Top Five Tuesday: All Star Sports

July 13, 2010Brian Aaby 1 Comment

In honor of our national pastime taking a break over these three days to have their All-Star game, I thought I’d give you my top five “All-Star” activities for all sports. The criteria, looking at all professional sports “all-star” breaks, I am listing my top 5 activities that take place surrounding these events. Please note, I think that NFL needs to get rid of their “Pro Bowl.” Nobody cares the week after the Super Bowl.

Without further ado, the list.

Honorable Mentions: NHL Skills Competition and the NBA Rookie/Sophomore Game. Haven’t even seen one yet, but I think I’d also enjoy an MLS All-Star Game.

Five: The NBA H-O-R-S-E competition. Nothing like taking a backyard favorite and having some of the guys in the NBA compete.

Four: The NBA All-Star Game. It’s crazy-go-nuts, no defense, but for whatever reason, I still watch it. The only way I think it will become an actual game is if they did something crazy like made it count for home-court advantage for the winner conference for the Championship series… oh wait, that’s bee done by the MLB. Okay, here’s my suggestion, the conference that wins, the teams in that conference that are in the NBA draft lottery get an extra ball in the drawing?

Three: NHL All-Star Game. I’m not a huge NHL Guy, I like the play-offs, but I have enjoyed watching bits of the All-Star game because of the increased scoring. It’s fun to see a game end 12-10. I think, similar to the NBA, the game is so much different than the actual season that a purest wouldn’t like it, but for an occasional fan, it is fun to see.

Two: The Three Point Contest in NBA. I love the one-minute format with five racks of five balls each and the “money ball” as the last one on each rack. This is one competition that can always be repeated because it doesn’t require creativity and it happens so quickly… whereas the Dunk Contest needs to go away for a good number of years.

One: The Baseball All-Star Game. All other All-Star games are played for fun. Not that I’m a huge fan of the home-field advantage in the world-series going to the winner, but I do like that the All-Star game in baseball actually seems to be played competitively. Take basketball for instance, if LeBron is on a break, nobody makes any effort to defend… I’m thankful that Cliff Lee didn’t underhand a pitch to Albert Pujols in tonight’s game.

Anyone have something I am missing?

Grace,
Brian

1609

July 12, 2010July 12, 2010Brian Aaby Leave a comment

I am so thankful for the faithfulness of family, friends and prayer partners of those who are serving on Youthmark Mission Ventures.

Just checked the analytics for the Youthmark.com blogs. Yesterday saw 1609 visitors to the mission blog pages!

If you have not gone there yet, I’d invite you to pick one (those posting this week will most likely have a red or orange dot next to them, indicating a recent post). It is such a blast to read a blog from the beginning (which will take less than 10 minutes).

Click here to get to the Youthmark blogs.

Thanks for your prayers! I cannot believe how faithful the Lord is in answering these requests. Life changing, for real.

Grace,
Brian

100five50 Update: RESTART PLEASE!!!

July 12, 2010July 12, 2010Brian Aaby 1 Comment

That’s right, I need to hit the reset button. The last three weeks have been horrible for me along the lines of my disciplines, ad that is EXACTLY what this whole system I’ve created is. If I am disciplined it works, without discipline it does not work at all.

Here we are on July 12; I just went back to my iCal where I keep track of my riding/exercise and read that the last time I rode a bike was on Sunday, June 27 in Phoenix. Since then I have been in Phoenix, Colorado, LA and Spokane with just a couple days at home. Being in those settings needing to eat at restaurants (PHX and Spokane), having an all-you-can-eat buffet thrown at me every meal (Colorado camp) and great food from my Mother-in-Law and In-N-Out (in CA) has not been a good thing.

So, here I am at 223 starting over on July 12. This is not upsetting at all, just a great self-realization exercise. I am committed to being disciplined in a much better way starting RIGHT NOW. Knowing I have similar schedule the rest of the summer with another camp and a family trip to Hawaii, I know that food temptations are going to be present, which is not a bad thing to partake in, it only becomes “bad” when I don’t take the time to exercise to match the intake.

I look forward to the second half of this challenge.

Heading home for an afternoon bike ride in just a few.

I would really appreciate the prayers for the second half of this challenge, looking forward to feeling great and dropping 13+ pounds!

Grace,
Brian

It’s A Small World After All

July 11, 2010Brian Aaby 1 Comment

On my way home from Spokane yesterday I received a text message from my best friend who lives near San Diego.

The text read: “Youthmark is everywhere” and my iPhone promptly displayed a picture for me.

Classic.

Jeramy and his family were hanging out near Oceanside for the afternoon when Jerusha (Jer’s wife) saw some folk wearing Youthmark Mission Venture shirts. She began a conversation saying “our friend Brian Aaby is the founder of Youthmark.”

Jeramy quickly engaged another group of people wearing the shirts. He said, “Do you know Brian Aaby”

“He goes to our church!”

Jeramy sent a second photo to me of Jenny, Tracey and Katie.

How cool that Jeramy and his family decided on Oceanside for a day trip. How cool that the team heading to Mexico jumped off I-5 right then/there for a short break. How cool is it that God wanted my friends to meet right then!

Praise the Lord!

Grace,
Brian

The Launches!

July 9, 2010Brian Aaby 3 Comments

My apologies for the lack of writing this week… I have much to write about, including some family medical stuff, some great vacation stuff and some fantastic Youthmark happenings! But first…

I decided against my typical “numbered” picture for this launch. Here’s why:

Wednesday morning actually began the series of Launches 3.0 – and following. I was on vacation down in Southern California and drove from Camarillo to Santa Clarita with 230 copies of RoadGrip and Merge for the Converge NW teams traveling to Mexico for SERVE. These churches combine every three years for a mission to Mexico. Youthmark was honored to be a part of the process this year. They are currently doing a three day launch at The Master’s College before they hit Mexico tomorrow.

Meanwhile…

I flew home Wednesday afternoon and by Wednesday evening was launching the Pulpit Rock Church of Colorado Springs on their City Serve YMV in Seattle. We launched that team on Wednesday night to Thursday morning.

Meanwhile…

Kirk Petersen flew to Juneau on Wednesday so that he could greet and launch East Boulder Baptist (Colorado) to Petersburg, AK. They did their launch Thursday afternoon to Friday morning. EBoulder

Meanwhile…

I was driving to Spokane and am currently at the Pine and Sprague Starbucks in Spokane Valley waiting to launch 90 or so for their missions to Idaho and Montana.

Meanwhile…

OneSpotJuneau Kirk is up in Juneau with three other churches doing their launch for three Southeast Alaska locations that most will Ferry to tomorrow morning!

All told… about 400 people are going out this week through Youthmark! Praise God!

Meanwhile…

You are launching us through Prayer! Right?

Grace,
Brian

Colorado Campin’

July 3, 2010July 3, 2010Brian Aaby 1 Comment

After my trip to Phoenix to launch the teams to the Desert SW, I flew into Denver and picked up my good friend, Mike Penberthy. Mike and I were the speakers for the Summit Camp put on by the Colorado Baptist Convention. This was the first of two camps we are doing together this summer. We were honored to speak to this group of students/staff and to partner in ministry with Everfound. This group is fantastic and they are very much the real-deal. They love Jesus and understand that being missional is here and now, not later and over there.

Below are some pics from this week.