hydroplanes and cars made out of these plastic gems.  Enough said.

Four: Big Wheel/Green Machine.  I loved the three-wheel wonder that is the Big Wheel.  I don’t know why they don’t make these for adults?  Do you remember when you did the power brake and power-slides so much that it actually made the wheel go square?  I didn’t mind, because that meant a new one was coming next Christmas…. until I was 12.  Getting old stunk.

Three: Big-Tonka Trucks. I remember a couple years Tonka made some vehicles that were almost perfectly to scale, I had a couple Broncos, Jeeps and Tow-Trucks that were about 18-24 inches in length and a good 8-10 inches tall.  These differed bigtime from what you have out there now… back then it was metal; I’d send those things off rock piles and cement barriers and it was just like I saw on the Dukes of Hazzard!  Loved me some Tonka.

Two: Baseball/Football Cards. I know, not a toy, but the sheer energy spent in purchasing, trading, drafting, researching, ranking and studying these things easily make them a true childhood toy.  I still have thousands.

One: Stompers. These little 4×4 were the best.  I know it is pretty silly to think, but I would honestly still play with mine if I had them.  Equipped with a single AA battery these Stompers did the offroad and off-carpet racing.  I loved setting up the ol’ Sandbox with tall mountains, deep tunnels and  plenty or boulders (baseball sized rocks) along the way.  Anyone have one they want to give me?  C’mon!

What stuff did I forget? Got one you agree or disagree with me on?

Grace,

Brian

CONTEST: Best Addition

Brian Aaby 13 Comments

This just screams “Contest.”  The picture below is a list of rules for teachers in the first school in San Diego, circa 1872, exactly 100 years before my birthyear!  I took this picture the other day and I haven’t stopped laughing!

So, the contest, staying consistent with the current list you can read below I’d like some more rules that you’d like to add.  The best additional rules will be listed as “in the running” and then after a couple days I’ll crown the Best Addition King or Queen!  As always, please keep them clean!

If your comment doesn’t appear right away, no worries, I may need to approve you if you haven’t commented ever before or in the last few weeks.  Have fun!

The 1872 San Diego School Rules for Teachers

Grace,
Brian

Note:  One of the best things about this, we discovered that the original teacher served for 1-year at the school, then married the school board President?  Hmmm?

********* In The Running **********

9. All teachers must be able to correctly define, spell, and use properly in a sentence the words nib, whittle, and scuttle. ~Calia

Any teacher who smiles at a child shall remain in isolation until a scowl returns. ~Jen

“Any teacher who actually dies physically, is required to tell somebody verbally, so the issue can be dealt with promptly.” ~Jan

9. Any teacher found to be a Confederate sympathizer will be tarred, feathered and sent to the new state of West Virginia indefinitely. ~Marc

Any teacher who stutters or mumbles while speaking will be sentenced to no less than three hours of cleaning up cattle manure. ~Richard Judd

ALL teachers who enter the evil Silicon Valley will be required to pay the penitence penalty of one apple. ~Joe Monto

If you balk at the first 8 rules the other 1864 rules will be applied more harshly. ~Aaron

************ The Winners*************

These were great, I honestly had a very tough time deciding… Monto’s was very prophetic, Aaron’s may have been the most unique/clever, but Jan and Jen get the prizes (it’s a tie!)… I’ve got a “Live and Love Loudly” (theme for the spring retreat for YMV’s) t-shirt for each of you as the prize!  I’ll arrange getting these to you.

Timing

Brian Aaby 1 Comment

The last several weeks have been filled with some very cool “God’s Timing” moments.  Things that happened that it was just so evident that God was orchestrating that exact circumstance for that exact moment.  For instance, I wrote about Brandon in Pine, AZ, who just happened to be pulling into the library at the exact time we were stopping in to ask about a church.  Then last week it was just so obvious to me that Sitka, Alaska was to be the place that our team from Dallas, Oregon should go.  However, the pieces did not fit and the day after they said, “not this year,” I heard back from Haines, Alaska who had not gotten back to me in three weeks.  Their leadership voted unanimously to have the team from Dallas!  God’s timing is perfect.

Well, yesterday He did it again. As I was listening to the Podcast of the sermon I missed last Sunday and after a much-needed 11 mile bike-ride while I was still cooling down, I thought I’d stop the procrastination and pull out our old lawnmower and begin the yard work for the year.  Side-note: our lawn mower is old.  It was old (used) when we received it in 1999. I had a hard time starting it this year and when it finally did start it would only go for about 30 seconds.  So, needless to say, 15 minutes into my lawn-mowing experience the front lawn was only 1/3 done.  It looked horrible.  As Pastor John was preaching through my earbuds and as the lawnmower was sputtering I was thinking about how long this would take with the engine lasting about 5-6 seconds each time I started it now…

…John, in his sermon, was talking about being Jesus in our world.  He literally had just introduced the point “share the Gospel” and was talking about our unsaved family, coworkers and our neighbors.

Over the light hacking of the mower and the proclamations of John I heard, “Hey, let me know if you need to borrow mine!”

My neighbor from across the street and a few doors down was inviting me to borrow his mower.  I had never met, nor seen the man.  However, this was a loud shout from God, not just a invite from a neighbor.

I love God’s timing.  Elisabeth and I had committed ourselves to this being the year we really invested in getting to know our neighbors.  We’ve seen some progress this year, but this was an unexpected blessing.  I did borrow my neighbor’s mower, and way more important than the lawn getting mowed was the foundation of relationship we now have through the couple of conversations we had before and after the mowing.

We left the conversation with the hope of doing a barbecue together soon!

Jesus is Lord of time!  He knew I’d be listing to that sermon at that time.  He knew our cruddy ol’ mower would sputter at that time and he  Thank you Lord for your timing!

Grace,

Brian

Top Five Tuesday: Spring Projects

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It’s been a busy early spring.  Between the Youthmark Mission Venture Spring Retreats, a wedding in Montana, writing for the summer of 2010, and other family happenings, I am noticing a growing list of stuff that I want to get done (and sometimes NEED to get done) growing.  So, for today’s list, I thought I’d procrastinate on getting some of these projects started and give you the list of the Spring Projects I want to work on in the order of most excitement.

The Criteria:  These projects are all things that I have not yet started work on (otherwise, the next five spring retreats would dominate the list, because I’m so excited about these).

Without further ado, the list.

Five: The Yard. Yep, that’s right, haven’t even mowed the lawn once in 2010.  Ouch.  It’s looks nasty, the only saving grace so far for our yard is that my lovely Bride has been a fantastic blessing and done a lot to keep the yard looking good (leaves, weeds and other general “yard” stuff).  Okay, I’ll get to it… oh darn, it’s starting to rain…

Four: The Garage. New Youthmark inventory means re-arranging the clutter of the garage, once again.  The good news, Elisabeth has still been able to park in the garage.  The bad news… I can’t remember the last time I parked in the garage.

Three: Odds and Ends for Elisabeth. I hate to call it a “Honey-Do” list because Elisabeth is just not that type of a gal.  However, she does have several things on her list that I could be of great help to her.  So the little things like the drooping curtain rod and large hole in our kitchen ceiling are on the list of things I look forward to getting done for the family.

Two: Revised Business/Ministry Plan. This whole “Youthmark” thing has been quite fun.  However, it can get a bit overwhelming and though I am a planner, I have discovered that without a road-map it can become difficult to know exactly where we are going.  I look forward to sitting down and coming up with a comprehensive ministry/business plan.  With this being said, please understand that it starts with and is maintained with a trust in the Spirit to guide (just don’t want anyone reacting to the word “plan”).

One: Pre-Marketing for 2011.  I have had a lot of ideas zippin’ around the ol’ noggin.  The only problem, I haven’t had a lot of time to get them written out and started.  However, my goal is to have 2011 “stuff” written by the beginning of the 2010 missions (this makes for better/smarter marketing as well).  Fun stuff in store, and quite different than the previous two years!

That’s the list for now… I don’t want it to grow, so please don’t send in your suggestions!

Grace,
Brian

500th Post!

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As I begin this, my 500th blog post at brianaaby.com, I wondered about “the early days of my blogging,” so I decided to go back and re-read my first posts here (three posted in late June), I wondered what I had done for my 1-year anniversary on that date, so I looked back at the archives and I posted twice, here and here.

June 28… a significant day, not only the day that I started my blog, but also the day that I started my spiritual journey with Jesus (way back in 1990)! Now, not even two years into my blog, I am up to 500 posts!  It’s been a fun journey and sorry to announce that this will be my last post as well.

April Fools’!  Since I didn’t get you on April 1, I thought I’d try the 18th.

In all seriousness, it has been a fun discipline to maintain this blog. I hope you will continue to be a faithful, semi-faithful or occasional drop-by reader.

In case you were wondering, here are the stats up to 500 posts:

The total views, as of 4.17.10 was 40,518 (I guess my mom has come by nearly 40,000 times, thanks Mom!)

I have received 752 comments… that means I average over 1 comment per post… man, it doesn’t seem like that, I’d like to hear back from you more!

The busiest day was Tuesday, January 5, 2010.  For whatever reason, 288 people wanted to see this. Which, in case you were wondering, hasn’t been totally fulfilled (there’s still time)!

500 down, at least another 500 to go, right?  We’ll see.

Grace,
Brian

And then there was one…

Brian Aaby Leave a comment

Thanks to all who have been praying oh-so-fervently on our behalf!  Join us in PRAISE that the prayer requests from last week have all pretty-much been answered! Alaska happened differently than we would think, Montana answers came slower than we had hoped, but literally at the PERFECT time to provide the encouragement we needed and then the Lord is doing a very unique thing with a couple shifts right now too (pray!). Join me in prayer for one more answer that we think could happen Sunday!

We are praying that a town in Montana says “yes” to receiving a team being trained for Montana.  We have a few other options, but I believe God may have us at this one specific place for this specific time.  The church is “between” Pastors and I think this could be just the spark they need!  Pray that the board of this church discerns God’s will and whatever the answer is, that we all praise God for what He is doing!

Exciting times!

Grace,

Brian

Top Five Tuesday: YMV Spring Retreat #1

Brian Aaby 1 Comment

This last weekend was our first “Spring Challenge” the Youthmark Mission Venture Spring Retreat.  It took place at Northwest Bible Church in Spring, Texas.  It included the youth groups from NWBC and another from Vinton, LA.  The students from Vinton are going out this year, one year after having a team from West Seattle serve in their community last summer!  It was so exciting to have them there.  I did post more about this retreat here.

So, today’s top 5 is a little different in that it’s sort of a report and a top 5 at the same time.  The criteria is pretty simple, my top five memories of the weekend.

Without further ado, the list:

Five: The launch of Mission51. I’ve been working on this little project that I’d say summarizes what we’re about at Youthmark… We do mission trips, but our passion is the 51 weeks of life outside of the mission trip.  Mission51 is really the call to be a missionary always, all ways a missionary.  You know it is an official movement when you have zip-up hoodies with the logo.  By the way, you can become a fan of mission51  on facebook and stay tuned for the mission51.org website.

Four: The Moment. There is a moment in the retreat that I was really looking forward to, and it did not disappoint. Because many have not attended who will attend, I can’t describe it, except to say, it was pretty powerful and God made Himself clear.

Three: Neil. My friend Neil Moloney, who is galavanting across the nation on a road trip right now timed his trip in order to be in Spring at the exact same time as us.  I put him to use right away.  Not only did Neil do some behind the scenes things, he helped with the worship with Joe Poppino as well.  Because we all got in on Thursday we had some quality time outside of Youthmark stuff as well.

Two:  Time with the Leaders. The team leaders for both NWBC and Crossroads of Vinton are such sweet people.  NWBC is heading into two communities in Idaho this summer, so the 8 leaders they had at the retreat were anxious to be trained.  Another Rob (the Sr. Pastor in Vinton) was not able to attend, however, the Crossroads youth leader, my friend Michelle, was there in all her Southern Accented glory.  The time chatting, encouraging and being encouraged by the leaders was sweet.

One: The Album. Joe Poppino, who is the worship leader for Youthmark–oh, and a worship pastor at a church in Mt. Vernon– was with me on the trip.  For the local retreats we have a band that plays with Joe. but to keep costs down, we have just Joe go on the out-of-area retreats.  Because Joe is such a gifted leader/teacher, we encourage the host church to bring in their musicians on Friday afternoon so that Joe can form a band for the weekend with his leadership.  Well, the NWBC students were excited to do this, that is, until someone Googled “Joe Poppino” and found out that Joe has “an album.”  The intimidation of a legitimate musician got the students too nervous to play.  This, of course, became the running joke of the weekend. Humble Joe (and he is humble) became known as Mr. Bigshot who has “an album.”   I started referring to him as “the talent.” And we all wanted signed autographs, because, afterall, he does have “an album.”

Looking forward to our other five retreats this spring, but this one was special!

Grace,

Brian